Grande Communications has made available to you several options for filtering junk email. However, before you decide to select any of these, it is critical that you understand how this process works! A brief synopsis is included to give you an idea of what happens when a message is examined for the telltale signs of 'spam'.

When any new message is received, it is scanned fully, line by line, and particular features are examined. Certain elements will flag the addition of a pre-determined point value to the overall 'score' of the email message. When parsing is complete, the total score is compared against a threshold value. If it exceeds this number, the message is then tagged as being junk by inserting into the subject line '***** SPAM *****'.

IMPORTANT: The point values are determined from a static list developed and honed by a collaberative effort of many independent Email providers around the world. They are however subjective, and what is junk to some, may not be junk to others. Many legitimate emails will generate at least a few 'hits', yet still pass the scan. Still others may be caught! Although SpamAssassin has been better than 98% accurate in our testing, it must be noted that it is not guaranteed to be correct all the time. Thus it is recommended that you do not select option 2 below if you find this to be an unacceptable risk!

The following options are available to you via your account administration interface:

1. Tag Spam
Email not passing the scan will have the following text inserted at the BEGINNING of the Subject: line of your email '***** SPAM *****'. This will allow you to set up your Email software to filter anything matching this into a separate folder. This will keep your Inbox free of junk mail & allow you to browse your filter target folder should you feel like something legitimate may have been intercepted. This is our recommended filtering method.

2. Discard Spam
Any Email that fails the scan will be deleted instantly. There will be no way of ever retrieving this mail, and it will never have to be downloaded to your machine as in (1) above. It is suggested that you use the 'Tag Spam' method of filtering for a while to get comfortable with its accuracy levels before enabling this option.

3. Quarantine Spam
Email that does not pass the filters will be delivered to a separate 'quarantine' folder on the mail server. This way you will not have to download them, however you will still be able to browse these messages via http://webmail.grandecom.net/ where they will be visible in the "JUNK" folder. NOTE: All quarantined junk emails count towards your 20mb email quota! Be sure to purge them often to keep from filling up your mailbox!