When you do a lot of business on the Internet, it is easy for your email to stack up. You can save a lot of time just by getting rid of spam (junk mail.) So how can you "can" the spam?

The first rule is never respond to spam. Don't send an email in reply to the "if you want to be taken of this list" tag line in the message or reply in any way to the spammer. When you respond in any manner, the company sending the spam knows your address is an active one, that you're receiving the email they send. Your name, I've heard, can then be put on a "premier list" that is sold to other spammers.

That said, there are softwares that will block spam, but there's a better way of blocking it that probably doesn't involve spending money on more software. If you use one of the good email programs (EudoraPro, Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer Mail or Netscape Mail), you can program the software to automatically send spam to your "trash" file.

Here's how it works with my email software, EudoraPro. When I check mail and see a message that's obviously spam, I click on it to highlight it (not to open it). Suppose the message has getrichquick@xxx.com in the "To" field. I click on the message header, click "Tools/Make Filter" then "Transfer To New Mailbox." I then click on "Trash" to tell EudoraPro that I want any future messages with those words in the "To" field to go straight into the trash: I will never see any messages from that particular spammer again.

I can also create filters to meet other situations. For example, if I want every message that has the words "get rich quick" or any other word or phrase in the body of the message to go directly to the trash, I create a filter that will do that. On the positive side, if I have a seller with the name "Jane Jones," I can create a behind-the-scenes mailbox for that person and create a filter that will transfer any message with the name "Jane Jones" in the "From" field directly to that mailbox.

I won't go into how to create filters in each of the other programs: check the "help" section of your particular email program to find out how to do so. We'll never stop spam from coming into our mailboxes, but we can do something about it!

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Published: August 16, 1999

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