At Bates College, we have an automated process which marks email messages that are most likely to be SPAM, by adding [PMX:#####] to the beginning of the Subject. The more # marks there are, the more likely it is to be SPAM.

Email filters allow you to specify rules to automatically sort incoming email into specific folders for later review or to delete messages without ever seeing them. For example:

CAUTION: important email could be deleted
with this process!

This is a powerful tool, but it is only as good as the rules you apply to the filtering process. For every filter you create, we highly recommend you send the sorted mail to a folder first, and review the folder frequently. If all of the messages are sorted correctly, then you can modify the filter to move future messages of that type to the trash, or delete them directly, if you so desire.

When in doubt, sort to a folder, and review before deleting!