Section 12.4. Junk Email: All Versions


12.4. Junk Email: All Versions

Windows Mail now offers Junk E-Mail Options, a feature that was glaringly absent in Outlook Express.

The Junk filter automatically channels what it believes to be spam into the Junk E-Mail folder in the folder list. Its factory setting is Low, meaning that only the most obvious spam gets sent to the Junk E-Mail folder. You'll probably still get a ton of spam, but at least almost no legitimate mail will get mistakenly classified as spam.

You can configure the level of security you want in the Junk E-Mail Options window, shown in Figure 12-13.

Figure 12-13. To visit this dialog box, choose Tools Junk E-Mail Options. Choose No Automatic Filtering, Low, High, or Safe List Only. You can also opt to permanently delete suspected spam instead of moving it to the Junk E-Mail folder. No matter what setting you choose, though, always go through the Junk E-Mail folder every few days to make sure you havent missed any important messages that were flagged as spam incorrectly .


12.4.1. Junk E-Mail Options

Junk E-Mail options offers five tabs. The Options tab is shown in Figure 12-13. The other tabs are:

  • Safe Senders . Messages from any contacts, email addresses, or domain names that you add to this list are never treated as junk email. (A domain name is what comes after the @ sign in an email address, as in bob@herbalviagra.com.) Click Add to begin.


    Tip: The two checkboxes below the list are also useful in preventing "false positives." The first, "Also trust e-mail from my Windows Contacts," means that anyone in your own address book is not a spammer. The second, "Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Sender's list," means that if you send mail to somebody, it's someone you don't consider a spammer.
  • Blocked Senders . This one's the flip side of Safe Senders: it's a list of contacts, email addresses, and domain names that you always want flagged as spam.

    FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
    Canning Spam

    Help! I'm awash in junk email! How do I get out of this mess?

    Spam is a much-hated form of advertising that involves sending unsolicited emails to thousands of people. While there's no instant cure for spam, you can take certain steps to protect yourself from it.

    1. Use one email account for online shopping, Web site and software registration, and newsgroup posting; use a second one for person-to-person email.

      Spammers have automated software robots that scour every public Internet message and Web page, automatically locating and recording email addresses they find. These are the primary sources of spam, so at least you're now restricting the junk mail to one secondary mail account.

    2. Whenever you receive a piece of junk mail, choose Message Junk E-Mail Add Sender to Blocked Senders List. Windows Mail no longer accepts email from that sender.

    3. When posting messages in a newsgroup, insert the letters NOSPAM, SPAMISBAD, or something similar somewhere into the email address you've specified in the News Account dialog box (page 420). Anyone replying to you via email must manually remove it from your email address, which, while a hassle, keeps your email address away from the spammer's robots. (They're getting smarter every day, though; a trickier insert may be required, along the lines of REMOVETOEMAIL or SPAMMERSARESCUM.)

    4. Create message rules to filter out messages containing typical advertising words such as casino, Rolex, herbal , and so forth. (You'll find instructions in this chapter.)

    5. Buy an antispam program like SpamAssassin.


  • International . You can also block email in foreign languages, or that originate overseas. (A huge percentage of spam originates overseas, since U.S. antispam laws have no jurisdiction there.) See Figure 12-14.

    Figure 12-14. If you find you're getting email from specific countries or domains, you can select the top-level domains (.ca for Canadian mail, .uk for British mail, and so on) for those countries . All email from those domains now gets treated as junk email .


  • Phishing . For a complete description of phishing scams, see page 346. In brief, phishing email is designed to look like it came from your bank, eBay, or PayPalbut it's a trick to get you to surrender your account information so the bad guys can steal your identity.

    Windows Mail keeps phishing email out of your Inbox unless you turn off this feature on this tab.

12.4.2. When the Junk Filter Goes Wrong

Windows Mail doesn't always get it right. It labels some good messages as junk, and some spam messages as OK.

Over time, though, it's supposed to get better if you patiently help it along. Every time you see a good piece of email in the Junk E-Mail folder, click it, and then click Not Junk on the Toolbar.

Better yet, use the Message Junk E-Mail submenu to choose one of these two options:

  • Add Sender to Safe Senders List . No future mail from this person will be misfiled.

  • Add Sender's Domain to Safe Senders List . No future mail from this person's entire company or ISP will be marked as spam.

The news isn't so good if you find a piece of spam in your Inbox; incredibly, there's no This is Junk button on the toolbar, or even a similar command in the Message menu.

You can use the Message Junk E-Mail Add Sender (or Senders Domain) to Blocked Senders List, of course. But since spammers rarely use the same address or domain twice, it's probably faster just to hit the Delete key.


Note: Microsoft intends to continue improving the quality of its spam filter through regular Windows Update updates (page 614).



Windows Vista. The Missing Manual
Windows Vista: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596528272
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 284
Authors: David Pogue

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