Steve's Junk Mail Tips

Effective ways to keep the mailbox junk-free

Because I'm heavily involved with computers and the Internet, people often talk to me about junk mail - how much of it they receive and how raunchy it often is. I don't complain about it at all. It just isn't a problem for me. But that's because I'm smart - not lucky. If you're feeling overwhelmed with the amount of unwanted e-mail hawking garbage, read on:

Outlook Express - Versions 5 and 6

I recommend this software highly. There are several alternative programs, such as IncrediMail and Netscape to name just two - but there's an element of stability, functionality and ease-of-use in this handy (and free) Microsoft product. Most people have no idea how to use it's powerful filters - called Message Rules - to customize the delivery and filtering of their e-mail.

In the Tools Menu of Outlook Express, choose Message Rules and then select Mail. If you haven't ever defined any rules before, you'll be taken to a screen where you can enter specific Conditions and Actions to filter your messages. Place a check mark in the Condition item "Where the subject line contains specific words" and another check mark in the Action item "Delete it."

In the Rule Description field, click the hyperlink "contains specific words" to start defining the words that are almost always associated with junk mail. Customize your list however you want it - but mine contains the following:

My e-mail address, money, debt, thousands, save, offer, payment, the percent sign (%) and the Dollar sign ($) as well as the word FREE. I also include all the SEX words - like penis, pussy, ass, slut, fuck (fucking) bitch and hardcore - as well as teen, hot, barely, young and Viagra. Pop stars get included in this list too - Shakira, Britney, Jennifer, Pamela and Christina are on the list - but I keep adding or changing their names, as trends require. Services and other items are also in my list - things like insurance, mortgage, loan, tickets and whatever else seems to fit at the time.

Obviously, if a friend writes me an e-mail with a subject line like "It's fucking hot outside!" I probably won't see it right away. It will be in my "Deleted Items" folder, which I peruse from time to time. After some time, you may find that your customized filter is properly filtering your mail and not deleting too many of the messages you really want. At that point, you can change the Action for your rule from "Delete it" to "Delete it from server." The latter option will remove it from the mail server at your ISP - without ever downloading it to your computer.

The ability to delete messages based on certain key words is just a scratch on the surface of the filtering ability of Mail Rules in Outlook Express. I would encourage anyone to spend a little time there - becoming familiar with the controls at their disposal.

Common Sense as a Filter

There are some simple rules here - stuff you can't program into your computer - which will do wonders for reducing your chances of receiving an excessive amount of garbage.

Don't sign up for products or services using your REAL (the one provided by your ISP) e-mail address. People love your e-mail address - they pay for it. If you absolutely MUST register for something online (and I do a lot of that) use an alternate address. Another swell product to come out of Redmond is Hotmail - Microsoft's FREE web-based e-mail. You may have noticed somewhere else in this site that I have listed a Hotmail account. That's the account I use for online transactions. Hotmail offers even more mail filtering options than Outlook Express does - which means I feel perfectly safe broadcasting my Hotmail address.
Don't "Unsubscribe" to anything! If you've signed up for e-mail newsletters or periodicals that you no longer wish to receive, it might be okay to click the "remove" link at the bottom. But in almost every situation, clicking that handy little hyperlink will probably just add you to more mailing lists. Especially if the link comes in an e-mail you never requested. The "unsubscribe" or "remove" link usually sends a signal to someone that your e-mail address is a "live" address - there's a real person behind it. Such an address is extremely valuable to mass-mailers.
Don't reply to junk mail. If the tip above didn't explain it clearly enough, sending ANY response to an unwanted message is a bad idea. Further, because most people don't know how to read the headers in their e-mail, they don't realize that junk messages seldom come from the addresses in the "From" field. Writing back to a nonexistent address is absolutely futile. Some messages are even disguised to appear as though they came from you. It's a cheap trick - but are you really going to send a message to yourself telling you to stop?
Don't be ignorant. Another type of junk mail I used to receive with some frequency was garbage from friends - all the special "send this to seven friends..." to get something free offers and those "new virus" alerts (which are always hoaxes) asking to pass the message along to everyone I know. Barnum said there was a sucker born every minute. He was right. There's a little mix of ignorance and stupidity in everyone - and a million ways to exploit it. No one tracks e-mail to see how many people you've sent it to. The $300 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe wastes about $50 worth of ingredients and doesn't make very convincing cookies. Any company that claims their scheme is NOT some sort of Multi-Level Marketing program really IS some sort of MLM venture. CNN, IBM and AOL never release virus alerts via e-mail - and you can be assured that McAfee and Symantec already have something in place for them. If something seems too outrageous to be true, too simple - or too dire - to leave alone, just delete it. By passing it along to "everyone you know" you're shining a spotlight on your own naiveté.

ISP Message Filters

Many Internet Service Providers are subscribing to "blacklists" or "blocklists" which are really one in the same - they're huge databases of domains and addresses which are recognized as sending (or having sent) mass amounts of unsolicited junk mail. Consolidated Telephone Company is one such company that subscribes to several of these lists, and also maintains their own. The result of using these databases is amazing - well over two million messages each month are discarded at CTC before they ever reach a targeted recipient. Keep in mind that CTC has a disproportionately small number of users - just under 15,000 users on the mail server. Do the math - that's an astounding number of junk messages that aren't cluttering customer mailboxes. Some people complain that having the ISP control or filter the content that comes to you via e-mail is a little imposing. They complain that sometimes, the ISP discards legitimate e-mail - and it's true. Occasionally, an otherwise legitimate e-mail is deleted at the mail server. But look at it in the right perspective - it's a drop in the ocean. The success of the filters is overwhelming. People who complain about such practices should simply use one of hundreds of free web-based e-mail services, or seek a different Internet Service Provider who isn't terribly concerned about your junk e-mail.

Steven A. Tolbers - September 2002

Click HERE to return to the main page.