email filter

[bgreenage]

Back when I had Earthlink as my internet provider they had an email program. You could put up to 500 email addresses into it and they were blocked from going into my email account> I never saw them in my in box. Is there anything like that now?

[WaltS48]

The Thunderbird email application has some built-in external classifiers per account for Junk filtering .

They include:

• SpamAssasin

• Bogofilter

• DSPAM

• POPfile

• SpamPal

[tanstaafl]

I think you're talking about automatically blocking new mail based on what address they were sent from. That is a common feature but has mixed results as most spammers periodically change the From: address they use, and may try to get your list of contacts from social media etc. and send a message that appears to be from somebody you know. Its trivial to use a forged From: address.

Blocking a message based on what server sent it (DNSBLs) is usually more effective. Many email providers will use a combination of several of those black lists.

Your best bet is to use a email provider that uses a heavyweight spam filtering program such as SpamAssassin or Rspamd. You don't want to use a email provider that essentially just has a Bayesian filter and the ability to block/enable senders based on their email address, that's not much better than what's available in Thunderbird.

I'm not a fan of Thunderbird's adaptive junk mail controls (its based on Bayesian filtering). However, most of the popular spam filter software that you can install on your PC is not much better than using a combination of Thunderbird's message filters and adaptive junk mail controls, they're just packaged and marketed much better.

Gmail has a excellent reputation for spam filtering. Yahoo and Outlook have a poor reputation. So do most ISPs. IMHO ISPs are also generally poor email providers as they view email as just a cost center.

[tsor]

... and they were blocked from going into my email account> I never saw them in my in box. Is there anything like that now?

If you are aware of the limitations that tanstaafl speaks of....

You may try Yandex.com / mail [free mail account]
There are message filters on the server site like:
Blacklist --> All messages from blacklisted email addresses will be blocked from your inbox.
Whitelist --> Emails sent from whitelisted Addresses are not redirected to the spam folder.

Zoho.com / mail [free mail account] has something similar on the server site in regards of the message filters.

Currently both email provider work with Thunderbird [POP3 and IMAP] and also with a single authenthication method [less secure].