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Be sure you don't fall for the old trick of writing back to spammers asking them to take you off their lists.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

How to get your e-mail program to toss out unwanted mail before you even see it


Feb. 7, 2001

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2001 Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2001, The Syracuse Newspapers

   We all get junk e-mail. I don't have a way to get rid of all of it, but I can tell you how to keep at least some of it off your screen.
   My method is simple. All I do is tell the Post Office, so to speak, to trash the mail I don't want. Mail destined for the trash never gets past my sentinels.
   The secret is to add junk-mail senders to your e-mail program's "Blocked Sender" list.That's the name Outlook Express gives to the list of persons and organizations whose mail should go straight into the trash. If you use another mail program, it might have the same kind of feature by another name.
   Outlook Express, the e-mail software widely used by Windows users with standard (non-AOL) connections, places the block-sender function right out on the main menu, under "Message." When you receive an unwanted junk-mail message, highlight the message entry in the right-hand window and click "Block Sender" under the "Message" menu.
   Outlook Express does the rest of the work for you. It creates a message rule that watches for all letters from that sender in the future. Any that are spotted coming into your mailbox are sent to the trash. (They go to the Deleted Items folder within the mail program.)
   But Outlook Express also asks if you'd like it to delete all currently existing messages from the sender you've just banned. They're deleted from the folder you have open, which usually will be the Inbox
   If you want to take a sender off your list, open the "Tools" menu and choose "Message Rules," then "Blocked Senders List." Find the sender and remove it.
   Blocking mail this way is easy -- so easy, in fact, that you might end up creating a monster. Stop to think before you add individuals (rather than bulk-mail organizations) to your list. If you put one of your friends on your list because the two of you were having an argument and you're tired of getting apologetic notes, you'll be blocking ALL messages from that person for a long time.
   One more thing: When you're dealing with unwanted mail, be sure you don't fall for the old trick of writing back to spammers asking them to take you off their lists. Doing that simply tells them your address is valid. In other words, it confirms your address and makes it much more valuable to the spammers. They can then put your confirmed address into a different list and sell it or use it to send specifically targeted mail.