One of the differences between OpenInbox and other mail providers is our approach to spam. Most providers will accept all mail and use secret filters to sort mail into your inbox, spam folder, or the void.

The problem caused by this approach is when there is a false positive your valid mail ends up lost in the spam folder. The sender thinks you "got" the mail, and it leaves them thinking you're either too busy or ignoring it. The alternative is you have to spend time reading the spam you're trying to avoid looking for valid emails, defeating the purpose of spam sorting.

Adding frustration is how your only option is to train their black-box filters by flagging mail as spam or not spam. Even after doing that some mail still ends up wrongly marked as spam and real spam still goes into your inbox.

With OpenInbox there is no spam folder, don't panic you can add one if you miss it, but since spam is rejected you won't need it. Spam is managed with policy settings deciding what gets rejected as spam or accepted as valid mail. The default policy settings work out of the box for 99% of users. Power users and those with unique cases can fine-tune policy settings to fit their needs. If you want to receive all mail including spam you can do that too.

The advantage is you don't need to train filters or have to read through a spam folder anymore. In the rare event that a valid mail is rejected as spam, the sender is immediately notified allowing the situation to be rectified instead of mail being lost in a spam folder. You also get access to mail logs showing what was accepted or rejected allowing you to fine-tune your policy settings as needed.

You might be wondering what are policy settings and how they work. They allow you to reject or exempt mail based on things like:

• IP
• Domain
• Email Address
• Country
• Spam Bots
• Forged Domains
• File Attachments
• Bannable Keywords
• Raw Email Headers
• Public IP Ban List
• Lack of Encryption
• Fake Reply Addresses
• New Domain Reputation
• Residential Connections