Use GMail to filter spam?

[setera]

Hello,

I'm trying to do something like documented on this web site for using the GMail spam filtering http://www.mjax.com/2008/03/27/using...mail-accounts/ . The advantage of the approach listed here is that it doesn't require lots of different IMAP accounts.... just a set of aliases on those accounts. The description assumes two things that don't seem to be the case with Bluehost/CPanel:

- A forwarding address takes precedence over the actual mailbox delivery
- You can have an alias to a local mailbox

As far as I can tell, the second item works OK using Forwarders, but the first does not. I end up with two copies in the Bluehost inbox instead of one. In theory, I would end up with a copy of the spam message since it would be delivered.

Is there a way to have a forward set up that doesn't copy to the underlying mailbox first?

Thanks,
Craig

[felgall]

If a corresponding mailbox doesn't exist then the forwarder will just forward the emails.

[setera]

Yes. I use that quite a bit. I guess the question is whether I can have xxx@mydomain.org defined as a real mailbox and add a forwarder for xxx@mydomain.org that "wins" and sends off to GMail without first leaving a copy in the real xxx@mydomain.org? I know it sounds strange, but that seems to be the gist of how this works for the specified description. It is nice because I wouldn't have to mess with extra email boxes... just aliases. The only other option I can think of would be to alias my real email address, but then have a different mailbox that is the place I actually access my mail.

I'm sure Postini would do this all much more easily, but I'm hoping to find a different way that would save a few bucks.

Craig

[altidude]

I just have my Gmail account retrieve mail from my standard BH account via POP3 with gmail set to not leave a copy on the BH server. I have Outlook at home set up to retrieve the spam filtered mail from my Gmail account via POP3. I don't use IMAP for this. POP3 works fine for my application.

I also have my email client at home set up with gmail as the SMTP server. That way all my mail is searchable at Gmail as well as spam filtered. This works pretty well in my case. The gmail.com address info in the header isn't a problem for me but some users have issues with that.

This method works fine but with a delay every now and then between gmail pulling mail from BH and that mail actually arriving at BH. The delay isn't a problem in the case of my personal email.

I'm surprised felgall didn't bring up the point that if you forward an address to Gmail, there is a chance that Google could block your domain as a source of spam since all the message look like they come from your domain. I used to forward from BH to gmail and had no problems with this but the company I work for does the same thing and every now and then our domain is blocked. Never for long but it does happen. I switched my personal mail to POP3 from forwarders on the advice of felgall.