Better Spam Management on the iPhone
I use the the standard Mail application under OS X on my Hackintosh and the Mail app on my iPhone. I've also got detailed rules set up in OS X's Mail to filter out additional spam and allocate specific mail to specific folders. The iPhone's Mail app doesn't allow any rules to be created, so the only way to have everything filtered is to open Mail is OS X. The trick is to stop at it the server level (the email host) instead of the client level (Mail is OS X and iOS). By setting the rules at the email provider, you should have less emails to have to sort through on your iPhone and your computer, One analogy to use for this is a nightclub with bouncers: The nightclub is your iPhone or computer, the actual interior is the general account folder, and the VIP club is your Inbox. The bouncers are the rules, and they check for specific criteria before letting any other "emails" through.
<BACKGROUND> There is a common email header I've noticed among various spam emails that go to one email account, but not the other. One of the pieces of code that seems to reside in the majority of these spam emails reads "compute1.nyi.mail.srv.osa" Unfortunately, I've also noticed this spam header in legitimate emails from family members and King's restaurants. I still want to get these emails, so deleting every email with the header "compute1.nyi.mail.srv.osa" isn't an option. To find this similar code in your spam emails, open your email program or web-based email site, click to open one of the spam emails and selec "All Headers", Raw Source" or something similar. In my case, choosing Raw Source for the email while viewing it in the web-based email program opened a new tab and presented the following (click to open in a larger window):
<BACKGROUND> There is a common email header I've noticed among various spam emails that go to one email account, but not the other. One of the pieces of code that seems to reside in the majority of these spam emails reads "compute1.nyi.mail.srv.osa" Unfortunately, I've also noticed this spam header in legitimate emails from family members and King's restaurants. I still want to get these emails, so deleting every email with the header "compute1.nyi.mail.srv.osa" isn't an option. To find this similar code in your spam emails, open your email program or web-based email site, click to open one of the spam emails and selec "All Headers", Raw Source" or something similar. In my case, choosing Raw Source for the email while viewing it in the web-based email program opened a new tab and presented the following (click to open in a larger window):
It'll look like jibberish, but the header I was looking for, the header that the majority of the spam emails seem to contain, is highlighted in blue at the top and reads "compute1.nyi.mail.srv.osa". <END BACKGROUND>
Now we must go to the email provider and set the rule to filter out these types of emails. You must first open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc), then log in to the account using the web page of your email provider. This could be Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo mail, or in the example here; Fastmail. The next step is to go to the page or click on the icon that allows you to create folders. Here I've gone to the page and created the folder "compute1-nyi" (click to expand):
Now we must go to the email provider and set the rule to filter out these types of emails. You must first open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc), then log in to the account using the web page of your email provider. This could be Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo mail, or in the example here; Fastmail. The next step is to go to the page or click on the icon that allows you to create folders. Here I've gone to the page and created the folder "compute1-nyi" (click to expand):
The next step is to set up a rule to route specific emails with the header to the newly created folder. You'll need to find the location to set up rules, and this is usually located under "Settings". If you've never accessed or used rules, you may need to consult the email provider's help section on how to get there.
The above example shows the tab "File into Folders" selected, only because I didn't want emails with that header to be deleted, which is why I didn't place them in the Discard tab.
My email host doesn't allow specific headers to be selected, so I have chosen "Any Header" from the drop-down list. Because the header is quite long, I select the next option to "Contains" rather than "Equals". I wanted the server side of the email to search for "compute1.nyi.mail.srv.osa" in the header, so I pasted it into the Text field to search for it. The next option was requesting where to file the emails that met the criteria, and I chose the newly created folder of "compute1-nyi". After saving the changes, I went into OS X's Mail application.
In order for Mail to see the newly created folder, I had to synchronize the application with the Mail server.
1. I clicked on Mailbox --> Synchronize All Accounts. (Your Mail program such as Outlook or Thunderbird should look similar).
2. After a few seconds, the "compute1-nyi" folder I created now appeared in the section of my Warpmail account.
My email host doesn't allow specific headers to be selected, so I have chosen "Any Header" from the drop-down list. Because the header is quite long, I select the next option to "Contains" rather than "Equals". I wanted the server side of the email to search for "compute1.nyi.mail.srv.osa" in the header, so I pasted it into the Text field to search for it. The next option was requesting where to file the emails that met the criteria, and I chose the newly created folder of "compute1-nyi". After saving the changes, I went into OS X's Mail application.
In order for Mail to see the newly created folder, I had to synchronize the application with the Mail server.
1. I clicked on Mailbox --> Synchronize All Accounts. (Your Mail program such as Outlook or Thunderbird should look similar).
2. After a few seconds, the "compute1-nyi" folder I created now appeared in the section of my Warpmail account.
So now that those are synced I can test it out. To test it, I took one of the spam emails with the known header, and forwarded it to myself.
I sent the email, then checked my iPhone. Because the "compute1-nyi" folder I created is outside of the regular Inbox, the message isn't gathered with my normal emails. Because of this, I have to scroll down to view the accounts, then click on "Warpmail" since that is the provider where I set the rule:
I click on my Warpmail account to show the entire list of folders in that directory:
Lo and behold! There's the compute1-nyi folder. I touch that to expose the contents:
...and there's the same piece of spam that I sent to my own account! From this point, all of those spammy emails now get relocated to the compute1-nyi folder resulting in a leaner list of emails to have to sort through.
You still may get a large portion of emails in your regular Inbox. To sort those, use your computer's email program to set up any rules. You can set these rules to have certain emails remain in your Inbox in nested, categorized folders; or to have the emails moved or copied to folders on your computer. Beware that if an email has already been moved (instead of copied) to a folder on your computer, that email won't be visible when you check emails on your iPhone.
You still may get a large portion of emails in your regular Inbox. To sort those, use your computer's email program to set up any rules. You can set these rules to have certain emails remain in your Inbox in nested, categorized folders; or to have the emails moved or copied to folders on your computer. Beware that if an email has already been moved (instead of copied) to a folder on your computer, that email won't be visible when you check emails on your iPhone.