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- Ruling out the Spam -
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This article is designed to help you sort your e-mail out such that
the sensible mail is delivered directly to your inbox, known spam
automatically thrown away, and any other mail sent to specified folders or quarantined
so you can decide whether it is spam or not. Please click
here to see my general article about spam.
Extending the general principles outlined here will also enable you to sort your
genuine mail into folders.
It works using Mail Message Rules. Although aimed mainly at users of
Microsoft Outlook Express, the general principles (I think!) can
be applied to other e-mail client software as well. Some of the web-based e-mail providers
(such as Yahoo!) permit you to set up message rules, but the way they are implemented is
often very restrictive and not very robust. It is hard, if not impossible, to use
these to effectively sort your messages out and make an educated guess at what might
be spam.
The article is quite long, as there are a number of embedded pictures (I hope it isn't
crippling your Internet connection too much if you're connected via dial-up!).
OK, so here goes. My guess is that your e-mail, like mine, falls into
these broad categories:
So the question we are addressing here is, "How do I make sure I get
the mail I want, don't ever see the mail I don't, and have the choice
with the remainder?"
In an attempt to answer this, we're going to sort the mail according to these
general rules:
OK, that's the general bit over. Now it's more specific to Outlook Express
I'm afraid. I'll add others as and when I have the experience and that
other really precious commodity that seems to be in short supply these days ...
what's is called, ah yes, time, that's it ... as and when I have the time.
Note also that this was developed using Outlook Express 6, but I think I'm right
in saying that it is the same in Outlook Express 5.5. I don't know about 5.0 or
earlier though, as I've always used 5.5 and 6. If you are using Windows 95, you can
update to Outlook Express 5.5 for free using the Windows Update site, and if you're
using Windows 98 or later you can update for free to Version 6. It's worth
running the latest version as it will contain all the latest bug fixes and
security patches issued by Microsoft.
To start with, it is worth taking this opportunity to set up or tidy up your Outlook
Express address book. One way to do this is to select the Address Book from the
menus as shown...
...and click on it. You'll get the address book as in the image below:
It is beyond the scope of this article to explain exactly how to use the
Outlook Express address book, however there is Microsoft's help which
you may find useful if you are uncertain as to what to do next.
Once you have got the address book set up as you like it, you are ready
to set up some pretty effective anti-spam message rules.
You'll probably want to start by setting up some mail folders.
I'm going to suggest that these folders be set up under the "Local
Folders" Outlook Express folder, but the principle will be the
same should you decide, for example, to set them up as subfolders
directly under Inbox.
There are at least three ways to create a new folder: one is to select
File from the top menu, then New, then Folder... and another is to select
File from the top menu, then Folder, then New..., and click on it. An easier
way though is to right-click on the existing folder under which you wish
to create your new one, and select New Folder...
They all go to the same place, namely the Create Folder window which
looks like this:
To create a folder called "Newsletters" under Local Folders, for example,
ensure that Local Folders is selected (highlighted). If not, click on it to
to select it then click in the folder name edit area. Type
in the name of your folder ("Newsletters"), and click on OK.
The new folder is now created. You'll need to create the required folders
individually because once you have created a folder, you are taken back
to the Outlook Express menu.
Do this as required; in this example we will set up two,
namely "Newsletters" and "Quarantine".
The folders area will now look similar to this:
Now it's time to set up the message rules themselves.
Select the Mail Message Rules option from the menus, as shown:
and click on it. If this is the first time you've used the message rules,
you'll get a window such as the one below:
If this is the case, and you wish to use this article as a kind of tutorial,
please click here to continue
If on the other hand you have already set some message rules up,
you'll see a window similar to this instead (only the detail will be different):
If you get this second window, you are probably already reasonably
familiar with its operation, and will know that there are a number of ways you can
edit the rules, for example:
The first rule we need is that which send the mail from the known
contacts in your address book directly to the Inbox. To do this,
click on the checkbox marked "Where the From line contains
people" as shown:
Now you need to tell it which people to accept. To do this, click on the
blue underlined "contains people" in the bottom section.
