Customize junk mail filters (spam) options in Windows Mail

Windows Mail comes with built in spam filters to prevent junk mail from reaching your inbox.These junk mail filters or automatically configured for the most common scenario. Is however possible to customize the level of spam filtering and other settings in your Windows Mail filters. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to configure your junk mail filters and spam options in Windows Mail, and even make Windows Mail automatically delete junk emails!

Configure spam options in Windows Mail

Follow these steps to customize your junk mail filters:

• Once inside Windows Mail, click on the "Tools" menu
• Then, choose "Junk E-mail Options"
• Windows Mail will open the Junk E-mail Options dialog, which contains all settings you can configure to finetune spam handling options and behavior.
• The "Options" tab lets you customize the level of junk mail protection you want.
• If you choose No Automatic Filtering ("Mail from blocked senders is still moved to the Junk E-mail Folder"), Windows Mail will not filter out any junk mail — you are in essence turning off the spam filters.
• The second setting is Low: "Move the most obvious junk e-mail to the Junk E-mail folder". This is the default, and in most cases sufficient; note that if your email service provider also offers junk mail filtering, some emails may be downloaded and placed inside the junk mail filter despite your spam settings in Windows Mail itself.
• If you set your spam settings to High ("Most junk e-mail is caught, but some regular mail may be caught as well. Check your Junk E-mail Folder often"), Windows Mail will probably become a bit too aggressive in filtering spam, and you may end up spending too much time marking legitimate email messages as "Not Spam".
• The last setting, Safe List Only ("Only mail from people or domains on your Safe Senders List will be delivered to your inbox"),  will only be feasible for unusual cases. Unless you have marked a sender or his/her domain (the part of their email address that comes after the "@" symbol), every email will be filtered as spam, and placed in Windows Mail's junk mail folder. If you need this level of spam protection, you may be interested in the next option Windows Mail offers to fight spam:
• Finally, you can check the "Permanently delete suspected junk e-mail instead of moving it to the Junk E-mail folder" checkbox to force your email program to delete any email message that it might filter as spam based on the settings we just discussed.
  
  It is self-explanatory, and we don't recommend that you enable this setting, unless you are willing to take the very real risk of seeing legitimate emails disappear without your ever knowing about them!

This concludes our tutorial on Windows Mail spam filtering and junk mail fighting settings: click on the OK button to apply these new options and return to your email messages.