Obscene e-mails

[#1]

I am getting loads of junk e-mail in my plusnet e-mail box, much of this is offensive stuff. Is there any simple way to block this off ?
If I use the spam filter after selecting the various e-mails it fails to shift it, the only other way is to select individual messages and delete them one by one.
I don't get any of this offensive stuff in my Gmail account (I guess they filter it out first) so is there any simple way I can do this ?

[#2]

Do you have spam filtering turned off?
You can enable Spam filtering by selecting the spam tab in Manage My Mail. Then make sure 'move to the spam folder' is ticked. That should ensure identified spam does not appear in your inbox.

[#3]

Most modern email clients allow you to create your own filtering rules, and therefore if you can identify anything in common within these unwanted messages, then you could create your own rules to move or delete the offending messages from your inbox automatically when they arrive.  A very simple example would be if the message contained the word "viagra" in the subject or message body, then move the email to the <unwanted> email folder.
I have written filtering rules that are hundreds of lines long, and so far my children have NEVER received anything unpleasant, but I do have a folder containing thousands of disgusting messages addressed to them.  The more you get though, the better sample you have for adapting your rules,  although it doesn't work on 'image' SPAM where there is no text in the email - just a picture of the words !
Another simple trick is to create a whitelist of the email addresses that you want to receive email from, and then create a filtering rule to only leave the whitelisted senders messages in your inbox.
I hope that helps, or at least gives you a starting point 

[#4]

Thanks for the responses. I Did have spam filtering turned on but on checking through the other boxes I had failed to put a tick in the apply box ?
The individual filtering sounds interesting... deleting anything that has specific words in either the title or e-mail itself.
In mozilla thunderbird this was easy to do as there was a filtering box where you just added the individual words but I am not too clear if the same easy facility exists in the plusnet e-mail.
I can see the boxes where you can block or accept specific e-mail addresses but not a specific spam filter as described above.

[#5]

If you liked the filtering system on Thunderbird why don't you continue to use Thunderbird and let it pick up your email from Plusnet and filter it for you?  I do that and find it very effective.  You can still go into Squirrel mail/Webmail direct at any time and have a look at any junk mail that may have been filtered out by the Plusnet system before you finally delete it. 

[#6]

jazz,
excellent idea.
Thanks

[#7]

You're welcome! 

[#8]

Alternatively you could use Gmail mail collector and receive your plusnet mail in the Gmail interface.