GETTING RID OF JUNKMAIL (also known as SPAM)

How do I get rid of all this junkmail?

ANSWER:

Statistics show that the majority of email sent is junkmail, also known as spam. We at Contour are victims of this as much as anyone else, and while this is a tough nut to crack, we can recommend some things that will help.

Mozilla Thunderbird (Free)

As of this writing, Mozilla is offering its Thunderbird email program free of charge. If you have a POP3 mail account (not purely web-based, like Hotmail or Yahoo! mail), this solution may work for you.

Download and install this program and set up your email account. To control the spam filter, go to Tools, Junk Mail Controls. See the program help section or its help web page for more details on the junk filter.

Outlook 2003 (about $100)

Also, if you use a POP3 mail service and do not mind spending about $100, you can try using Microsoft Outlook 2003 as your email program. The referenced page describes the product and also has a link to order a 30-day trial CD. This version of Outlook provides an excellent spam filter (or rather, sorter) bundled with it. It uses an intelligent algorithm to place suspect email into a folder called Junk Mail, as shown below:

Initially, you would want to periodically check the Junk E-mail folder to make sure legitimate emails are not being put there. If you do catch a legitimate email there, you can set an option to add the sender to a Safe-Sender list. In addition, you will want to periodically check Microsoft's Office Update website to see if there are any updates to the spam filter.

Preventing more spam in the future

The goal is to keep your primary email address, the one you use every day, out of spammers' lists. It would be nice if you never had to give your address out to any website or any company, but this is just not realistic. You may want to subscribe to some free offers and you may want to post messages on a web message board and be able to be reached by people you do not know.

The best solution to this quandary is to create a secondary, or "throw-away," email address using a free service such as Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. You will want to use this account whenever you post your address online or need to fill out any kind of online questionnaire. Both Hotmail and Yahoo! mail offer spam protection, and besides, if the mailbox becomes overrun with spam, you can just open a new account.

One last word of advice - do not ever follow an "unsubscribe" link from a spam email. The vast majority of the time, whenever you fill out an unsubscribe form, your address is added to a list of verified email addresses, which are resold to other spammers. Remember, responding to spam in any way always generates more spam.

Author:
Dimitri Karhu
10/1/2004