I get a lot of spam sent to <random> (at) mydomain.com, so I set up the following filter using BIS. My goal was to suppress any messages being sent to an address other than heybuick(at)mydomain.com, but it's not working:

Apply filter when: "TO" FIELD
Contains: HEYBUICK(at)MYDOMAIN.COM


Forward messages to device? YES
Header only UNCHECKED
Level 1 notification UNCHECKED

What did I do wrong? Any alternative suggestions to avoid spam of this kind?
Thanks

Go back in to filter settings and at the bottom of the filter window there is a dialog that says when no filter applies with two options. Pick the one that says do not forward message.

Then sign up for Google Apps and get rid of the spam for good.

Yes, kill spam at the server level. First and optimal line of defense.

You have another thing that you can do to kill spam if you don't want to move your email to Google Apps. If you are getting domain email for accounts other than your own then you have the catch all feature of your web host mail enabled and it is set to your address. Turn that off. Or set it to forward to another account. That will diminish the amount of spam that lands on your BlackBerry and in your inbox.

Google Apps will stop it. I have had one of my domains for 10 years or more and the spammers love to fill me up. I get about 2,000 messages a day at my account there and all but 30 or so on average are spam. All 2,00 used to land in my Outlook inbox (and at the time my Treo as well) but since the switch to Google Apps, about 2 years ago maybe, I have gotten 1 spam message that ended up in my inbox. Just 1.

For about the first year I used to go through my spam box every day to make sure there were no false positives. After a year, maybe a little more, of never finding one I stopped doing that. I have moved all of my domains to Google Apps and couldn't be happier.

There are free and paid versions of Google Apps. Free is free and the paid is $50 per user, per year. I go the paid route for some of the extra goodies and it only costs me about 40% of what hosted exchange would. I'm not getting contact and calendar sync the way that I would with Exchange, but I'm OK with that.

Read about it here:
Google Apps

Has Google addressed the issue where accounts set up through Apps doesn't get instantly pushed through the BIS, but rather gets "polled" every 15 minutes by BIS before it is pushed to the BB?

I tried Apps out a while back, and while it looked great in theory, the lack of instant delivery was a dealkiller for me so I just went back to "regular" Gmail.

If you set it up to use IMAP it is polled every 15 minutes and changes are sync'd back. If you use POP, email delivery is pushed, but changes don't sync back. That has not changed.

I'm not sure if it is a Google thing or a RIM thing. I tend to blame RIM because IMAP works everywhere else that I use it just like it should. I don't really know though what the cause is.

I keep the Gmail mobile app and the version for Apps on my BB to use for my main personal as well as business account. I use the BIS account for the instant notification and the Gmail mobile apps to read and reply. I do this for the better text formatting and so that my changes will sync back instantly. I also use it so that I can search my mail and view my labels. All in all it works out well for me.

The Gmail mobile app for hosted accounts is a bit of a pain in that it doesn't store your account info. Every time I pull the battery I have to enter the info again, but I get to use the BB which I love and Gmail which I love. Small price to pay.