Anti-spam message rules
Ed
I took the time recently to sort out my Outlook Express
message rules due to the excessive amount of spam I've
been receiving of late. My new rule set is proving to be
extremely effective and I thought my approach may be
useful to others being plagued with large amounts of
unsolicited emails.
Firstly, none of the rules I use make use of the
"Where the message body contains 'abc'" type of rule. For
this type of rule to work the message must be downloaded
from the mail server. There are several issues with this:
1) It may take a long while to download the email, especially
if it has a virus attached.
2) The email may have a virus attached!
3) Other rules may have identified it as spam without the
need to download it.
4) Once downloaded it will appear in one folder or another.
It can't be made to disappear as with the 'delete from server'
rule.
The first rule
==========
My first rule is designed to delete everything from off the mail
server that I know from previous experiance should not be
downloaded
My first rule looks something like this
Apply this rule to currently downloaded messages
Where the From line contains 'Special' or 'undisclosed' or
'Bargains' or 'Find A Date' or 'Weight' or
'Insurance' or 'Greeting' or 'Offer' or 'fabulous' or
'congratulations' or 'mail delivery' or saintly.com'
or Where the Subject line contains 'porn' or 'sex' or
'viagra' or 'teenage' or 'mortgage' or 'klez' or
'lolita' or 'buy it' or 'instant credit' or 'lose weight'
or Where the To or CC line contains
'undisclosed'
Delete it from server
The from line words can be either the words that appear in place
of the senders email address or part of the senders email address.
If I'm unsure about the details I right click the email and select
properties. I then select the 'details' tab from the properties dialog.
Folder rules
=========
My next set of rules are designed to file mails from mailing lists
I've subscribed to etc. into appropriate folders. I have about 10 rules
that pick up either on the 'From' line or the 'Subject' line
eg.
Apply this rule to currently downloaded messages
Where the From line contains 'scifi.com'
Move it to the Sci File folder
and Stop processing more rules
I always end rules with the 'Stop processing more rules' command
if I'm not deleting the mail from the server.
'Leave alone' rule
===============
After the 'folder' rules I've a single rule designed to
leave particular emails in the Inbox. Mails that have been
sent to my currently 'valid' email address for instance
rather than old accounts which attract mostly spam.
eg.
Apply this rule to currently downloaded messages
Where the From line contains 'microsoft.com'
or Where the To line contains 'som...@mydomain.com'
Stop processing more rules
'Delete from server after other rules' rule
===============================
At this point all the email that you expect to receive should
have been processed. I catch a lot of spam with this one by not
being very specific. Others may find they need to be more specific
here so as not to delete wanted emails. I know for instance I'm
extremely unlikely to receive emails from someone with a
'yahoo.com' account (unless it's from a mailing list, in which
case it will have been process by one of the 'folder' rules)
eg.
Apply this rule to currently downloaded messages
Where the From line contains 'hotmail.com' or 'yahoo.com' or
'eudoramail.com' or 'bigfoot.com' or '.us' or '.net' or
'aol.com' or '.sk' or 'msn.com' or '.nl' or
'btopenworld.com' or 'excite.com' or 'cs.com' or
'hotbot.com' or 'altavista.com' or '.info' or 'lycos.com' or
'.lv'
or Where the Subject line contains 'please try again' or
'hacker' or 'free'
Delete it from server
The last rule. File it in the 'Deleted Items' folder
====================================
If an email reaches this rule it means it could either be spam
that I haven't catered for yet, or its simply an email from
someone I don't normally receive emails from. Either way I
need to update my rules to prevent emails of that type from
being filed in the 'Deleted Items' folder again.
Now that I've been working on regularly updating my rules for the
last couple of months, I've been capturing the vast majority of
spam emails before they even get downloaded. I'm fairly certain
too that I haven't lost any emails that I wanted to receive either.
I hope others have similar success.
kind regards,
Ed.
Axel
spam again. You can use it for as long as you like for free like
WinZip without it timing out and you'll never have to conceal your
email address. http://www.comthing.com
Ed
newsgroup spam too like the one touting ComThing. LOL.
It looks like Mr Johnson's been rather busy of late. Don't
bother replying, I won't see it :-)
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:travelingjohnson%40yahoo.com&hl=en&
lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=r&start=10&sa=N