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Spam filters and Whitelisting

In order to keep the membership database current we need to be able to contact you by email on occasion. Legitimate email sometimes gets blocked as part of an effort to reduce spam. Please ensure that this does not happen to you by adding our email address, [email protected], to your "white list" of approved senders. All mail from the site comes from [email protected].

A good approach for all email providers is to add [email protected] to your address book or list of contacts, and use your email to send an email to [email protected] with the simple title "Test".

If you're having trouble,

1. Use the search feature of your email provider to search for [email protected], and then mark the items you find as "not spam".
2. Send an email to [email protected] with the subject "Test". This will in some cases indicate to your email provider that since you've *sent* an email to us, you want to *receive* email from us.
3. Add [email protected] to your addressbook.

Guidelines for some of the more popular email providers are listed below.

AOL users
One way to be sure email from Warmshowers.org is delivered to you successfully is to create a folder for it. When you receive messages from us this folder will appear in bold type (just like the Inbox does when you have new messages). Here are the steps to create this folder.

  • Once you have logged into AOL Mail click on Settings
  • From the menu on the left-hand side of the page that appears choose Filters and Alerts
  • Click the + Create filter button and put the following information into the popup window that appears:
    • Type a filter name (for example "Warmshowers_filter") into the Create a filter called field
    • In the section Look for incoming messages matching all of the following: enter [email protected] into the From field
    • In the section Do the following with matched messages: select New Folder in the Move to folder... field; in the box that appears create a new folder name (for example "Warmshowers") and click on the + icon next to it
    • Click the Create button

GMail users
We have very few problems with GMail, but since they introduced "Inbox Tabs" some people don't know to monitor the other tabs ("Social", "Updates", etc.). The easiest technique is to turn off the tabs in inbox settings.

Outlook.com, Hotmail, and MSN users
Hotmail users can add Warmshowers.org to their Contact list.

  • Once you have logged into Hotmail click on Contact
  • On the Contacts page that appears click on New
  • On the New contact page that appears add [email protected] to the Personal email: field
  • Complete the process by clicking on the Save button at the bottom of the page

Yahoo! users
Yahoo! users should also create a filter for email from Warmshowers.org.

  • Once you have logged into Yahoo! Mail select Mail Options from the Options menu
  • From the menu on the left-hand side of the page that appears click Filters (under the Advanced Options category)
  • Next click the +Add button that appears
  • In the form that you will see next:
    • choose a name for your filter (for example "Warmshowers_filter") and type it into the Filter Name: field
    • under the If all of the following rules are true section:
      • in the Sender line, select Contains from the pull-down menu
      • type [email protected] into the next field
      • leave the sender match case box un-checked
    • under the Then deliver the email to the following folder section, choose Inbox from the pull-down menu
    • once you click on something (for example the Inbox tab) the filter you just created will be saved

By following the instructions above, you will hopefully get every message notification, announcement and important news that we send.

Randy Fay
Warmshowers.org webmaster