A "Select people" window appears, like this:
Now you need to pick up the required contacts from your address book.
Click on the "Address Book..." button.
The following window appears:
To select a range of contacts in your address book in one fell swoop,
there is a clever little trick you can use. Firstly, click on the
first contact you wish to accept. Say you want to take everyone here,
i.e. Person 1 through to Person 5. The grey highlight on Person 1
will turn dark blue once clicked.
Next, move your mouse to the final contact you wish to select, scrolling down if necessary.
Hold down either SHIFT key and click on that contact with the
shift key depressed. All the selected contacts will receive a dark
blue background, as illustrated:
(In my illustration, there are not enough contacts to merit having a
scrollbar, but if there were enough, you could use it at will without
losing your selected contacts.)
It could be that not all contacts in your address book are required.
For example, let's suppose you don't want to automatically accept mail from
Person 3. An easy way to select or deselect a single contact without affecting whatever
else has been selected is to click on it with either CONTROL key depressed at the same time.
Your display will now look similar to the following:
You can do this for as many or as few contacts as required, singly
selecting or deselecting them at will.
Once you have done this, click on the From button. The contacts are
copied across to the right-hand pane thus:
To remove a contact that has got into the right-hand pane by mistake,
right-click on the unwanted contact in the right-hand column and click
on remove, as shown:
and the contact is removed. Once again, you can do this as often as required.
When done, take them into the rule by pressing OK. If you've made
a lot of mistakes, press Cancel and start this step over again. Once
you've done this and clicked on OK, the "Select People"
window comes back with the following information:
You may, if you wish, add further contacts here that are not in your
address book. Simply type the name in the box....
...click on Add...
... and hey presto! Bob's your aunt's live-in lover! Well, he's not your uncle, is he?
Do this as often as required. You can easily remove any of the
contacts simply by highlighting them and clicking on the "Remove"
button. When finished, click the OK button. You are now taken back
to the "New Mail Rule" window.
Now it's time to select an action, that is, what's going to happen to a message that
meets the specified criteria in this rule. In Outlook Express, you cannot
specifically state that you want to deliver mail messages to the Inbox because
they are delivered there by default. However, you can tell it to
not process any more rules at this stage. This has the desired
effect of delivering the mail that meets these criteria to your inbox, and at the same time
saving it from being further processed by the anti-spam rules you are about to set up.
In the "Select actions for your rule" area, scroll down until the option "Stop
processing more rules" is displayed, and select it by clicking its checkbox.
Finally, give the rule a sensible name, such as "Mail from contacts"...
...and click on OK to save the rule.
You can turn the rule on and off as and when required by checking and
unchecking the checkbox pertaining to that rule. You may edit the details
you have just set up by clicking on the blue underlined portion in
the bottom section of the window.
OK, now let's create the rule to filter out the newsletters. Click on
"New..." to create another new message rule, and once again you get the
"New Mail Rule" window.
Let's suppose you receive newsletters called "Spamwatch Express"
and other (unrelated) ones from newsletter@aeromodelling.com. Unfortunately,
you know that the Spamwatch one can legitimately originate from a number of different e-mail
addresses, and the subject line from the aeromodelling one can legitimately be different
every time you receive one of their mailshots. No problem. We can handle that.
Let's deal with the aeromodelling one first, as we're familiar with this now.
Click on the "Where the From line contains people" checkbox (this will
be used to handle the aeromodelling one), and also the "Where the Subject
line contains specific words" checkbox.
Your New Mail Rule window will now look similar to this:
We want to accept mails where the sender is specified OR the subject contains
known words/phrases, but currently this is set to only accept both/and. We
can change this easily enough by clicking on the blue underlined "and"
Click the "Message match any one of the criteria" to make the AND into
an OR. The change is reflected when you click the OK button.
It can be seen that in order for this rule to be applied, an e-mail message will
either need to originate from a list of people OR contain specific words/phrases
in the subject title. Furthermore, the OR is inclusive, that is, if you receive
an e-mail from the aeromodelling address with "Spamwatch Express" in the
title (OK, extremely unlikely) then the rule will still be applied. This will usually
be the desired effect.
