Conquering Spam
If you are like the vast majority of internet users, you are probably getting more and more frustrated by all the spam that piles up in your inbox. The first thing you need to know about spam however is that spam protection is not an exact science. There is no guarantee that by putting multiple spam protection tools in place that you will completely eliminate spam from your inbox. That being said, people have tried to put laws in place to prevent spam but there will always be those who keep sending spam so you need to put some tools in place to help protect yourself. Here are some tips on how you can conquer spam in your own life, or at least reduce it, and help to keep your inbox free from unwanted mail.
The first thing you should do is get to know your email program and what tools it has available for preventing spam. Microsoft Outlook for example allows you to control the levels of spam that you tolerate in your inbox as well as giving you the option of what to do with suspected spam. By setting your junk mail options in Outlook you can choose a level from low spam control (or even no control) to only allowing emails through that you have on your safe list. You can also decide whether suspected junk mail gets sent directly to your junk mail folder or whether it is permanently deleted. The options you choose here will depend on how much valid mail you may receive that could be suspected of being spam. Newsletters that you subscribe to for example may be taken as being spam, in which case you may not want a very high level of control or you may wish to have the junk mail sent to your junk mail folder. If you always want to receive email from a particular sender or domain then you should put this into your Safe list or “White list”.
If you have your own domain and can control your email settings in the control panel of your host then you may be able to stop spam at this point. Cpanel’s boxtrapper is one way of stopping spam and means that anyone who is not on your whitelist will need to send a verification email in order for their emails to get through to you. Another spam control mechanism that can be used at this point is SpamAssassin. SpamAssassin is a set of rules which prevents spam getting through to you and which can easily be configured if you want extra rules added or to remove rules.
There are also a number of other software programs available that you can either buy or get for free that will help you control spam on your computer. These include such software as McAfee’s Spam Killer, Norton’s Internet Security Suite. If you would prefer a free spam blocker you may want to use Mailwasher or Spamfighter.
