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Keep Spam Away With McAfee Security Center

Last Updated: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 > Related Articles

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Summary

Learn to set anti-spam options for email and the Web.

Solution

 

What is McAfee Security Center?

The Security Center on your computer desktop is part of your free Cox Security Suite Powered by McAfee®. It is a powerful security solution that allows you to monitor the security status on your computer and to know instantly whether virus, spyware, email, and firewall protection services are up-to-date. 

How can it help me?

You can use this tool to set anti-spam levels and manage how spam is handled when it arrives in your inbox.

To begin, click the McAfee Security Center icon in your taskbar or on your desktop.

icon

For help with any Security Center feature visit the McAfee Community. Click Home and Home Office, then under Communities on the left, click Security Center.

Knowledge level recommended for this article: Advanced

 

In this series learn to:
Set anti-spam levelsManage spam messagesUse the anti-spam toolbarSet up customer filtering

Set anti-spam levels

By setting the anti-spam levels you can decide what email to weed out and what to keep. For example, if you begin to realize that email you want to keep is getting tagged as spam you can set your levels to prevent that from happening.

1

On the Security Center console look under Features then expand Web and Email Protection.

web and email protection

2

Click Anti-spam: On. If it says Off then it is not set up. 

anti-spam

3

Click Spam Protection Levels.

spam levels

4

After reading the descriptions, choose from one of the following options. 

protection levels

 

5

Click the Apply button. 

All steps complete.

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Manage spam messages

You can choose where to put spam and phishing email, change the [SPAM] and [PHISHING] tag that displays in the email subject line, define a maximum size to filter, and decide how often to update your spam filtering rules.

1
  1. On the Security Center console look under the Features section and expand Web and Email Protection.
  2. Click Anti-spam.
  3. Click Email Processing.

processing

2
To choose or change the appropriate options, follow the below guidelines: 
If you want to...Then...
Choose where to put spam and phishing mail

Under After marking email as spam, choose one of the following: 

  • Store in anti-spam folder
  • Leave in Inbox
Change the subject line of the spam email

Under Label: enter: [SPAM] for spam

Change the subject line of the phishing emailUnder Label: enter [PHISHING] for phishing
Change the maximum email size to filter
  1. Under Other rules put a check next to Ignore email larger than 
  2. Enter a size greater than 0 and smaller than 251.
 Decide how often to update the spam filtering rules
  1. Under Other Rules put a check next to  Update spam rules every
  2. Enter a number between 5 and 600 for the minutes 
 Under Notify McAfee when you, choose the option you prefer, if any.

Additional Options

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Anti-spam toolbar

If you are using Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, or Thunderbird, you can remove the Anti-Spam toolbar if you need to stop filtering your email. You might do this when troubleshooting an issue.

1

Under Web and Email Protection click Anti-spam.

anti-spam

2
  1. Expand Anti-spam Toolbar.
  2. Uncheck the email program you use.
  3. Click the Apply button. 

anti-spam tool

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Customer filtering rules

When you add or edit a custom filter you can decide the rules Anti-spam uses. Your choices are explained in the table below Step 3.

1
  1. Under Web and Email Protection click Anti-spam.
  2. Expand Custom Filtering Rules, as shown below:

custom filtering

2
Choose the rules you want for a custom filter. The following table explains each option:
If you want to...Then...
Manage email containing your filtered words and phrasesUnder Action: choose Allow or Block
Choose which part of the email to filterUnder Field: choose either Recipient, Sender, Subject, Header or Body
Decide if the email must contain specific words or phrasesUnder Condition: choose contains or doesn't contain
Determine the words or phrases to filterUnder Word or Phrase enter the words to look for in email.
For instance, if you want to filter the word 'mortgage' all email with that word will be either blocked or allowed into your Inbox.
Use an advanced algorithm to filter wordsPut a check in the box next to Use regular expressions to find particular words and characters in your custom filtering rule
Note: This is for advanced users only. it allows you to choose a phrase, such as, the subject line of a spam email you want to stop receiving.
All steps complete.

 


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