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Gmail & Thunderbird (From GESA site maintainer Kristen Taylor)
Many of us forward all mail to a gmail account. You'll need an invite from someone already in the system. I have 100, as of 4.11.06, to extend. Email ktaylor at virginia dot edu if interested.
Another email client is Thunderbird: which you train to sort junk mail into another folder (separate from the trash folder). This is my client of choice.
Greylisting (copied from President Lily Sheehan's earlier email)
Go to http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/email/greylisting/ and follow the instructions to register. The site explains greylisting fairly well, but here's a brief description: once you've registered, the system will never block an email from another virginia account and you can opt to have periodic emails sent to you about the emails that have been blocked.
ITC & Mac Mail (From Dawson's Row Rep and Grad Conf Committee Member Extraordinaire Ania Wieckowski)
ITC's comments on spam filtering include instructions for many mail clients.
Mac Mail: I've added some details to the official Apple support listing below.
Make sure that junk mail filtering is turned on: go to Mail>Preferences>Junk Mail and verify that Enable Junk Mail Filtering is checked.
1. When you first start using Mail, the junk mail feature goes through a training period. Messages that Mail thinks is junk appear in brown text in your Inbox. If Mail marks something as "junk" that isn't, click the Not Junk button to help train Mail.
2. If a message isn't marked as "junk" but should be, click the Junk button to help train Mail.
3. If you'd like to make some changes to the junk mail filter, choose Preferences from the Mail menu.
4. Click the Junk Mail button to display its settings.
5. To make certain types of messages exempt from junk mail filtering, select the item checkboxes below the line, "The following types of messages are exempt from junk mail filtering."
6. After a couple of weeks of training, evaluate how well Mail is flagging your junk mail. If it's fairly accurate, select the "Move it to the Junk mailbox (Automatic)" radio button in the Junk Mail pane of Mail preferences. This creates a Junk mailbox in the left column. Mail will now automatically move junk mail to this mailbox (you won't see it in your Inbox anymore). Make it a point to check your Junk mailbox periodically to make sure that you aren't missing anything important (be sure to click Not Junk on these types of messages).
7. If you want to turn off junk mail filtering, deselect the "Enable junk mail filtering" checkbox.
*I've added an "edu" rule, which means that no mail sent from any email address ending in .edu will be put in my Junk folder (of course this includes all UVA mail). To do this: Go to Mail>Preferences>Junk Mail and click Advanced. Under "If all of the following conditions are met:", click the last "+" sign on the bottom right to add another rule. Using the drop-down menus, choose "From," "does not contain," and type in ".edu"
Screenshots of the two set-up screens as I have them configured are below--this has worked great for me so far. I only get one or two junk messages in my actual inbox per day, and the rest all get sent to a separate folder, which I scan in less than a minute per day, and then empty. And no messages from anyone I put in my address book--which includes not only my friends' and professors' addresses, but business contacts--will ever be put in "Junk." You can also create further rules with the email addresses of, say, potential future employers by adding a "From" / "does not contain" rule with their domain address ("@whitehouse.gov") as you apply for jobs---even if you don't know who from that organization might be emailing you back.
