Selecting Your Level of spam Protection: spam Controls and spaminator

spam Controls offer a medium level of spam protection to PeoplePC subscribers at no charge. This level is called Known spam Blocking. You can enhance your spam protection by upgrading to spaminator, which includes all the features of spam Controls plus a feature called Suspect Email Blocking.

Understanding how each level works will help you determine the best level of protection for your email address. Each level is described below.

You can change your level of spam protection (or turn spam protection off altogether) anytime through the Settings page.

Note: Certain email messages will always appear in your Inbox, regardless of your level of spam protection. These include Allowed Sender Requests sent by spaminator; email summaries (if you've chosen to receive them); most "bounced" email notices generated when you send messages to invalid email addresses; and messages from PeoplePC regarding your account, Customer Support, or products and services. (You can stop receiving messages about products and services by following the unsubscribe instructions in those emails).

Known spam Blocking (Medium Protection)

Known spam Blocking is enabled by default on all PeoplePC email addresses.

Your spam Controls are constantly being updated to recognize new spam circulating on the Internet. To identify junk email messages, spam Controls uses a network of specially created email addresses that attract vast quantities of spam. Known spam Blocking analyzes any messages that appear to be bulk email, i.e., those that are sent to many of spam Controls' email addresses.

Known spam Blocking examines these messages for forged headers, invalid unsubscribe information, and other telltale signs that a message is spam. If the message is spam, spam Controls creates a filter to keep it from reaching your Inbox.

Known spam Blocking checks each of your incoming messages to determine whether it matches any of the junk email that spamBlocker knows about.

If a message matches, spaminator intercepts it and automatically deletes it by default (if you wish, however, you can set spaminator to store known spam in your Known spam folder; see spaminator Settings). If a message does not match, spaminator allows the message to reach your Inbox.

Known spam Blocking might provide all the protection you need. And because it requires no action on your part, it's the easiest option. However, you might receive messages in your Inbox that you consider to be spam, even though spam Controls hasn't classified them as junk email. If this occurs, you can activate Suspect Email Blocking.

Spaminator with Suspect Email Blocking (Highest Protection)

Spaminator provides the highest level of spam protection. Make sure you have Suspect Email Blocking activated. Only email from senders who are in your Web Mail Address Book will reach your Inbox. All other email will be treated as either Known spam or Suspect Email. Spaminator practically ensures that your Inbox will be spam-free. You must upgrade to spaminator to have the highest level of spam protection.

Follow these steps:
1. Click the “Spaminator” link in the left hand column of the main Web Mail page
2. From the Setting tab, select the Suspect Email Blocking button
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

With Suspect Email Blocking, spaminator examines any message that Known spam Blocking has not intercepted. If the sender's email address or Company (Domain) (i.e., the portion of the email address after the @ symbol, such as peoplepc.com) appears in your Web Mail Address Book, spaminator allows the message to reach your Inbox normally.

If the sender's address or Company (Domain) does not appear in your Web Mail Address Book, spaminator does three things:

1. Intercepts the message and stores it online in your Suspect Email folder (which you can open by clicking the Suspect Email tab in the spam Controls/spaminator interface).
2. Automatically replies to the sender with instructions on how to ask to be added to your Address Book
3. Notifies you about the intercepted message in a summary you'll receive periodically via email (see Settings for more about email summaries)

Note: Messages in your Suspect Email folder remain on PeoplePC's incoming email server and count toward your 100MB mailbox storage limit. Messages in this folder that are more than 14 days old are deleted automatically (to change the number of days before suspect messages are deleted, see spaminator Settings).

Suspect Email Blocking practically ensures that your Inbox will be spam-free. To be effective, however, Suspect Email Blocking requires that you maintain a list of email addresses and Companies (Domains) you want to receive email from in your Web Mail Address Book.

Suspect Email Blocking works in conjunction with Known spam Blocking. You cannot use Suspect Email Blocking by itself.

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