Sorting Into Subfolders

[amlamb]

Outlook residing on my computer allows setting up rules for sorting arriving e-mails into subfolders. Is there a way to sort incoming e-mails on the web-based mail?

[miken]

Outlook residing on my computer allows setting up rules for sorting arriving e-mails into subfolders. Is there a way to sort incoming e-mails on the web-based mail?

This can be found by hitting Settings on the top right hand side and then going to Filters.

[dtref]

From Mike N: This can be found by hitting Settings on the top right hand side and then going to Filters.

I tried that but it doesn’t seem to work. I have Thunderbird. I used to just download my emails from Sonic.net. Lately there has been A LOT of really offensive spam getting downloaded so I went to my Sonic account to set some filters to move the garbage into Trash. To my chagrin, the garbage only goes to Trash when I log in to Sonic.net, but NOT when I just ask Thunderbird to download new emails to my computer.

How can I get the Sonic filters to send unwanted emails to Trash (or delete them outright) instead of holding them for download to my computer?

Thank you for any help.

[miken]

From Mike N: This can be found by hitting Settings on the top right hand side and then going to Filters.

I tried that but it doesn’t seem to work. I have Thunderbird. I used to just download my emails from Sonic.net. Lately there has been A LOT of really offensive spam getting downloaded so I went to my Sonic account to set some filters to move the garbage into Trash. To my chagrin, the garbage only goes to Trash when I log in to Sonic.net, but NOT when I just ask Thunderbird to download new emails to my computer.

How can I get the Sonic filters to send unwanted emails to Trash (or delete them outright) instead of holding them for download to my computer?

Thank you for any help.

You should set up e-mail filters on whatever client you are using for e-mail (whether it's Outlook, Thunderbird or our Web based client). In Thunderbird, filters are located at 'Tools' > 'Message Filters'. There are probably some good guides out there if you need any help, but also feel free to post any questions your having trouble with on here and I'll try my best to answer them.

[dtref]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for answering my post.

I have been filtering my email IN Thunderbird for a long time (at least 5 years). I have extensive filters in T-bird and they work exactly as I want them to.

However, in the last month, truly offensive emails have become a serious problem. Previously, there were a few here and there. Now, maybe thanks to Trump, definitely thanks to the growing ease with which criminals can generate spam in prodigious quantities, the numbers are rapidly increasing. In the period 9/16 - 10/16, I averaged 90 emails per day TOTAL. Now, just the disgusting ones are running upwards of 50 or 60/day… and the number is growing.

If my only problem were how blatantly obscene these emails are, I’d just keep updating my T-bird filters but there is another issue. Huge DDoS attacks used to be around 200gbs but now, using the IoT, 300-400gbs are common. Similarly, the radically increasing ability of miscreants to bombard individuals’ computers with massive amounts of spam suck my bandwidth. I have been able to subsist on and thus pay for only 3gbs/month bandwidth for a long time. However, this tidal wave of spam is threatening to push me well over my monthly limit. That is why I turned to Sonic.net’s mail filters. My hope was to cut the spam off at the Sonic server, dump it into my Trash there, and not have any of it usurp bandwidth downloading to my computer.

So I went to my Sonic mail account, settings, filters, and wrote about 13 filters for the worst of the stuff. Since then here is what has happened.

Every time I just let T-bird retrieve the mail from my Sonic Inbox, along with the unfiltered stuff comes all the garbage which my filters faithfully place in the correct T-bird folder. However, every time I log on to Sonic.net, amazingly all the filtered garbage is in my Sonic Junk folder and only items that are not covered by my Sonic.net filters remain in my Sonic Inbox. If I then download my emails to my computer, only the items in the Sonic Inbox are retrieved; the stuff in the Sonic Junk stays there.

What is happening is that when T-bird logs into my Sonic account to retrieve email, the filters don’t kick in. ONLY when I log in manually do they work.

So my question is how do I get Sonic.net to either filter stuff as it comes into my account OR filter stuff even when email is accessed electronically?

Thank you, Mike, for reading this post.

[drew.phillips]

Hi dtref,

Just like Thunderbird filters, the webmail filters only run on your Inbox once the messages have been downloaded.

That is to say, the filters run "client side" after the messages are received in the Inbox and then appropriate action is taken (i.e. Move to Trash).

At this point, what you want are server side filters. These are filters that run on our servers as the mail is being delivered to your spool. We support "procmail" files, which is a semi-advanced set of instructions that are run on our systems as we're delivering mail to you. Writing them, unfortunately, is not a beginner task and incorrect rules can result in mail being lost. While we allow users to create these files, our support team cannot help or offer any assistance except to remove the rules in the event of problems.

That said, I think I know exactly the nature of the messages you're talking about. I helped a friend who was having a similar problem here write some rules which has almost eliminated these messages altogether. If you'd like, PM me your details or email [email protected] with some samples and put attention to my name in the message.

If the messages you're getting are similar to the ones I've written some rules for in the past we can largely put a stop to these on the server side so your mail client never needs to download or see any of the messages. Additionally, the filtering will happen whether you're opening Thunderbird, webmail, or an email program on a mobile phone.

[dtref]

Dear Drew Phillips,

How do I PM you?

Respectfully yours,
Diane

[wa2ibm]

How do I PM you?

Click on the little blue message icon just below his name on the right.