Solution to Spam On Your iPhone

I’ve read some various stories about the iPhone where, while thrilled with iPhone’s email program they are disappointed with all the spam showing up on the iPhone. While it is true the iPhone doesn’t have any built-in spam filtering there is a pretty easy solution and mine was set up before I even bought an iPhone.

I have no less than six email accounts because I like my mail to be routed and stored by type. Last year when I picked up my MacBook Pro I switched all my email accounts from POP to IMAP. Unlike POP where messages are stored on the local computer IMAP messages are stored on the server. So no matter which of my machines I access my email from the changes are the same across them all. So if I read or delete a mail on one machine when I go to my other machine that email will be deleted. This is the first half of the solution.

The second half of the solution is a great piece of software for the Mac called SpamSieve. SpamSieve is a spam filtering application that works cooperatively with your email application (be it Apple Mail, MS Entourage, Eudora, etc) to filter your spam. I have been delighted with the product and as someone who receives several hundred spam messages a day it has been very accurate and a godsend.

So, the iPhone spam solution? Leave the MacBook Pro on, as it always has been anyway, so that it is constantly retrieving new email and is filtering it with SpamSieve. Since the MacBook Pro is filtering the email and making the changes on the accounts on their IMAP servers those same changes will be made when I access my email using the iPhone. Now, occasionally there may be a delay when the iPhone pulls down the message before the MacBook Pro has done so any spam that has found its way to my iPhone is gobbled up by the MacBook Pro when it makes its next sweep.

This has worked very well for me and kept my iPhone a spam-free environment without having to change any of my email accounts or anything else in my setup. So if you are having this problem see which of your email accounts you can change access using IMAP (many email providers give you an option or if you can configure your own website you can set it as an option) and start keeping your mail organized and synchronized!