[Macworld.com]

iPhone overwhelmed with spam? Filter your email with Gmail. [more]

[dmon313]

Chris,
Thanks for the great tip on eliminating spam. Very helpful.
By the way, Andy Ihnatko also suggested a way of getting "push email" on the iPhone: forward gmail to yahoo mail and then set up a yahoo account on the iPhone. I have been doing this to get push email and it works like a charm. (you probably already know about this tip, but I thought I would pass it on just in case.)
- Dan

[wingdo]

OK, so set up my .mac mail to get picked up by google mail and have that forwarded to yahoo.
zoinks!

[ghp2006]

I am glad someone finely articulated the information for other iPhone users!
However, you have discrepancy in your directions!
By making GAMIL the default AND removing all other accounts, the user will not be able to CHANGE the WHO or REPLY TO fileds in the email. All sent emails will show as originating FROM the GMAIL account.
Here is what I do (FWIW)
Leave the accounts in place.
In the outgoing server, use the information already in the Gmail account and enter this to the outgoing server of all POP accounts.
Sync iPhone to Mac
Now go to GMail account and select settings/accounts.
Go to the Send Mail as option and enter all the POP accounts.
When finished and verified, select a default and select the "Reply from the same address the message was sent to"
Now, whatever POP account you use, it no only goes through GMAIL but appears to come from your POP account.
Additionally, your iPhone will work in both WiFi and EDGE modes.
ajm

Now

[JoeC]

Quote:

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OK, so set up my .mac mail to get picked up by google mail and have that forwarded to yahoo.
zoinks!

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My thoughts exactly. When is Apple going to give .Mac users push IMAP and offer a junk mail filter? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
The problem with GMail POP is that nothing you do on iPhone is going to get reflected on the desktop. So you'll end up reading/deleting/moving emails twice every time. Also, as noted by friends of mine using GMail on iPhone, whenever you send a message via pop on iPhone, that message ends up in your Inbox, sent by you, instead of in your Sent folder. Very annoying.
If you forward emails from one account to another, as demonstrated with the Yahoo! push trick, you still end up having to clean up your original inbox once in a while, don't you? Anything you do with the Yahoo! IMAP account will only effect the Yahoo! account. Unless you set up some sort of rule to auto-erase a message once it was forwarded.
Seems too complicated to be worth it to me.

[daveedvdv]

I've given up on trying to read mail to a single address from multiple devices using the POP3 protocol. I really don't want to deal with messages more than once. So I've switched to IMAP instead. My desktop runs SpamSieve, and is "always on". So when I bring up my IMAP Inbox up from iPhone, SpamSieve has already removed quasi-all the spam (quasi-all, because sometimes a spam message comes in between the last update of my desktop and the time I look at iPhone's view of my Inbox).

[ghp2006]

"The problem with GMail POP is that nothing you do on iPhone is going to get reflected on the desktop. So you'll end up reading/deleting/moving emails twice every time. Also, as noted by friends of mine using GMail on iPhone, whenever you send a message via pop on iPhone, that message ends up in your Inbox, sent by you, instead of in your Sent folder. Very annoying."
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You only need to setup a filter in GMAIL to automatically emails received from your "other" POPs to SENT, DELETE, or ARCHIVE!
ajm

[jedi228]

It should be clear that these round-about solutions won't be necessary if Apple opens up the iPhone and lets us use our own apps. I've never found a server based SPAM filter to be as a effective as a local filter I train myself.
There are so many apps that just don't as work web-apps and a SPAM filter is a perfect example.
My belief is that Apple should let the user choose whether to have a closed or open iPhone. If users want the responsibility of more power let them have it. If users want to have simplicity let them have it. Create two tiers of customer support so that users on basic mode can receive better support on a more controlled enviroment.

[OM_user]

The Google stop is only necessary if you want the spam filtering of Gmail. Otherwise, you could just have .Mac forward all your mail to Yahoo directly, which could then push all that mail to your iPhone.
However, if you have tons of spam on your .Mac mail, I guess the intermediate step of Gmail would be necessary.

[mike3k]

I refuse to install any anti-spam software on my Mac because I believe that once the spam reaches your inbox it's already too late. I like to use strong server-side filtering.
I use both GMail and a Dreamhost IMAP account. With Dreamhost, I use tweak SpamAssassin's rules and use Procmail to make my spam go away before I see it. I have two gmail accounts. The one I use publicly for registering at various sites is overwhelmed by spam, so I have it forward to my other Gmail account, which I only give to friends. That way I get two levels of Gmail spam filtering. Some spam gets past the first gmail account's spam filter, but the second one almost always catches it. I only get about 1 false positive a month.

[sundoggy]

Gmail is a great way to filter spam and aggregate multiple accounts. This is how I set up my iPhone (using the method noted above to automatically archive emails from me) and it works great. Plus, Gmail is a great way to archive and search all your email (well outside of the enterprise domain, where this may get very complicated depending on security measures in place).

[galley]

I've been using Gmail as the hub for all my e-mail for about 6 months, and I don't even have an iPhone. It pulls e-mail from three POP accounts I have (including .mac). The SPAM filtering is excellent - I might get a SPAM message once or twice a week in my inbox, but the SPAM mailbox receives probably 25-50 messages a day (these messages get deleted automatically when they're 30 days old). I can select which return address I want to use for sent messages from a popup menu, but when I'm replying, it's set to default to the account that the original message was sent to. Pretty slick.

[DonSmith]

I solve my junk mail problem beautifully with BlueBottle.com and a paid IMAP account (about $20 a year).
BlueBottle.com is a challenge/response junk mail filter. Here's how it works...
There's an approved list. Anyone on your approved list gets their mail put directly into your inbox.
If they are not on your approved list the sender will get a challenge email. All they have to do his hit <REPLY>. That will put their original email into your inbox and put their email address on your approved list so that they no longer have to deal with the challenge. The thinking here is that computers can't <REPLY> so anyone who replies must be a live person and worthy of getting on your approved list.
You can manually add things like computer lists that you want to receive.
You can also set a four-digit code, that, when used anywhere on a subject line within parentheses, allows a first-time email to go directly to your inbox.
All other mail goes to a PENDING folder that you can check from time to time. If you see something in your PENDING folder that you want to allow, just put a check next to it and click "ALLOW".
For me, I forward my MAC.COM email address to my BlueBottle.com account and I also forward my "civilian" email address to BlueBottle.com.
My desktop, my laptop, and my iPhone only check my IMAP BlueBottle.com mailbox. Because it's IMAP, my mail is the same no matter from where I check it, unlike a POP3 account where the mail downloads to where you checked it from and then you don't see it when you check your mail from the road. All mail stays on the server in a IMAP account so the INBOX you see from you desktop has the same content as the INBOX you'll see from on the road. Even through the Web-based interface.
My iPhone email is now very nice. Only mail from real people and mail from servers I've approved appear in my INBOX.
Don Smith

[Chris Breen]

I feel obliged to say that a lot of people hate challenge/response. Personally, when faced with such a thing -- particularly when someone else has initiated the exchange -- I rarely respond. I have my own spam problems to deal with without having to worry about someone else's.