My email is all hosted at Tuffmail, which a friend recommended a few years ago, and which I now recommend to other friends in turn. Yes, you have to pay, but the spam filtering is wonderful, you can buy loads of storage, and it’s never down. One of the best things is being able to filter mail directly on the server — I never use my mail client’s rules, as all my email is in the correct folders already.
But setting up the filters on Tuffmail is a bit arcane. There’s no pretty interface, and you have to write the rules using the [Sieve filtering language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language)). It’s very powerful but there doesn’t seem to be any easy-to-read and comprehensive documentation. There are some examples but they’re scattered all over the place.
This won’t fix that problem, but here’s another scattered example, an anonymised version of my own Sieve filters, with duplicate clauses removed. Hopefully it’s useful to someone.
# You have to 'require' certain features before you can use them
# in rules.
require ["fileinto", "regex", "imapflags"];
# Redirect emails related to a specific TypePad weblog to the person
# responsible for running it.
if allof (
header :contains ["From"] "noreply@sixapart.com",
header :contains ["Subject"] "[Blog Name]"
) {
redirect "anne@example.com";
stop;
}
# File emails from a specific email address into a specific mailbox
# within a subfolder.
if header :contains ["To"] "philgyford@example.com" {
fileinto "FolderName/MailboxName";
stop;
}
# File emails from any social networking sites into a folder called
# "@Social". Note the use of a regular expression to match Facebook's
# emails to addresses of a form like:
# notification+odfojhrw@facebookmail.com
if anyof (
header :contains ["X-Twitterrecipientscreenname"] "philgyford",
header :contains ["From"] "invitations@linkedin.com",
header :contains ["Reply-To"] "noreply@facebookmail.com",
header :regex ["From"] "notification\+.+@facebookmail.com",
header :contains ["Sender"] "messages-noreply@bounce.linkedin.com"
)
{
fileinto "@Social";
stop;
}
# File emails from a mailing list into a specific folder/mailbox.
if header :contains ["List-ID"] "mailing-list-name.yahoogroups.com" {
fileinto "FolderName/Mailbox Name";
stop;
}
# File emails sent to, OR CC'd to, a mailing list into a mailbox
# two levels deep.
if header :contains ["To", "CC"] "mailinglist@example.com" {
fileinto "FolderName/Subfolder Name/MailboxName";
stop;
}
# File emails from two different mailing lists into the same
# specific mailbox.
if header :contains ["List-ID"] ["mailing-list.lists.example.com", "backup-mailing-list.googlegroups.com"] {
fileinto "Mailbox Name";
stop;
}
# File messages from a mailing list I never get round to reading,
# and mark them as read so I don't feel guilty.
if header :contains ["From"] "mailinglist@example.com" {
setflag "\\Seen";
fileinto "FolderName/MailboxName";
stop;
}
# For emails I keep receiving but never want to read or see,
# mark as read and file them in the Trash.
if anyof (
header :contains ["From"] "\"Billy Nomates\" <billy@example.com>",
header :contains ["From"] "another@example.com" # You can add comments here too.
) {
setflag "\\Seen";
fileinto "Trash";
stop;
}
Comments
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Chess Griffin at 6 Aug 2010, 2:56am. Permalink
I am also a Tuffmail customer (*love* the service) and am continually on the lookout for good, simple Sieve examples. This one fits the bill perfectly. Thanks!