Our Anti-Spam Email filter system uses many factors to determine the validity of an incoming message including the sender's email address, the sending server's IP address, and the content of the message. Unwanted messages which reach your inbox will fall into two categories, missed spam and unwanted mass mailings.
Sporatic spam which got passed the filters can either just be deleted or you can forward the message with it's headers to our spam submisison team for evaluation. Instructions to do this can be found at
http://mxtoolbox.com/cs/forums/787/ShowThread.aspx.
The other type of unwelcome messages in your inbox are recurring messages from a sender that you do not want such as a newletter or mailing list. To combat these, you can set up a mail filter to automatically move these messages to your Junk folder. A mail filter can be set up at two different locations, either on our server or in your local mail client such as Outlook. The best place to set up such a filter depends on how you prefer to recieve your mail, and how you use your mailbox.
If you create a mail filter in the web interface, then all mail will be filtered no matter how you access your mailbox. If you use the web interface or have multiple mail clients such as a phone or mobile device this is definitely your best avenue. The instructions for setting this up can be found at
http://mxtoolbox.com/cs/forums/post/810.aspx.
If you rely exclusively on a local mail client such as Microsoft Outlook, then you might want to consider creating a local mail filter on your computer. This has the advantage in that you do not need to go to the web interface so adding a new person to your filter is quick and easy. The disadvantage is that if you access your mail with the web interface or connect to your mailbox with a phone or other device, then you will see all of your messages in the inbox, without any filtering. Instructions on setting up a filter in Outlook can be found at
http://mxtoolbox.com/cs/forums/809/ShowThread.aspxUpdate: As of Feb, 5th 2009 the MxToolBox Forums have moved to http://community.mxtoolbox.com/forums
Peter
Product Development Engineer
peter@MXToolBox.com
512-637-8762