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Keeping spam out of your Inbox, part 2
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What are anti-spam programs can I can use on my computer?
First, some email programs have built-in anti-spam functions. If you're using Microsoft Outlook, it has an anti-spam system built-in, plus you can use the "rules" function along with filtering by your ISP. If you're using Outlook Express, you might want to consider a third-party anti-spam program -- just pay attention to what you are downloading or buying. Many anti-spam programs are designed for Outlook, not Outlook Express. They may install, but they won't do a thing.
If you are using Eudora, the "paid version" includes a junk mail filter, while the "sponsored" and "light" versions do not.
I use the free anti-spam program POPFile with Eudora. POPFile will work with any POP3 or IMAP client, including Outlook and Outlook Express, and actually does multiple classifications of email based on the email's content. You can use "buckets" such as "work," "personal," "spam," and "other," and create any other classifications you want to use. This can help you get back control of your inbox. POPFile will add the bucket's name to the email's subject, if you want.
POPFile can also be set to force the classification answer under certain circumstances. I use this to make sure that emails from certain people will never end up being classified as spam. At this point, I've used POPFile for about 8 months, and I get 150 or so spams per day.
The free email & news program called Mozilla Thunderbird has a built-in anti-spam filter. Thunderbird's slogan is "Reclaim your Inbox!"
You must train almost every anti-spam program to recognize what you consider to be spam. At first, it may identify very little. After a couple days of training, it will be pretty accurate. After a couple months, you should occasionally see a spam email in your Inbox.
A program called Mailwasher takes a different approach to the anti-spam challenge. You can use Mailwasher to look at email headers before actually downloading the emails, let Mailwasher make its initial classification, review that, and download only the good emails. You can even "bounce" the spam emails back as if your email address is bogus. Some people swear this works. In my opinion, most of the spam is coming with fake "from" addresses, so all you would be doing is adding to the junk email problem!
There are also a number of anti-spam programs from the standard set of utility program manufacturers.
Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!
<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/keep-out-spam-2.php">Keeping spam out of your Inbox</a>
Copyright © 2005 Terry A. Stockdale
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