Email is an essential communication tool and nearly everyone has an email address (or five), but it’s ubiquitous nature makes it a popular target for unsolicited marketing messages, also known as spam. To combat this, email providers utilize sophisticated filters that attempt to sort the legitimate email (ham) from the unwanted messages (spam).
Spam filtering is an excellent tool email providers use to help manage the unending flow of unwanted email messages sent every day. Often, this process happens silently behind the scenes, but the process can become very apparent when you don’t receive a message you need. As good as spam filters are, mistakes can be made.
To keep your inbox clean from unwanted emails and to help protect you against malicious messages, Spectrum Webmail uses spam filtering solutions. When messages go to the Spam folder, or when you want to make sure future messages don’t end up in spam, there’s a couple things you can do: mark messages as not junk and manually add the sender’s email address to your safe sender list (or “white list”). As a final resort, you can change the way spam is handled so that ALL messages, spam included, are soreted into your inbox. We’ll discuss these in more detail below.
Add an email address to your Spectrum safe sender list
To keep important email out of your junk folder, you can add the sender’s email address to your Charter.net (Spectrum) safe sender list. If a desired email is already in your junk folder, you can mark the email as “not spam” to help train the Charter spam filter to not send those types of messages to your spam folder in the future.
Add email to safe sender list
Email addresses on your safe sender list will never be treated as junk. You can enter individual email addresses or whole domains.
- Sign in to your Spectrum (Charter) Email account
- Select the Settings tab (top)
- Select Filters & Blocked Senders from the left navigation
- Under the Safe Senders header, enter the sender’s email address in the box under Email Address or Domain
- Enter the sender’s email address
- Select the Add button
Mark email as not spam
If a desired email is already in your spam folder, you can mark it as Not Spam to move it to your inbox and help train the Spectrum spam filter.
- Sign into your Spectrum web mail account from a computer
- Select the Spam folder from the left navigation
- Select the box next to the email(s) you wish to mark
- Choose the Mark As button at top and then select Not Spam
- Answer Yes to the confirmation prompt
The message will be moved to your inbox. Note: Only email that has been read can be flagged.
Nuclear option: Get rid of the spam folder
Okay, this option doesn’t exactly get rid of the spam folder, but it does change the way your account handles spam messages. By changing this setting, all messages, legitimate or spam, are delivered to your inbox. You may want to use this option if nothing else works or if you want to be very sure you see that important message as soon as it arrives without wondering where it may have ended up.
- Sign in to your Spectrum (Charter) Email account
- Select the Settings tab (top)
- Select Filters & Blocked Senders from the left navigation
- Scroll down on the right side to the Spam header
- Select either the first or second option as you prefer. We recommend selecting Prefix the email subject with the text “SPAM:” and deliver to inbox
Spam will now be sorted into your inbox instead of getting hidden away in your spam folder.
Did this guide work for you?
Let us know if this guide for Spectrum (Charter) Webmail worked for you in the comments below. While we strive to keep our guides up-to-date and relevant, sometimes things change without notice. If you find something is different in your Spectrum Webmail account from this guide, let us know what you had to do differently. Thanks for your help and input!
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9 replies on “How to whitelist in Charter email (updated for 2020)”
It worked.
I have repeatedly tried the steps above for email from several senders that continually end up in my SPAM folder, but to no avail. Addresses and domains in the Safe Senders list are ignored, marking email as “not spam” makes no difference for anything but the item marked, and adding a sender to my contacts has been unsuccessful. To make matters worse, I have actually paid for some of the content that is being mishandled in this manner, and technical support at Charter-Spectrum seems clueless, ultimately blaming the senders for formatting or content in the emails as triggers for the spam filter’s erroneous actions. Short of turning off the spam filter so that all email goes to the inbox, I have tried everything they have suggested, including sending letters to the errant senders, informing them that their emails contain content deemed unworthy of my inbox by Charter-Spectrum. And thus the issue continues unresolved after years of frustration…
Unfortunately, we cannot assist in this matter. However, we noticed our guide was not fully accurate, so we’ve updated it to match the way the Spectrum webmail application is laid out now. We also added instructions for a final, “nuclear”, option that has all messages, spam included, sorted into the inbox.
Regarding email addresses in the safe list… sometimes the sender’s email address changes slightly. It may be helpful to enter the domain of the sender (e.g. domain.com) instead of the exact email address (e.g. name@domain.com).
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