Cotse offers the following two systems for those who want
to essentially bar all email other than from selected
senders: Note that you are not required to use either of
these systems; they are simply available to you as part of
Cotse's suite of filtering options.
Goldlist Sender(s) -
One of Cotse.Net's unique filters is the Goldlisted
Senders list -- a list you create by entering the email
addresses of those from whom you will accept email. You can
goldlist individual senders, entire domains, or even
particular extensions (such as .biz, .uk). Mail received
from addresses on your goldlist senders list will get
delivered to your Inbox while all other messages will be
delivered to your Trash folder, deleted from the server,
merely tagged with an X-Goldlist tag in the header, or
rejected, at your option.
Goldlisting Senders is a great idea for those who only
want to hear from selected senders or domains (such as a
workgroup or specific friends and family), or for parents
who want to be able to establish permissions for their
children's email correspondents. Goldlisting senders in
conjunction with deleting all email from those not on the
goldlist disables all other filters described below. As long
as the mail is from a sender on your goldlist and you
haven't killed your alias (see below), the mail will be
delivered to your Inbox.
Need to add someone or delete them from the Goldlisted
Senders? No problem - your Goldlist can be easily edited
with the webmail interface.
Subject-Line
Password Protected Email - Instead of creating a
Goldlist for Senders, you may wish to use subject-line
password protection for your incoming email. In this system,
you create a password (NOT your login password) that you
give out to selected friends, family or colleagues. Tell
them that they must include that password in the subject
line of any email to you or their mail will not be
received.
With subject-line password-protected email, messages that
contain the password in the subject line will be delivered
to your Inbox and other filtering rules will be
disabled.
Any messages without the password in the subject line
will be delivered to your Trash folder, deleted, or
rejected, at your option. You can disable subject-line
password protection at any time or change the password
phrase and start again, if need be.
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Handling Inline
HTML - Web bugs, advertising images, and a lot of
spam comes with html or web pages embedded in the email. By
forbidding html, you can reduce spam and disable web bugs
that are often embedded in email as a way of letting the
sender know the message was viewed.
Handling
Attachments - Worms, trojans, and viruses are an
increasing problem, but you can reduce your risk of getting
infected by forbidding emails with certain potentially
dangerous attachments. The attachments management options
page includes a checklist with all of the executable file
types. You can ban some kinds of attachments, or all types
of attachments on the list (the default setting is to ban
all potentially dangerous attachments). You can also add
your own file types to the list of blocked attachments. Note
that if you forbid some or all attachments, all messages
containing such attachments will be delivered to your Trash
folder, deleted, or rejected, at your option.
Unsafe Image Rules
- You can set up rules for handling potentially
unsafe images and whether they are displayed in your
webmail. You can select several different options defining
who will be considered trusted. You can also pick from
several fields in the headers and specify a search string
(such as the sender's address) which, if found, will allow
the images in your messages. With this option, you can allow
some people you trust to send you potentially dangerous
image files while forbidding others.
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Banned Vocabulary
List - With this form of rule-based filtering, you
can maintain your own library of forbidden words or phrases
and use it to block offensive emails from ever reaching your
Inbox. Any messages with words or phrases listed on your ban
list will be delivered to your Trash or Spam folder,
deleted, or rejected, at your option. By setting your filter
rules to delete messages with banned vocabulary and not to
notify you, you will never see the message or any of its
offensive text at all.
In addition, you can use this feature to search for
headers that are added by SpamAssassin, so you can pick and
choose which types of messages to block based on the results
of tests performed by SpamAssassin (requires enabling of
Spam Assassin).
Establishing a banned vocabulary list is easy. Simply
copy and paste, or type in the text you wish to ban on the
options page for banned vocabulary. You do not need to worry
about upper and lower case letters, simply add whatever you
think will stop a particular type of message from getting
through. This technique can be very helpful if you are not
using very restrictive filters, as it enables you to
eliminate some spam based on keyword or even part of a
keyword (such as "viag" to block some of the variations of
spellings for viagra, which is currently popular in
spam).
Blacklist
Sender - Cotse filters give you the option to
blacklist a specific sender by username, or to blacklist a
specific email address, an entire domain, an entire
extension (like .biz), and/or an entire country (like .ch or
.ru). Blacklisting will block any email from that address or
specified domain from being delivered to your Inbox.
Blacklisting Sender(s) is a useful tool for preventing
specific individuals, specific organizations, or entire
domains from contacting you via email. Any time you receive
an email you don't want, you can blacklist the sender or
domain for the future by simply clicking a link while the
email is open in your webmail interface (i.e., when you are
looking at the message page). You can also manually edit
your blacklist to add or delete particular senders or
domains. All mail from blacklisted sources will be delivered
to your Trash folder, deleted, or rejected, at your
option.
Goldlist Your Email
Aliases - Goldlisting one or more of your own email
aliases enables to you to receive email addressed to only
those aliases, while email to all your other aliases is
either deleted, sent to Trash, or rejected, at your option.
