Help With Spam Filters

Spam filters look at incoming email and give it a "spam rating". If rates too high, then the email is classed as spam. The HSMG tries to avoid the spam indicators, but sometimes the filters can see the automated email from our website as spam. Automated email includes things like renewal notifications, eNews, Conference Attendee updates, and sending your login information if requested from the form on the login page. Generally personal email from someone at the HSMG will not be considered spam.

In order to be sure that you receive automated emails from the HSMG you can whitelist addresses from soapguild.org. By whitelisting an address or domain you tell the spam filter that you want to receive mail from that address or domain and no email from there is filtered.

How you whitelist an address depends on what filters you have in place.

Filters On Your Computer

Some spam filters work on your computer. Nowadays many virus protection software also includes spam filters. Check to see what you have running on your computer and set it to accept mail from @soapguild.org. Look for the settings for a "whitelist" or "allowed list". An example from Norton Internet Security is below.

NORTON INTERNET SECURITY

1. Open Norton Internet Security by clicking on it from your Start Menu or right-clicking the icon in your task bar.
2. Click Norton AntiSpam in the left side buttons.
3. Click Allowed List
4. Click Configure in the white box that displays.
5. After the list displays, click Add
6. Select Domain (not email) in the drop down box.
7. Type @soapguild.org in the address box.
8. Optional - type a description in the Description box.
9. Click OK.
10. Click Okay (out of allowed list)
11. Close Norton Internet Security (click X in top right hand corner).

From your Internet Service Provider

Your Internet Service Provider is the one that processes the email that your receive. They host your email box. Your email through your ISP would be something like yourname@earthlink.net or yourname@comcast.net. In those examples, earthlink and comcast are the ISP.

Different ISPs use different spam filters. Earthlink, for example, has a very agressive spam filter called Spaminator. The default requires that all mail senders confirm themselves and are accepted before any mail goes through.

You may or may not be able to change the spam filter settings for your ISP. Try going to the support page(s) for your ISP and look for email or spam settings. You will probably have to log in in order to make any changes.

An example from Earhtlink is below.

EARTHLINK

Note: Earthlink apparently doesn't allow whitelisting from a domain, so you'll need to add in the individual addresses:

1. Go to https://myaccount.earthlink.net and log in
2. Click Email Profiles in left menu
3. On the line for SpamBlocker, click Edit
4. Click Address Book in the left menu (down near the bottom)
5. Click Add (in the top bar of address book)
6. Add webmaster@soapguild.org to your address book.
7. Repeat steps 5 & 6, adding the following email addresses.
   These are the ones you are most likely to be used for sending HSMG email:
         news@soapguild.org
         President@soapguild.org
         Administration@soapguild.org
         Conference@soapguild.org
8. Exit and log out.

From Your Website Hosting Company

If you receive your email through your own website (ie yourname@yoursoapcompany.com) the company that hosts your website may have a spam filter service set up on the host computer. In most cases you can set the aggressiveness of the spam filter and also add to the whitelist from within the control panel or "back end" for your website hosting service.

The following example is using Cpanel and SpamAssassin:

CPANEL

1. Go to your CPanel (using whatever logins your provider gave you.
2. Click on Mail
3. Click on SpamAssassin

SPAMASSASSIN

If not enabled, then it is not blocking your mail. If it IS enabled then do the following steps:

1. Click Configure SpamAssassin
2. In a Whitelist_from box enter *@soapguild.org
3. Click Save

Summary

In order to ensure that you receive mail from the HSMG you must:

1. Determine what filters are effecting your email.
2. Set those filters to WHITELIST and email from any address @soapguild.org

These same steps apply to any website or person from whom you wish to always receive email.

If you have questions or difficulty with these steps, feel free to contact the webmaster@soapguild.org