Saying that no one likes spam is like saying that no one likes higher gas prices. Duh. Problem is, many email servers — especially those hosted by ISPs — have poor spam filters. This means not only are you bothered on your desktop, but you’re also bothered if that email address gets pushed to your BlackBerry. So how can you stop it?
Well, you could set up some filters in your BIS account. That, however, might not be sufficient. Spam comes in many forms, and it’s tough to pick out addresses and keywords which can catch everything. You know what has a really good spam filter? Gmail. We’ve talked about Gmail and BlackBerry before. Now let’s look at how you can use it to filter your spam.
The first step is to add both your spam-filled email address and your Gmail address to your BIS account. You can do this with your BIS login (you can find your BIS login address in our changing your BlackBerry auto signature post). You can use an existing Gmail address if you wish. If you don’t have one, or don’t want to hook up your Gmail to your BlackBerry, just set up a new one. It’s free, remember.
Head into your spam-filled email address, and set it to forward to your Gmail address. Gmail actually allows you to fully control an external email address from Gmail itself, but I wouldn’t recommend that for these purposes. I have three external emails controlled through Gmail, but for the most part those messages never get pushed to my BlackBerry. Not sure if others have that problem (I use the IMAP instructions for Gmail). To make things simpler, just set it to forward.
Next, while you’re still in your BIS account, click on the filters icon next to your spam-filled email address. That will bring up a screen which allows you to add a filter. We’re not going for that, though. Below that, there’s an option for when no filters apply. Set that to “Do not forward messages to device.”
That about wraps it up. Since you have your spam-filed email address on your device, you can send using that. Yet when you receive mail from that addy, it will filter through Gmail, thus eliminating the bulk of your spam.
