Tele-NET uses industry-standard spam filtering to reduce the junk email that makes it through to your inbox. It's effective, but not perfect, and it never will be. That's just the nature of spam.
You and I can glance at a message and know right-away if it's spam or not. Computers are nowhere near as smart and probably never will be. All a spam filter can do is analyze a message and work out the likelihood that it is spam. It's not a simple Yes/No but a sliding scale of 'spaminess'.
When an email is analysed by a spam filter it is given a 'score' - the higher the score, the more likely that the message is spam.
Messages with a high score are almost certainly spam.
Messages with a low score are probably not spam.
The problem is usually with the middle-range scores. These are a mix of spam and non-spam messages - some messages you want and others you don't.
If middle-ranking messages are all considered spam then you'll miss some messages you want to get (a 'false positive'). Most ISPs pass on the middle-range scoring messages so you will not miss messages you actually want that might have triggered a false-positive.
Note: There's no certainty in spam filtering, only scores and likelihoods' which is why we talk about messages 'probably' or 'maybe' being spam based on their scores. The scoring system can be wrong either way (ie giving a low score to spam or a high score to a message you want)
The solution to this 'gray-area' of spam and non-spam is to have spam filtering at various points in the passage of an email message from sender to you. Your ISP email host can filter out the high-scoring messages, while passing through the middle and low scoring messages for your email client spam filter to handle.
A spam filter on your computer can do things that an 'off-site' spam filter cannot. On your computer, the spam filter can check your own Contacts or 'Safe Senders' list to work out if a message is from someone you know. You have much more control over your local spam filter than anything available on your email host.
This multi-level approach means that even if a message is wrongly put into your Junk Email filter, you can find it. If the company or email host is too aggressive about deleting spam (ie it deletes messages with middle-rank spam scores) then you don't have an opportunity to do any filtering yourself.
Rather than Tele-NET removing all possible spam, it's better for us to remove the most obvious spam only and leave the rest for your computer to handle.
Some options for spam filters to use on your computer:
(Please note, we are not officially recommending these programs, nor do we support them if you install them. You assume all responsibility for installing, configuring, and/or troubleshooting them.)
Mail Washer
Spam Fighter
Cactus Spam Filter
