Newbie guide: Setting up filtering in MS Outlook Express 5
What this page is all about
08/10/00
In this little guide, TweakCentral shows you a quickie way to filter
out unwanted email.
Simply
put, spam is rude. It's inconsiderate. And many times the best way to
combat it isn't at the source, but the destination. Many companies blindly
send out thousands of email to randomly generated email addresses simply
hoping for a response. If you reply to these with an "unsubscirbe"
request, all you've done is signal to the spammer that your email address
is in-fact a valid email address and watch out. They can then sell your
email address to other mass-marketers and you have, in-effect opened the
floodgates.
Fortunately
for us, Outlook
Express (and other email clients) are coming with more and more powerful
filtering tools. It only takes a second to configure your email client
to filter out a certain email. Let me show you how.
This article focuses on Outlook Express, but other email clients should
have similar features.
Setting up an email filter in Outlook Express couldn't be easier. And
once you've done one, adding more is trivial.
Step 1. Let's get started
Launch
Outlook Express and open Tools | Message Rules |
Mail...
A note: OE (Outlook Express) offers a "blocked senders" feature.
I don't use this and I'll tell you why.
Spammers caught on to this a long time ago. Nowadays a resourceful spammer
will commandeer many "zombie" email accounts from which to spam
you. The next spam you receive from this spammer will probably come from
a different email address and get by your "blocked senders"
filter. Read on to see what we're going to do.
Step 2. Select the criteria
Now we need to select the criteria on which we want to filter this email.
As I said above, the most common way to filter an email is by the "from"
line. This allows you to delete (or do whatever you want to) all incoming
email based on who (the sender claims) it's from.
The problem with this is that many spammers circumvent these filters by
using a different account each time they spam you. Using the "from
line" filter is best to "unsubscribe" you from "legitimate"
automated emails and people or domains that are hounding you.
Take a look at the criteria OE lets you choose from:
For example, if someone signs you up to a mailing-list (or "egroup"),
you can enter that in the Where To line contains people filter.
Step 3. Select the action to take
Now we need to select the criteria on which we want to filter this email.
As I said above, the most
Take a pull of the actions OE can automatically do for you: Oooh - 3 ways to delete spam - I want to tongue-kiss the OE developers!
Ok, here you want to choose the very last one (press d 3-times will
get you there automatically)
Yeah, that's the stuff! You see OE finds out some information about the email before it even
brings it down from the mailserver. By selecting this feature, OE won't
even bother downloading it from the server. For example, if you check
your mail from two locations and at one location you have a very slow
connection. You can easily just check "Message size is more than
size" (makes sense) and then "Do not download from server"
and leave messages with large attachments to download later and just get
your other mail.
Step 4. Fill in the specifics
Now just fill in the specific details OE needs to filter your email.
I'm talkin' who the messages are from that you want to delete.
Just add the recipient's name in the box and click Add. You can enter
(and add) more names here too. If you select other criteria, you can fill
those out in the same way.
Feel free to be more broad. Like in the picture OE will filter ALL mail
from TweakCentral or containing TweakCentral in the from box.
You might want to be careful here. If you enter aol or hotmail, then OE
will delete ALL mail from ANYONE mailing you from an AOL or hotmail account.
You might accidentally delete a message you want to reach you. Even though
AOL and hotmail are bastions for spammers and should be banned .
Step 5. Finishing up
That's basically it!
All that's left to do is give the rule a name and position it with your
other rules.
OE executes the rules one at a time, so you can do different things based
on what order your rules are in.
I hope you enjoyed this guide. I also hope that you can save time and
make your day a little less irritating by taking back control over a small
portion of your life that may have just gotten a little out-of-control.
As usual your questions & comments are welcome:
Don't worry, I won't filter you .
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Simply
put, spam is rude. It's inconsiderate. And many times the best way to
combat it isn't at the source, but the destination. Many companies blindly
send out thousands of email to randomly generated email addresses simply
hoping for a response. If you reply to these with an "unsubscirbe"
request, all you've done is signal to the spammer that your email address
is in-fact a valid email address and watch out. They can then sell your
email address to other mass-marketers and you have, in-effect opened the
floodgates.
Fortunately
for us, 
Launch
Outlook Express and open Tools | Message Rules |
Mail...
.
