Trash the Junk Mail, part 2

Trash the Junk Mail, part 2

It seems that more than ever, I check my Internet mail and find unwanted e mail messages accumulating in my e mail program. These try selling varied services including insurance, background checks, online gambling, software, diets, digital TV and varied forms of sex. Last month, I defined junk e-mail and started sharing my strategy for managing it. This month, I will finish sharing my strategy.

Junk e-mail is not selective. We receive junk e-mail regardless of our demographics. We cannot stop receiving junk e-mail. I suggest a better approach: make Outlook manage junk e-mail for us.

I'm running Outlook 2000 and implementing its rule feature. I created a folder named "Junk E mail" and told Outlook 2000 to move any inbound junk e mail directly into that folder.

I created an Outlook rule that looks at messages, as they arrive, and determines if they are from domains that routinely send junk e-mail. If the messages are, then Outlook automatically moves them to my Junk E mail folder. If they're not, Outlook lets them remain in my IN box. Creating this is a two-step process.

First, build an Outlook Rule that performs this screening. From Outlook's IN box, choose Tools > Rules Wizard > New to launch the Rules Wizard. Choose "Check messages when they arrive" and click "Next." Select "Suspected to be junk e-mail or from Junk Senders" and click "Next." Select "move it to the specified folder" and click "specified folder" in the bottom window. Navigate to the "Junk E-mail" folder you created, select the folder and click "OK." Click "Next" twice. Rename the rule (if you want to) and click "Finish." From now on, Outlook will intercept messages from Junk Senders and move them to the Junk e mail folder.

Second, add known domains to the list of junk senders. I received several junk e-mails last month from folks with e-mail addresses in the "customoffers.com" domain. We can tell Outlook to view any message from someone in customoffers.com as junk e-mail and move it to the Junk E-mail folder. Here's how.

Add the customoffers.com domain to the Junk senders list. From Outlook's IN box, choose Tools > Rules Wizard. Select the rule you made (above) from the top window. View the bottom window and click the link "Junk Senders…." Click the "Add…" button. In the Sender box, type the junk e-mail domain customoffers.com and press (Enter). Click "OK" twice to return to Outlook's In Box.

I hope the last two articles have helped explain junk e-mail and some strategies to make it less intrusive. Junk e-mail, unfortunately, is here to stay. Buying or guessing e-mail addresses is very inexpensive and simple. Someone recently sent me a junk e-mail offering 1,000,000 e-mail addresses for $39.95. Assuming only a 1% sell rate for a $10 product, the inexpensive investment would have paid off greatly for whomever bought this list.