Reducing Spam - Using Spam Filters and Bounce Unwanted Emails to Reduce Spam

Reducing Spam

Read Helpful Tips on how to Reduce Spam

Create Message Filters in Outlook Express | Create Spam Filters for other Email programs |
Create Spam Filters on the server using our SpamGuard feature in your Control Panel |
Try the Cloudmark Desktop Spam Filter

Helpful Tips on how to Reduce Spam

Without filtering or taking measures to reduce spam, you could find between 25% to 80% of your email is spam, or unsolicited email.
IDC estimates that 7.8 billion emails are spammed out over the world every day!

So following are a few tips on reducing spam and filtering spam.

1)	NEVER RESPOND OR UNSUBSCRIBE TO SPAM Oh sure, they say they'll take your name off the list, but they're lying. What they really want to do is confirm that they've got a live address. Also, if you respond, they'll sell your address to every other spammer on the planet meaning you'll soon be flooded with even more spam.
2)	DON'T POST YOUR ADDRESS ON YOUR WEBSITE It seems like a good idea at the time, but posting your email address on your personal home page is just an invitation to spammers. Spammers and the people who sell spamming as a business have software that "harvests" email addresses from the Net. This software crawls through the Internet seeking text strings that are -something-@-something-.-something-. When it finds one, it catalogues it on a database of other email addresses to be used to send spam. Create a Contact Form rather than displaying your email address. Instructions on how to do this are available HERE.
3)	BOUNCE INVALID ADDRESSES Set up mailboxes for all your email addresses, and bounce unwanted junk emails. It is quite common practice to use a "catch all" email address, i.e. one email that will receive everything@yourdomain.com. This has the draw back that if a spammer sends to generic email addresses, you could receive the spam email a dozen times or more. Instructions on how to do this are available HERE.
4)	SET UP E-MAIL FILTERS a) USING THE EMAIL RULES FEATURE IN YOUR EMAIL PROGRAM; OR b) THE SERVER SPAM GUARD FEATURE ON THE SERVER These two options have the same end result, although the server spam guard feature may be a little more effective. Please be aware that the spam guard feature on the server works by building a database of words from each email received and therefore if you receive a lot of emails the database can get bigger and bigger and therefore can take up a lot of server space, so please consider this before installing.
	a) SET UP E-MAIL FILTERS / RULES IN YOUR EMAIL PROGRAM Set up Mail Rules in your E-mail program (such as Outlook Express) to delete spam before it downloads to your inbox. Instructions on how to do this are available HERE.
	b) SET UP E-MAIL FILTERS / RULES DIRECTLY ON THE SERVER USING THE SPAM GUARD FEATURE Set up Mail Filters on the server using the Spam Guard feature to delete spam before it downloads to your inbox. Instructions on how to do this are available HERE.
5)	USE A DESKTOP SOLUTION ON YOUR PC IN ADDITION TO A and C above Spam Filters will not capture ALL spam so using a software program such as Cloudmark This software will at least move the spam into a SPAM folder in your email program mail program and the spam will not land in your INBOX, which means that you don't waste time having to read them. For a FREE 30 day TRIAL - click here.
6)	USE A SECOND EMAIL ADDRESS IN NEWSGROUPS Newsgroups are the great email address gathering ground for spammers. If you post to a group, you're going to get spam -- it is just a matter of time. So how are you supposed to participate? Use a disposable email address rather than the one you use for talking to friends and relatives. In other words, have a public address and a private address. You'll just have to deal with the spam in your public account, but if you find too much spam coming in to it you can change it to a new address.
7)	DON'T GIVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WITHOUT KNOWING HOW IT WILL BE USED If a website is asking for your email address, they want to use it for something. Be sure you know what. Read the terms of use and privacy statements of any site before telling them your address. Ask yourself some simple questions. Are they going to share or sell my address? Do I want emails from this website? Do I trust them? Is it worth the risk? If you can't answer these questions satisfactorily, if you can't find their privacy statement, don't tell them your address.
8)	NEVER BUY ANYTHING ADVERTISED IN SPAM The reason that people spam is because they can make money. They make money, like all advertisers, by convincing people to buy a product. If no one buys the things advertised in spam, companies will quit paying spammers to advertise their products.
	The above steps may not totally stop spam, but should help dramatically in its reduction.

