Rules And Tools To Filter Junk Email

Starting with Outlook 98, you may use either the Organize pane or the Rules Wizard to make use of the built in junk mail processing feature. However, by putting wanted senders in the junk mail folders and not ignoring items sent with no “From” address can be lead to unsatisfactory results. While Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007, include the Junk Email folder, the end user cannot update it, since Microsoft releases regular updates for it. Since few spammers reuse addresses and the blocked lists are also of limited size, the technique of adding addresses to the blocked lists doesn't work.

The following explains how the Outlook has blocked and safe lists work.

Outlook 2003's Safe and Blocked Sender's lists: The maximum capacity of the safe and blocked lists in Outlook should not exceed 2000 addresses since the maximum size of the lists is 512K and Outlook alerts you once the limit is reached. Older versions have a larger capacity and hence Outlook may crash while trying to import them. The limit on the number of addresses is a means of improving performance. The lists are downloaded when the users synchronize with the Exchange mailbox. This limit could be adjusted by making the necessary changes in the required registry key.

Using Outlook's Blocked and Safe Sender's lists: Since it takes time to tinker around with the filters, Microsoft believes that the user should not spend too much time with them. While adding email, addresses to the lists that send spam would result in a long list of addresses that may never be used again. If one spends time, each day adding addresses to his blocked sender's lists it only means that he has to update his anti spam filters.

Built-in Rules Method: Outlook's filtering techniques for adult-content and junk mail filtering are based on a specific list of email addresses and an internal list of terms. There are steps to automatically move or delete E-mail messages based on content, sender, making an exception to your filtered content list, changing the destination folder to junk messages, adult-content messages.

Rules to Counter eMail Spam

To block out messages in an efficient manner, Microsoft allows one to create a set of rules that create a set of anti-spam filters. A rule can be considered to be a macro triggered by a set of conditions. Outlook can delete a message, flag it, print it or use it for launching an application among the very many capabilities that it possesses. Outlook applies the rules to the messages it receives as well as the messages it sends. The rule capability extends unto the mail server only if it is an Exchange server in which case it informs you, if the rule applies to your system only. The rules wizard lets you create rules from the scratch or from existing messages with variables already in place.

Sue's low maintenance method for filtering spam:
The last four rules in the Rules Wizard make sure that undesired messages not sent directly to me are sent to a Junk Mail Folder. They are designed to handle mailing lists. When one receives the first message from any new mailing list that he has subscribed to, the header is examined to figure out whether the From or To address is the one that distinguishes the distribution list; which is not very difficult. Then, he should right-click and choose Add to Contacts to add the address to his Contacts folder. There are a few specific rules to move messages from a few specific distribution lists into their own folders.

Items sent TO or FROM other lists are caught by these two rules and retained in the inbox.

• Rule#1 - Pre-Junk FROM: Apply this rule after the message arrives from people or distribution list (select distribution list addresses from the address book), then move it to the Inbox folder and finally stop processing more rules.
• Rule #2 - Pre-Junk TO: Apply this rule after the message arrives to people or distribution list (select distribution list addresses from the address book), then move it to the Inbox folder and finally stop processing more rules. The following rule applies to mail sent to any of your email addresses. These addresses are also added in Contacts. This rule works better than those that are created with those sent to me directly or where my name is present in conditions.
• Rule #3 - Pre-Junk TO ME: Apply this rule after the message arrives to people or distribution list (select my own personal email addresses from the PAB or Contacts) then move it to the Inbox folder and finally stop processing more rules.
• Rule #4 - Move to Junkmail folder: Move it to the Junkmail folder except if my name is present in the To or Cc box.