Last Updated on December 1, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla
I use the K9 client to retrieve my main emails on my tablet and Droid phone. I simply connected using Pop3. That was OK until recently.
The flea infested scum sucking, bottom feeding, worse than rabid herpes spammers have been flooding my mailbox with useless “Make it bigger”, “become a millionaire”, “Buy our crud” emails. The ratio of garbage to useful emails is getting to be about 30:1.
The first option, honing my skill with a Katana, hunting down every single spammer and leaving them yelling in agony as they try to keep their entrails in their body is just not practical.
So, I had to find a plan B.
My hosting company, Westhost is not able to run the latest version of Spamassassin. I forget the actual reason. That would not matter much because while SpamAssassin is a good product, it still would not address the problem.
I then looked into a solution such as using MailWasher’s server side solution. That looked like a great idea. However, it would not work with a shared hosting solution. I just wasn’t ready to go another 500 dollars or so a year for a dedicated server.
I began to look at the possibility of using Gmail to filter emails. As far as I know, that is within the terms of service.. The basic idea is that you forward email from your main account to a gmail account. Gmail then filters the spam out and your signal to noise ratio gets a lot better.
The basic process is
- Set up a gmail account to receive the mail forwarded from your main account (You could probably forward to an existing gmail account. I wanted to keep things separated a bit)
- Set up your main email account on your domain to forward all mail to your new gmail account. Not all hosting companies will facilitate forwarding. I’m lucky that Westhost does allow that.
- Then go into your gmail client on your mobile device(s). Add the new account under Settings, Add account. If you didn’t have a gmail account previously, then add the gmail app to your mobile device.
- You should now be able to tap the icon on the top left and see radio buttons allowing you to select the account you want to view. If you didn’t have a previous gmail account, then you will only need to set up the one account.
UPDATE DECEMBER 2019 – I no longer use the K-9 client for mail. I use the mail client provided with Android.