Spam Filter for IMAP, SSL Email Client

[tab01234]

Good Evening Happy Shiny Apple People!
I am admittedly new to using Apple products, I can fix the hardware, but never owned anything with an I in front of its name until two days ago when I purchased my new IPad Air through Sprint.

I primarily have a solid Windows and Linux background, and I know my way around the settings of MacBooks to get them up and running on a network, install printers etc. But I have little to no knowledge of Apple Apps.

I manage a CentOS web server with about 20 domains living on it. I have Spam Assassin running on it, but even at its most conservative settings my primary work email has a serious spam issue.

I use IMAP with SSL. for my personal account, the server is capable of doing whatever I want it to (in case there are changes I can make on it to make more Apple Friendly)

I am using the IPad to replace my Windows laptop, which it does amazingly well, much better than I expected.

On my Windows 7 Ultimate laptop I had Outlook 2010 running, with a spam filter named Spam Bayes which turned out to be a powerful tool. I had to teach it, but it learned very quickly and I did not realize just how effective it is, until the last couple of days. I am getting a LOT of spam. I don't have time to physically filter it out. Which leads me to my question:

I am looking for the best email client and or spam filter I can get. It does not need to be free.

I am currently using the native email client on my IPad, I am yet to ad additional Spam protection because I just don't know the market well enough.

Any help on this would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks!
-tab smith

 

[twerppoet]

To the best of my knowledge there is no way of applying a spam filtering app to the Mail app. Anything you do will have to be done before it gets to the iPad.

Apple's own iCloud mail has a built in spam filter. You have no controls over it other than marking mail as junk; which is supposed to train the filter.

I've never heard of Spam Assassin, but I have heard of Mailroute. It's often recommended (and advertised) on various Apple centric blogs. Unlike your Spam Assassin, Mailroute does it's thing before your email hits the computer or iOS device. That means it would work on all your devices, not just ones you install a bit of extra software on. Of course that means you're re-routeing your mail through their servers, but they have an excellent reputation.

I'm afraid that's all I know about it. I haven't needed a heavy duty spam filter on my personal accounts. At least not anything that isn't already built into iCloud and Gmail.

 

[tab01234]

Spam Assassin is an RPM used in Linux based Apache web servers to filter spam. it monitors blacklists of bad domains and blocked IP addresses of known spam servers. It also assigns points to an email based on the text within the email itself. For example it may assign the word 'Viagra' 2 points. The lower you set the points the higher the level of spam protection. It is commonly used by isp's to filter spam.

But it is not doing a good enough job for me currently. Once your email address is out there it's out there. I have seen a couple of apps on the App Store that claim to be spam filters, but my experience is Android based, my phone currently is a Note4.

But I've only been using that for email, my laptop dealt with my corporate email nonsense.

I think mail route is a service that requires you change your MX records so your mail hits them and then they forward the approved mail to you, I am looking for a local client based product if I can find one, but I'll sure check it out. Thanks for the info!

 

[twerppoet]

No problem.

You are right about what Mailroute does. There are, of course, both advantages and disadvantages to that method.

I'm thinking that any spam filter that works on iOS is also going to be an email client. There is no way to add a filter to the native Mail client. That means you're not just shopping for a spam filter, but a good Mail app replacement that also has spam filtering.

Good luck, and if you find what you need please let us know.