Bouncing unwanted junk email

Set up mailboxes for all your email addresses, and bounce unwanted junk emails

It is quite common practice to use a "catch all" email address, i.e.. one email that will receive everything@yourdomain.com. This has the draw back that if a spammer sends to generic email addresses, you could receive the spam email a dozen times or more.

Following is how to create mailboxes and bounce unwanted email

Log into your Control Panel - www.yourdomain.com/menu.
Click on your Mail Manager icon .
You should set up mailboxes for each of your valid email addresses by clicking on New Address. (Also see the Mail Manager for full mailbox setup instructions).
Then click on your Default account and tick "Bounce Default Email (i.e. reject all email that does not have an address above.) "
Tick "Autoresponse for mail caught by the default: " and add an auto reply message such as:

This is an auto response message.
The email address you have sent to is not valid.
Please refer to our website for current email addresses.
Click on Save at the bottom of the page.

Test the accounts work by sending emails to both valid and non valid addresses.

To set up Message Filters (Message Rules) in Outlook Express

Filters help you organise your mail as well as remove unwanted junk email. If you receive large amounts of email messages everyday, instead of crowding your inbox with all the messages, you can have filters set so messages get distributed into different folders.

Outlook Express filters are called Message Rules and they can only be used when you have your account set up through a POP server. You can set up a message rule to "delete certain unwanted email messages from the server".

Setting Filters (Message Rules) in Outlook Express

Open Outlook Express
Click on the Tools menu, select Message Rules and Mail.
The New Mail Rule dialogue box appears. If you have added a rule before then click on Add New rule.
The New Mail Rule box is divided into 4 parts. The first part is to configure what messages are filtered, the second is to configure what to do with the filtered messages, the third is a sub configuration of the first and the third (depending on which is active). The Fourth section is the name of the rule (you can give it any name).
In this example the first section, 1. Select the Conditions for your rule will be set to Where the From line contains people because usually mail is filtered with respect to who sends the message.
Notice that because you have section one active, section three (3. Rule Description) changes so you can configure whose mail will be filtered.
Click on the blue underlined text contains people in section 3 of the New Mail Rule dialogue box.
The Select People dialogue box appears.

Type in the name of the person whose mail you would like to filter and click Add.
Click OK when you are finished adding all the names that you want.
Now in section two, 2. Select the Actions for your rule:, specify what you would like to do with the message once it has been filtered. You have several options such as delete and move to a folder. Because the most common action is to move it to a folder Move it to the Specified folder is checked.
Notice that now section three has a new option; Move it to the specified folder.
Click on specified in section three of the New Mail Rule dialogue box.
The Move dialogue box appears. Select the folder where you would like to move the folder to (it cannot be the Inbox), or create a New Folder, then click OK.
In section four, 4. Name of the rule type in a name (a good name would be one that describes the type of filter that it is).
Click OK.
Log out from Outlook Express. The next time you log in the rules will be applied to any NEW incoming messages.

Note: If you want to delete certain emails from the server without downloading them first to your computer, you can tick "Delete from Server" when you Select the Actions for your rule:

An example of this would be, if you wanted all emails that contain the words "buy viagra" to be deleted from the server, without downloading onto your computer:

Notes:

Think carefully about what rules you set up, as you don't want useful emails being deleted before you see them.
You can create a new rule by selecting an existing one on the Message Rules tab and clicking Copy. This is helpful when the new rule you want to create is similar to an existing one.
You can create a rule from a message by selecting an e-mail message in the main window and then on the Message menu clicking Create Rule from Message. This helps by automatically filling in the name of the person on the From line; no other information from the message, however, is entered into the rule.

Rules for other Email programs

If you use email programs other than Outlook Express, try clicking on Help and typing "message rules" in the find box, or go to Google and type in the name of your Email program followed by the message rules.