Filtering SPAM with Outlook Express

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

In this tutorial, you'll find out how to filter unwanted SPAM from clogging up your Outlook Express inbox. This tutorial will also allow you to move messages from specific people to the mail folder of your choice.

The Inbox Assistant

In Microsoft Outlook Express, click on the Tools menu and choose Inbox Assistant. You will see a box that looks like Figure 1.

Figure 1

This box will list all of the rules you set up to filter your e-mail. Right now the box is empty because we have not yet set up any rules. For your first rule, click on Add.

You will now see a box that looks like Figure 2. We want to automatically delete any e-mail messages we receive with the letters "XXX" in the Subject line. To do this, type XXX in the box next to Subject, just as it is in the image below. We have just set up the criteria.

Now, we want to perform an action on all messages that adhere to that criteria. In this case, we want to delete all of those messages -- click on the box next to Delete off server. The dialog box will now look exactly like Figure 2.

Figure 2

When you click OK, it will bring you back to the Inbox Assistant shown in Figure 1, only now you will see a rule displayed with a check mark next to it. As long as that box is checked, Outlook Express will automatically delete any e-mail with XXX in the Subject! XXX is used in subject of many unsolicited pornographic e-mails. To stop that rule from being used, simply uncheck it. If you want to get rid of a rule forever, simply delete it.

The Inbox Assistant lets you set all kinds of criteria. You can perform actions on e-mail based on:

• Who it was sent by
• Which address is was sent to
• Who was CC:'d (carbon copied) in the message
• What words appear in the subject
• What account it was downloaded from (only used if you have more than one account)
• How large the message is

The size option is useful if you have a slow connection at home, and you do not want to download any large e-mail attachments with your mail. You can also choose the checkbox at the top that says All Messages. When you check this box, the action you choose will apply to every message sent to you.

Once you've set your criteria, you decide what you want to happen to the message(s) that meet that criteria. You can:

• Move the message to a particular mail folder
• Copy the message to a particular mail folder
• Forward the message to another e-mail address
• Reply to the message with a text file
• Delete the message
• Ignore the message

The Reply With option is useful if you are going away on a trip -- you can write a text message that will automatically be sent to everyone who sends you mail by combining this option with the All Messages checkbox.

You can set however many rules you want. They will be applied in order, from top to bottom, so choose carefully which filters appear first. Some other subjects you should filter out to avoid SPAM are ADV:, $$$, and Make Money. All in all, filters are a great way to manage your e-mail automatically, and Outlook Express' Inbox Assistant provides one of the easiest ways to perform this task. Fight the SPAM!

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