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Antispam protection

Unsolicited email, called spam, ranks among the greatest electronic communication problems. Spam represents up to 30 percent of all email communication. Antispam protection serves to protect against this problem. Combining several email security principles, the Antispam module provides superior filtering to keep your inbox clean. To configure the antispam protection, open Advanced setup (F5) > Web and email > Email client protection > Antispam protection.

CONFIG_SMON

For spam detection, one important principle is recognizing unsolicited emails based on pre-defined trusted addresses (allowed) and spam addresses (blocked).

The primary method used to detect spam is scanning email message properties. Received messages are scanned for basic Antispam criteria (message definitions, statistical heuristics, recognizing algorithms and other unique methods), and the resulting index value determines whether a message is a spam or not.

Enable email client antispam protection—When enabled, antispam protection will be activated automatically on system startup.

Allow advanced antispam scan—Additional antispam data will be downloaded periodically, increasing antispam capabilities and producing better results.

Antispam protection in ESET Internet Security enables you to set different parameters for messages.

Message processing

Add text to email subject—Enables you to add a custom prefix string to the subject line of messages that have been classified as spam. The default is "[SPAM]".

Move messages to spam folder—When enabled, spam messages will be moved to the default junk email folder, and messages reclassified as not spam will be moved to the inbox. When you right-click an email message and select ESET Internet Security from the context menu, you can choose from applicable options.

Use the folder—Specify the custom folder where you want to move infected emails when detected.

Mark spam messages as read—Enable this to mark spam as read automatically. It will help you to focus your attention on "clean" messages.

Mark reclassified messages as unread—Messages originally classified as spam but later marked as "clean" will be displayed as unread.

Spam score logging—The ESET Internet Security Antispam engine assigns a spam score to every scanned message. The message will be recorded in the antispam log (main program window > Tools > Log files > Antispam protection).

None—The score from antispam scanning will not be logged.

Reclassified and marked as spam—Select this if you want to record a spam score for messages marked as SPAM.

All—All messages will be recorded to the log with a spam score.


note

When you click a message in the junk email folder, you can choose Reclassify selected messages as NOT spam, and the message will be moved to the inbox. When you click a message you consider spam in the inbox, select Reclassify messages as spam and the message will be moved to the junk email folder. You can select multiple messages and act on all of them simultaneously.


note

ESET Internet Security supports Antispam protection for Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail.