Note most of this applies to Outlook Express but can often be easily adapted to
other mailers. If you currently do not use a mailer, most Internet Explorer
versions from 5.x up have Outlook Express available. If you perfer not to use
Outlook Express, there are several other mailer about and most can be found on
www.tucows.com
by typing in mailers or email clients in the site search arguement.
This page was placed here recently to assist those who may use a POP3 email
server and find the amount of unsolictited email unacceptable. Note that you
should likely NEVER reply to the return address on any remove me link as it
just tells the spammer that you are there and have read at least that email.
Unless the company is one you can recall asking for email from such as a news
letter or something then it is my advice and opinion it is best to block them
instead of asking for them to stop mailing things to you. Lets talk about
what Email Spam is and how it works so you can understand how to try to limit
your having to handle it.
First thing to understand is bulk mailers treat it as a business which it is
for them. They get paid on a per hundred or per thousand email sent basis
usually. So they are always looking for email addresses. They obtain these
addresses from little tricks and also purchase them from each other. The
tricks include small programs or other functions they may provide online and
then once they have an email address for you, they can include it in the ones
they bulk mail to. So that game you downloaded that you played once and
decided it was nothing worth having but it prompted you to register an email
address just gave the spammer your address. Do not think that pretty large
and impressive looking websites are above this either. Just because a site is
impressive to look at or has a lot of information do not think it means they
are not above selling your email address to someone they know or are partnered
with. Once someone else has it they can and often do sell it themselves to
someone else. So that soon you are getting sex site spam and everything else.
So the first line of defence is to set up a spam box ideally.
This is a HTTP based email address on a server. Most any search engine allows
you a email address and most are HTTP for free. Pick one and set it up then
use that email address to send to anyone you are not 110% sure will not share
your email address with mail spammer operations. This would be the best
possible first line of defence against being spammed. However like most of us,
this ship has already sailed. So we move onto the second choice... Oh did I
mention the email spammers often use dead end type email boxes. They often set
them up through proxy servers to hide who or where they are sending it from as
well. In this way the effectiveness of blocking the email ID they use or
trying to complain about them sending you email is pretty ineffective in most
cases. In most cases if you apply to remove yourself from their mail list you
will get a stuffed email box, a box that does not exist, or worse still a
server with a form that will in most cases just add your email address to the
group they know someone has that address for sure and it is active. Also
opening email spam often adds to the problem. You see like many websites
email spam has what is know as web bugs added to them. These are graphic
files ( usually gifs with cookies ) that are included with the HTML content
you get in the spam. Using text only ( plain text only email accepted ) will
greatly limit this as well a virus content on email. I also strongly suggest
very current antivirus software anyway that scans anything you get in by way of
email.
If you have an HTTP email aside from hotmail.com it is likely a web based
email. Few other HTTP mail servers exist as far as I can tell and I have only
found hotmail to offer mailer operation of them. It could be that there are
other mailers around that could operate HTTP type mailboxes. If so I am not
aware of them but this should not stop you from looking if you wish to retain
an HTTP based email service you are with. Most mailers however I know of are
SMTP ( POP3 ) type mailers. Depending on the mailer used most have a filter
option in place. On Outlook Express it is called Message Rules. Before we
move on to this too deeply it is important to mention that you should set up
some degree of security with your mailer. Make sure your virus scanner scans
all incoming email and attachments. Some would even suggest you set the
mailer to not accept attachments. I suggest you set it to not preview them at
the very least. In fact you can use the Message rules to set up a folder
solely for attachments to be placed in so that any attachment sent there should
be harder to accidently open. The reason why I suggest this is the number
one way to get a virus on your system is by way of email attachment. The best
way to stop it is to not accept any attachments however this tends to prevent
pictures, audio and video email from getting to your system. If you wish to
you can also set up the message rules on Outlook Express to leave any
attachments on the server so that you can decide if you wish to download them.
Ok enough already about the Message Rules and what they can do, tell me how to
use them! Well this is going to take a bit of thinking on your part. I am
not going to be able to tell you what rules will work for you. You must set
up what you wish to limit. It is however shockingly easy to access. Start up
your mailer ( assuming you have the mailer already set up to get your email
from the mail server you use ) and cycle it to get any new email you may have.
You will need a message or spam ideally to start this process, and these
instuction will be for Outlook Express so if you are using other software you
may have to look about a bit to see how to do the same thing. Click or
otherwise highlight the header in the inbox of the spam you wish to block,
limit or otherwise prevent from being seen anymore. Then click MESSAGE at the
top of the Outlook Express tool bar. You should then see Block sender and
Create Rule from Message. Blocking sender will just prevent the person who
sent you this email ( at this email address ) from sending you anymore emails.
If they change their email address they can send the message again. Create
Rule from Message offers several options. I suggest this as a better fix in
most cases. You must however be mindful of the fact of what your rules are and
not to make too many different rules. ( you can amend rules also so there is
little point in having 50 or 60 message rules as it just slows down your mailer
operation and likely will make it less useful to use rules at all ) I
generally suggest you try to limit your message rules to less than 10 or 12
rules. I will provide the instuctions on how to make two basic rules I use
here and you can work from them to make what you would like to do in the case
if your email.
Attachments:
-
highlight a message ( it does not need to have an attachment to do this )
-
click on Message on the Outlook Express toolbar
-
select Create Rule from Message
-
check only the box that says "if Message has an Attachment"
-
then you can either select move message to a folder or leave message on server
or flag message or any other option you may wish.
-
click ok when you are done, you should get a notice that message rule was
successfully added.
I would normally suggest making a new folder for these and calling it
attachments. This should then move the message with the attachment to that
folder and not leave it in your in box.
Then you can use caution in opening such messages as you see fit such as only
opening them offline and with virus scanner active or what have you. If you
have a problem with people sending you virus payloads you may wish to just
leave these on the server. It should in most cases download the header of the
message so you know they are there but not allow the payload to be placed on
your system. If you have a problem with hidden payloads you may wish to move
them to an attachment folder and then start a program like AnalogX Script
Defender before you open of the message content found there which should
prevent any scripts from being run without asking your permission first.
Blocking with Subject Strings:
-
hightlight a message ( it does not have to be of the subject you wish to limit
)
-
click on the Outlook Express toolbar
-
select create rule from message
-
check box that says if subject line contains the following word(s) - if you
wish to you can also have it scan the message body but if you leave the check
in the from line it will only work when it is from this one sender.
-
then check what you wish to do with the message that has a match to the word
string. You can delete it, move it to another folder, leave it on the server,
even delete it at the server without downloading it. You can even move all
messages that contain say "FWD" in them to a folder you can title Forwards or
something like this. There are countless options.
This is why I said I can show you the process of how to do this but you will
have to construct it as you would wish it to be. There is however a few more
things to say.
Most of these items work on POP3 mail servers with Outlook Express. I cannot
speak to what the limits or functions are on other programs. Outlook Express
does NOT apply message rules to hotmail. You must use the filter on the
hotmail site to limit spam on hotmail. ( it is pretty effective except on
Microsofts own spam of course if you set it to the highest setting ) Most
mail servers have a server based filter also which you can set up more or less
using the same general guidelines as I have mentioned above. As with any
filter however you can find yourself filtering out some email you would wish to
read. Keep in mind that you should mention to people you talk to you are
filtering your email and how so they will know what to avoid sending and
getting caught in the mail filter.
If you wish to edit the message rules you have made it is not hard to do that
either. ( it is also why you would see I mentioned to keep your message rule
count low ) To edit them go to Outlook Express's TOOLBAR and select TOOLS then
Editi Message Rules, then select Mail in most cases. You will be shown Message
Rule 1 through whatever number you have. You can edit them or delete them or
move them up or down the list as to where you wish to have them applied. Note
that the higher up the list the sooner the rule will be applied. ( so if you
have attachments at the top of the list it would move any attachment to your
attachment folder say and not delete it from the server if you had that as a
rule but further down the list ) With some practice and a bit of thinking
most can get a pretty effective set of Message rules in place that will GREATLY
limit the amount of spam you have to deal with.
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