Goldlisting email aliases is particularly useful for those
who own their own domain and only wish to receive email for
particular aliases at that domain while rejecting all
others.
Unlike the Goldlist Sender
filter, however, goldlisting an alias does not automatically
deliver all email to the goldlisted alias to your inbox.
Rather, it acts as a gateway, and allows email addressed to
your goldlisted alias(es) to pass through the gateway and
then go through any other filters you may have created or
enabled.
Whitelist
Sender- If you do not have the Goldlist Sender
option activated, whitelisting a sender's address or domain
will guarantee delivery to your Inbox regardless of any
other rules you have set up. This is useful, for example, if
you need to blacklist an entire domain but you still want to
receive email from one person (or a number of individuals)
at that domain. It is also useful for defining a circle of
friends to whom you want to give the ability to email you
even if they should happen to use a word that might be in
your banned vocabulary list.
Any email received from addresses listed in the Whitelist
Sender list will be automatically delivered to your Inbox.
For your convenience, users or entire domains can be
whitelisted by clicking on a link on the message page, or by
manually entering the information on the whitelist
management page in your webmail interface.
Whitelist
Destination Address - This form of Whitelisting
guarantees that messages sent to specified addresses (such
as the custom aliases you create to subscribe to mail lists)
will be delivered to your Inbox, regardless of any other
rules for restricting email.
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Cotse gives you a variety of filters to help you reduce
spam, dangerous messages (those containing viruses, worms,
etc.) or objectionable materials from ever reaching your
inbox. Whereas most systems deliver mail to your inbox and
then apply filters, Cotse's filters are server-side, i.e.,
they are applied before the mail ever gets to you. Note that
you do not need to choose among spam filtering methods: you
can enable any or all of the following:
Bayesian Filtering
- Bayesian filtering uses a statistical analysis of the
incoming messages based on your own database of information
that describes spam and non-spam messages. With this type of
filtering, you train it to recognize what you consider valid
email and what you consider spam. In time your filter will
adapt to suit your particular needs. This is currently the
hottest thing in Spam filtering.
SpamAssassin -
SpamAssassin will score the incoming email based on its
content to determine whether the message is likely to be
spam, and if so, it will be delivered to your Spam folder,
deleted, or rejected, at your option. If you suspect a
friend's mail might land up being coded as "spam," you might
wish to set your options for delivery to the "Trash" or
"Spam" folders so you can skim them to make sure no "real"
email got rejected (alternatively, you may wish to use the
Whitelist Sender option to insure your friend's email
reaches your Inbox).
DNSBLs (DNS Blacklists)
- Cotse provides a list of externally generated
spam filtering lists. If you wish to use one of these lists
to scan your incoming mail, simply enable the list(s) of
your choice. In our experience, using SpamAssassin in
conjunction with some "Banned Vocabulary" usually works to
catch and delete most spam.
Want to use a DNSBL that's not on our
list? Email helpdesk at cotse.net and if it's
publicly available, we'll add it for you.
SpamCop - SpamCop is
a free service that greatly assists in finding the true
source of the spam and helps in letting the proper people
know about the abuse. To use it, you must get a SpamCop
authorization code. There is a free sign up page you can use
to sign up for an account. Once your account is set up, you
can enter your authorization code on our SpamCop page, and
then use the easy link to report spam to SpamCop. Please
read the caution on our SpamCop page, however.
Kill Aliases -
The Alias Killfile prevents messages that are sent to
certain aliases (e.g., alias@yourname.cotse.net) from being
delivered. This is useful for aliases that have become spam
traps - simply list the alias in the Kill Alias page of your
webmail interface, and any mail sent to it will be delivered
to your Trash folder, deleted, or rejected, at your
option.
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Cotse has a number of filters to help you forward mail to
other destinations. For mail that is not Sender-Goldlisted,
Subject-Line Password-Protected, or Sender-Whitelisted, you
can use the Mail Filters option to create rules to
filter mail to other addresses. The filters can detect
information in the header and/or in the body of the email,
allowing you to filter it to your cell phone, your PDA, or
another email address or account. Two examples of how you
might use these filters are:
Filter Destination to Alternate Address
- forward email based on the destination address in the
envelope of the message. This is useful if you wish to give
people a Cotse address and not your main ISP account or
address. By configuring this section, mail sent to you at a
Cotse identity can be redirected or forwarded to another
address of yours.
Filter Sender to Alternate Address -
Want to forward all mail from one individual or domain to
another email address or account? You can do that by using
this feature.
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Cotse also has filters that enable you to sort your
incoming mail. Two examples follow:
Filter Destination To Alternate Folder -
Sort your incoming mail into folders based on the
destination address in the envelope of the message. This is
a convenient feature if you have used an alias or identity
to sign up for a mail list. Any mail that comes in directed
to that identity can be quickly sorted into a folder for
that mail list that you create in Folders.
Filter Sender To Alternate Folder - Want
to sort all mail from one individual or domain to a
particular folder? Use this feature in conjunction with
creating a new folder for that individual or domain's
mail.
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