Home Office: Block Spam With E-Mail Filters, Part 3

I'd go bonkers if I didn't organize the tons of e-mail I get each day. It's also crucial that I sort out the spam and e-mail with virus-laden attachments and dump it right into the Trash folder. I know you've been following the last two columns that give you some basics on using filters and rules. No? Hey, you're missing some great tutorials. Check 'em both out at the PC World site.

This week? Eudora, the e-mail program I've used for years and love to hate; America Online; and an assortment of popular Web-based e-mail services.

Eudora (All Versions)

Eudora's filters are smart, and you can create one in a flash.

For example, I have Eudora flag messages with attachments by slapping them with a bright color. Here's how:

1. Select Tools, choose Filters, and click the New button.
2. In the right pane, check the Incoming and Manual boxes.
3. In the Header drop-down list, choose Body.
4. The next field should already say "Contains"; in the field directly to its right, type attachment converted.
5. Skip down to the Action area, click open the first drop-down list, choose Make Label, click inside the field that appears, and choose a color.
6. Save the filter with Ctrl-S and close the Filters window. Now every e-mail message with an attachment will stand out from those without one.

You can block some viruses--MyDoom, for instance--by adding cannot be represented in 7-bit in the "Contains" field (as you did with "attachment converted" in Step 4, above). Then skip down to the Action area, click open the first drop-down list, choose Transfer To, click the button labeled "In" and change it to "Trash." In the next Action area, click and choose Skip Rest.

Dig This: You think you have a smart horse? (That's a rhetorical question; no need to answer.) Patches the horse is both entertaining and intelligent. This is on my list of top ten best animal videos, and it's big--the WMV is about 4.9MB.

• Play immediately.
• Download, save, unzip, and play.

AOL 9.0 Optimized

Unfortunately, AOL 9.0 doesn't trust its users with a really robust filtering feature. (That may change in a future version, but I'm not holding my breath.) Worse, its settings are, at least in my opinion, thoroughly confusing. My advice is to drop AOL and switch to a service that doesn't treat you like a child, like NetZero, for instance.

If you're using AOL's e-mail client, about the best you can do in the way of filtering is to either allow or block specific screen names, e-mail addresses, or entire domains. But the crazy part is that it's all or nothing--you can't block some e-mails and allow others through. That's just so, so dumb.

Get to this setting by heading to AOL keyword: spam controls (press Ctrl-K and enter spam controls). At the Mail and Spam Control dialog box, click the Edit link across from Sender File and click "Use a Custom Sender List." Neither choice is terrific, though "Allow only the senders and domains listed below" seems to be the better of the two. That's because if you've set the Advanced Spam Filter to medium, most of the spam will be automatically filtered and only e-mail from people on your allowed list will get through.

In the Mail and Spam Control dialog box you can also block messages with specific words in the subject line or message body. You'll use the less-than-satisfying Custom Word List by clicking the "Mail containing words on my Custom Word List" check box and selecting the "Custom Word List" link. Enter a word, say Rolex, to filter and click Add. Click Save.

MSN Hotmail

It's not worth fiddling with Hotmail's filters unless you want to send incoming e-mail to specific folders, which isn't a bad idea. That's because Hotmail's advanced setting won't even let you filter on attachments. See for yourself: Click Mail, then Options (in the upper right corner of the window), then choose Custom Filters, New Filter, and click Advanced Filter. While you're in the Advanced Filter dialog box, check out Hotmail's other junk mail features. There's some good news, though, because Hotmail automatically blocks attachments with viruses.

Hotmail also lets you restrict e-mail in your inbox to messages only from people in your Contacts list, and any newsgroups you subscribe to. Here's how:

1. From the Mail tab, choose Options, Junk E-Mail Protection, click Junk E-Mail Filter, and choose Exclusive.
2. Click your browser's Back button, click Safe List, and add addresses you want to allow through the filter, such as friends and business associates.
3. Click Mailing Lists and add any lists you subscribe to so they won't be filtered as junk.

Yahoo Mail

As with Hotmail, you can play around with filters by choosing Mail Options (in the upper right of the window) and clicking Filters. But to take full advantage of the way Yahoo Mail blocks spam, click Spam Protection. I use "Immediately delete these messages" because Yahoo Mail is good at culling out real e-mails from spam. And be sure to uncheck "Add the sender's email address to my blocked addresses list"--Yahoo limits the number of blocked address to 100 on its free accounts.

Google's Gmail

Gmail's solution to blocking viruses is simply to not accept attachments that are executable files (which have the .exe file-name extension).

OTOH, Gmail does let you filter e-mails that have other types of attachments. Go to the Inbox screen and click the "Create a filter" link (it's to the right of the "Search the Web" button). If that link's not available, click Settings, choose the Filters tab, and select "Create a new filter."

Regardless of how you get there, in the Create a Filter dialog box you'll want to type your criteria in the field you're filtering on. For instance, stick billgates@microsoft.com into the From field. Then click the "Has attachment" check box. Click the Next Step button and click the "Move it to the Trash" check box.

Dig This: You're used to watching videos. But how about a movie that's made entirely from ASCII characters? That's right, there's a whole Web site devoted to plain-text movies. I suggest starting with the one I think is the easiest to recognize: Matrix1. Depending on your connection, it may take a minute or two to load, or longer. Then ask yourself: "How did they do that?" Or as my wife said when I showed it to her: "Why did they do that?" [sigh]

In addition to writing PC World's Home Office column, Steve Bass is the author of "PC Annoyances." Sign up to have Steve Bass's Home Office Newsletter e-mailed to you each week. Comments or questions? Send Steve e-mail.