How to avoid SPAM mails getting synchronized to your Blackberry Device

In this post, I will explain how to avoid spam mails being synchronized to your Blackberry Device.

The situation is the following:

We are running TrendMicro Worry-Free Enterprise edition as antivirus/anti-spam protection. On request of the customer, all spam-detected mail needs to be forwarded to the end-users mailbox (Junk mail folder), with a tag [SPAM] in the subject line.

As the “move” to the junk mail folder is an Outlook feature, the situation is that all mails first comes in the Outlook inbox, which gets picked up by the Blackberry engine, and thus gets synchronized to the Blackberry Device, before it gets moved to the junk mail folder. This is especially nasty during the weekends and off-working hours.

I know, I could also modify the settings on TrendMicro to not moving the spam-mails to the end-user, but hey, the customer pays my bills, so why complain, right :)

Now the situation is clear, I will show you the simple and easy steps to do:

a) Open up the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) Management Console; this will show you all linked mailbox/blackberry users

b) Select a user / Properties / Go to Filters

c) Select Filter Rules, and – if not already enabled – say “True” to the forward messages to Blackberry device option

d) In the next window, a few examples already exist; the idea is to add here a rule which says “If there is [SPAM] in the subject, hold the mail from being synchronized”

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e) Click “New”, and enter the settings as in below screenshot:

- Filter Name => give a descriptive name of the filter

- Enabled => True, to activate the filter mechanism

- Subject => [SPAM], the keyword that should exist in the subject field which triggers the filter

- Action => Hold, to make sure the mail does not get picked up by the BB engine

Apply and Oke should do the job.

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f) IMPORTANT : the creation of filters is individually per Blackberry User, so you have to do the same trick again for all users having issues with this.

As you see, a gentle, “piece-of-cake easy” configuration to make the end-users as your best friends again.

Cheers,

Peter