Managing Your Junk Mail

Outlook 2003 includes an improved junk mail filter that includes safe senders, safe recipients, and blocked senders lists.. Along with safe lists, you can mark messages that are in the J

[ Team LiB ]

Managing Your Junk Mail

Junk email and spam are a problem everyone faces It's not hard to get on a spammer's list, but it's difficult to get off the list Outlook 2003 includes an improved junk mail filter that includes safe senders, safe recipients, and blocked senders lists

Microsoft built the junk email filter using information it learned

from studying Hotmail's spam Microsoft plans to provide regular

updates to the junk email filters on the Office update site, which is

accessible using the Help, Check for Updates menu selection Let's

hope this junk email filter doesn't end up like the ones in previous

versions of Outlook, where promised updates never materialized

Along with safe lists, you can mark messages that are in the Junk E-mail folder as not junk and the message is moved back to your inbox When you've moved all the messages out of the folder that were caught by the junk filter, right-click on the Junk E-mail folder and choose Empty Junk E-mail Folder to permanently delete the messages in the folder These messages are not moved to the Deleted Items folder and cannot be recovered, so make sure that you remove all the messages that were moved to the folder by mistake before you empty the folder

Access the Junk E-mail settings from Tools, Options, Preferences, and clicking the Junk mail button or by right-clicking on any message and choosing Junk mail, Junk E-mail Options (see Figure 14.12)

Figure 14.12 New to Outlook 2003, the Junk E-mail rules provide much needed spam filtering capabilities Select the level of filtering you want from this dialog

Use the Junk E-mail Options dialog to set the level of protection you desire:

• No Automatic Filtering— Disables the automatic filters but continues to filter messages from addresses on the blocked senders list

• Low— Catches some junk mail, but lets a lot through This setting won't catch

many newsletters or advertising you requested

• High— Catches most junk email, including newsletters and advertising you

request The filter misses some spam; specifically, it misses spam that contains only images downloaded from the Internet and little or no text

• Safe Lists Only— Puts all your email in the Junk E-mail folder, except messages from addresses on your safe lists This selection will have a high false-positive rate, especially in the beginning as you build your safe filters

The final option on this tab enables you to permanently delete all messages suspected to

be junk This is usually a bad idea, especially for the Safe Lists Only and High filters Both options have a high false-positive rate and you risk deleting good mail

When junk filtering is enabled, you can right-click on any message and choose Junk E-mail The context menu includes menus to

• Add Sender to Blocked Senders List

• Add Sender to Safe Senders List

• Add Senders Domain (@example.com) to Safe Senders List

• Add Recipient to Safe Recipients List

• Mark As Not Junk

• Junk E-mail Options

The first four options add the sender, the recipient, or the sender's domain to the

appropriate list on the Junk E-mail Options dialog Junk E-mail Options opens the dialog

of the same name, and Mark As Not Junk opens a dialog from which you can select to always trust email from the sender or to the addresses in the To field (see Figure 14.13) After making your section, the message moves back to the inbox

Figure 14.13 Use the Mark As Not Junk dialog to add the sender to your safe

sender list and move the message back to the Inbox

Note that when Outlook is first run, the junk filter scans all folders in your message store and messages in other folders might be moved to the Junk E-mail folder Mark As Not Junk moves the messages back to the inbox only, not to the folder the message was

originally stored in

Understanding Safe Lists

Real spam fighters don't use the term safe list; they call the list of addresses and domains that are always allowed to send mail to your address a whitelist

Outlook contains two whitelists: the Safe Senders and Safe Recipients lists Each list has its own tab on the Junk E-mail Options dialog box, which makes it easier to see who is on

which list The Safe Senders list includes a check box to Also Trust E-mail from My Contacts (see Figure 14.14) It's enabled by default and should be disabled, especially if you have a contact for yourself Spammers have already discovered some ways to take advantage of the Safe Senders list and more are expected to follow

Figure 14.14 Enter trusted addresses in the lists on the Safe Senders and Safe Recipients tabs Use Safe Senders for addresses found in the From field; Safe Recipients is used for addresses in the To field, such as mailing list addresses

The Safe and Blocked lists accept full email addresses or only the

domain part of the address, using (for example) the @microsoft.com

format Wildcards don't work and you'll have multiple entries to allow

or block domains such as @microsoft.com, @exchange.microsoft.com,

and @newsletters.microsoft.com

The Safe Senders, Safe Recipients, and Blocked Senders tabs each has Add, Edit, and Remove buttons that you can use to manage your lists To remove one address from the lists, select it and click Remove; to remove several addresses, select all of them and click

Remove

If you discover that you accidentally added an address to the wrong list, you can copy the address and enter it on the correct list:

1 Select the address, choose Edit, and use Ctrl+C to copy the address to your

clipboard Click Close or OK

2 Click Remove to delete the address from the list

3 Select the tab for the list it belongs on

4 Click the Add button and paste the address in the Add field

Sometimes it's easier to delete the address and type it in on the correct tab, except when the address is long

Using Blocked Senders Lists

The opposite of a whitelist, blacklist is the term used by spam fighters to refer to blocked senders The Blocked Senders list works like the safe lists, except that any messages received from an email address or domain on the list are moved to the Junk E-mail folder Outlook doesn't check the message against the content filter, and the message is not processed by any rules Because the junk filter processes mail before the Rules Wizard, when you want to delete mail from a person or domain, you should use the Blocked Senders list

The dialogs for Safe Senders, Safe Recipients, and Blocked Senders

each has an Import from File and Export to File button For best results,

don't import lists created in older versions of Outlook Let the Junk

E-mail filter process the E-mail and add only the domains or senders it

misses Importing old lists will end up doing two things: duplicate what

the filters are already doing and add old domains that no longer send

junk email

Use Export to File to back up your domain list or to share it with other Outlook 2003 users Naturally, Import from File is used to restore your lists Each list exports to a separate text file, not one file containing all of your safe and blocked senders

[ Team LiB ]