Set up the aeromodelling e-mail address using the "contains people"
dialogues: this is exactly as before so I won't explain it again.
Set up the subject lines by clicking on the blue underlined "contains
specific words". This is very similar to the e-mail address
entry system (except for obvious reasons there is no access to the address book),
so I won't spell it out, except for this illustration of the window:
I have noticed that Outlook Express 6 is not case-sensitive
here, so it does not matter whether you enter "Spamwatch Express" or
"spamwatch express"; however, I think version 5.5 is case-sensitive.
To find out, set up an experiment with different cases in the subject line, and
send yourself an e-mail using different combinations. I wish Microsoft had
made this an option.
Once you have entered the Spamwatch Express, your New
Mail Rule window will look as follows:
Of course, just as before, you can have as many or as few e-mail addresses
and subject lines as required here.
Now we want to specify that any mail that satisfies these criteria be moved
into the Newsletters folder. Check the "Move to specified folder"
checkbox (under Actions), and you'll see a new clause appear in the rule
description line, namely "Move it to the specified folder".
Click on the blue underlined word "specified", select the
Newsletter folder...
...and click on OK.
We don't want any more rules to be processed against these e-mails, so we need
to tell Outlook Express explicitly not to process any more rules on them. We do this by
selecting the "Stop processing more rules" action exactly as before.
Finally, give the rule a name...
...and click on OK to accept it.
Add as many rules as required. Rather than explaining each stage step-by-step
now, I'll highlight one or two actions you might find useful when creating
your other rules.
One is "Delete it". This will move the e-mail directly to your
Deleted Items folder.
Another is "Do not download it from the server". This is useful
where you don't want to waste time downloading e-mails with large attachments
(see the "Where the message size is more than size" and/or "Where
the message has an attachment" contitions).
The other one I want to draw your attention to is "Delete it from the
server". This is dangerous because once an e-mail is deleted from the server
it is gone forever! However, where the spam is known about this one can
be very handy indeed as you'll never see the junk e-mail in the first place,
and neither will it come back to haunt you.
Note that those final two will prevent you from selecting any other
actions to act with them; this is pretty reasonable behaviour.
You might want to create a rule such as the following to delete spam where
the sender's e-mail address is known:
This could be used to delete spam where the subject line, or part thereof, is known:
This one will delete spam which you have identified by knowing some
of the text within the body of the message itself:
Finally, any other messages that have not been filtered out must be sent to
a quarantine folder. If you omit this final stage, all remaining messages
will go to your Inbox, which could be counter-productive, defeating the object of
the exercise. The rule is set up in much the same manner as the others, using the
"All Messages" condition.
It's a good idea to also select the "Stop processing more rules"
action here, to safeguard further actions should more rules be added at
a later date.
When you have finished, your rules may look like this:
OK that, and that's it. There is one thing worth pointing out before finishing off
though, namely there is an issue where it can look as if e-mails are
not being processed correctly by the rules you set up. By default, an
e-mail will be passed through ALL the rules unless you tell it to stop
by way of the "Stop processing more rules" action. This is not
a bug in Outlook Express, it is a design feature. What can happen is that
an e-mail may get moved by the first message rule, but it if you don't tell it
that this is the only required action on that e-mail, it could get processed
by another rule also if it meets the required criteria. This could result
in perfectly legitimate mail being deleted from the server!
Note that, very often, there is More Than One Way To Do It. Usually you can
achieve the same effect by selecting different menu routes to the same place, or by
clicking on buttons that are available. For instance, when we created the
folders, you could have waited until you created the message rule and clicked
on "New Folder..." and set the folders up at that time.
If you've got this far, you deserve a medal! Not from me though, I don't issue
medals! Happy surfing, and happy spam-free (well, spam-reduced) e-mailing!
I would like to acknowledge the authors of the screen dump program MWSnap for
producing an excellent freeware program. I used this to create the screen shots in
this article. You can download the program for free from
www.mirekw.com.
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