Who Me? I AM NOT A SPAMMER!!
What IS spam anyway? It's those commercial messages sent to clog your mailbox to sell you all sorts of things you don't want. Right? Right. But that only partially right. Some of it comes from people advertising smutty websites that no nice people want to see. That's another definition. And there are more — one kind affects too many of us, and it comes from some of our friends. That is the topic of this computer tip.
Yes, your best friend may be a spammer. Or, that may be a description of you. "How is that?", you say. Well recall all those forwarded messages that contain jokes, or inspirational messages telling us how to live our lives better? These messages are passed along by people who seem to have nothing better to do with their time. Some correspondents tell me that they can't find the REAL messages because their friends fill up their mailboxes with this stuff! In some cases their mail boxes fill up and their ISP returns mail to senders because the box has used all the alloted space!
Most of the people who do this are nice people with good intentions, but the results of their "well meant" activity is often annoying, inconvenient, and down right harmful to your ability to carry on legitimate correspondence via your email account. What to do about it?
If you are one of those people with good intentions forwarding all these interesting messages to all your friends, STOP IT NOW. You are wasting bandwidth not to mention a lot of your time and your friends' time with this nonsense.
If you have friends who do this to you, check out the list below. One or more of the items should contain a solution for you.
- Ignore all forwarded messages unless they are true messages for you. Often this will discourage your forwarding correspondents, and they'll eventually quit. If not, read on ...
- Tell your forwarding friends that you appreciate that they are thinking of you, but their mail is interferring with you handling your email, and to please send only personal messages that they may have for you. NO FORWARDS! This should not hurt their feelings. If they ignore this plea, they really aren't the "friends" you think they are.
- If the above suggestion doesn't work, another solution is to abandon the email address that you are currently using and set up a new one. Free email accounts are available at Yahoo.com and gmail.com. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide a website where their customers can manage their email accounts. This includes changing usernames and passwords. Your username is the one that is on the left side of the @ in your email address. Also, most ISPs allow more than one email account per customer. For this to work, you will have to notify all your correspondents of your new address, but do not notify your forwarding friends.
- Block your spammer:
- Yahoo.com: Yahoo.com Login and go to your Inbox. Locate and select (click the check box) a message from a sender that you want to block, righ-click that message, choose "Filter Emails Like This..." and fill the necessary blanks. The sender's email address is filled for you. On the Subject line, open the list box and choose "starts with", and write "FW:" in the space for you to fill. Make a choice of what you want done with the message from the list box below "Then move the message to:" Click the Save button. The selection of "forward" should block the forwards, but allow real messages from your friend. Repeat the process with each sender you wish to block. You don't have to pick the modifiers if you want to completely block mail from a specific sender, or with a specific subject.
- gmail.com: gmail.com, login and go to your Inbox. Gmail has a similar process to Yahoo. Check the offending message, open the list on the "More actions" tab, and choose "Filter messages like these". The Create a Filter form will have the email address filled in. You will have to fill in the Subject. Write "FW: " Then click next step to tell gmail what to do with the messages. Check the box you prefer. When satisfied, click the button, "Create Filter". You're done.
- Charter.net: Go to http://www.charter.net/. Find the link labeled "Check Email" in the upper right corner of the page. Login with your full email address and password with your 5-digit zip code. This takes you to your inbox. (Incidently, you can pick up your mail while traveling on this website.) All you get is a "Report As Spam" button. Up comes a dialog box that asks the question: "Do you want to forward the selected messages to a spam abuse center and delete them?" On that is a pair of OK and Cancel buttons.
- Windstream.net: Here's the link to Windstream's Internet email site: http://webmail.windstream.net/ I am no longer a Windstream email customer, so can't describe their process. But look for something similar to that offered by the ISPs listed above.
- In a test of Internet mail page provided by APlus.net, the company that hosts this website, www.tylersterritory.com, I found that it merely has a "Junk Mail" button that rids the Inbox of offending messages.
- If all else fails, if you use pop3 email (using Outlook or Outlook Express), you can block them on your own computer. This won't keep them from filling you mailbox on the ISP server, but at lease, you won't have to wade through them to find your messages.
- In Outlook Expresss, highlight the offending message, on the Message menu at the top of the window, click "Create Rule From Message ... ." 1. Select the Conditions for your rule: Check the box next to this line: Where the From line contains people. 2. Select the Actions for your rule: Check the box of your choice. (One of the choices is to not download messages from that sender from the server.) 3. Rule Description (click on an underlined value to edit it): This will be filled in with the sender of your highlighted message. This can be changed at time of creating. If you need to edit or delete a rule after the fact, on the Tools menu, choose Message Rules, choose Mail, this gives you access a dialog box that allows editing or deleting rules, removing an entry from the blocked senders list, etc.
- Outlook users should search the Outlook Help system for Junk E-mail and read about those filders.