Cox Upgrades E-Mail

Cox Communications Inc. is giving its high-speed-Internet subscribers increased e-mail-storage capacity and spam-control features as part of a series of free upgrades to the service.

"Millions of Cox customers currently use our e-mail service because it is easy to use and clutter-free, in contrast to the other free e-mail services that are loaded with banners and pop-up ads," said Steve Gorman, vice president of Cox High Speed Internet Marketing, in a prepared statement.

Cox is increasing the storage available for all cable-modem subscribers to 250 megabytes.

The MSO also added the ability for customers to create their own spam filters by blocking or granting access to specific senders or domains. Users can create personal "block lists" and block messages from as many as 20 domain names or individual e-mail addresses. Incoming mail matching the personal block filters will be deleted or filtered when received.

Customers can also create "Safe Sender" lists and limit the mail received by a particular mailbox to a list of 20 addresses or domains. Users will be able to report spam to Cox's “SpamBlocker” team with one simple click.

In another new feature, customers will be able to mark multiple messages as read or unread, flag as spam or file them in other folders. Customers will also be able to create e-mail groups and import or export addresses from other programs into Cox's “WebMail.” And an automatic spell-check function has been added.