Internet Tips: Wage War on Spam With Old Tools and New Filters

No, it's not just you. The volume of junk e-mail is spiraling out of control. Don't be ashamed if now you actually receive more spam than regular messages. Your e-mail program's built-in junk mail filter and third-party tools such as Cloudmark's SpamNet and McAfee's SpamKiller trap a lot of unsolicited garbage, but they're far from perfect.

These programs (and others like them) sometimes commit the spam filter's mortal sin--moving nonspam to a junk mail folder. The problem isn't that the mail is gone (it's not), it's that you must frequently comb through all of the messages identified as spam to be sure you're not deleting important personal mail. To me, this nullifies the spam software's main benefit--saving time. I'd rather have a little spam cluttering my in-box and know that the messages moved to my spam folder don't contain an urgent note from an editor offering me work.

What's a spam-beleaguered person to do? I say filter it yourself. All of the most popular e-mail programs let you create multiple filters that examine each incoming message, then flag or move those that meet your definition of spam. Because you control the filters, you can test how well they work, make modifications, control the order in which they run, and remove those that don't work the way you want. It sounds complicated, but it's not. Start simply by creating one filter, and then tweak it until it works just right. Once it does, add another one.

A good way to start is with a filter that centers on the most common criterion--the contents of the To: field. Much of the spam you receive is not addressed to you personally, which is an easy characteristic to check for. Here are the steps for creating such a filter in three popular e-mail programs.

Outlook 2002: Click File, New, Folder to create a folder to store spam. Name it Spam, Junk Mail, or the epithet of your choice, and click OK. Next, choose Tools, Rules Wizard, click the New button, and click Next. Uncheck from people or distribution list, check where my name is not in the To box, and click Next. Click the specified hyperlink in the 'rule description' field at the bottom of the wizard window, navigate to the spam folder you created, click OK, and then click Next to move on to the list of exceptions to your rule. Check except where my name is in the Cc box and, optionally, except if from people or distribution list and except if sent to people or distribution list. If you decide to use either of the latter two conditions, click their people or distribution list links in the rule description field to add addresses that you know aren't sources or destinations of spam, such as newsletter or mailing list subscriptions. (The addresses must be in your Outlook contacts list.) Click Next, give the rule a name if you want to, and then click Finish to create the rule.

Outlook Express 6: Create a spam destination folder ( File, New, Folder), name it Spam (for example), and click OK. Next, choose Tools, Message Rules, Mail, and click New. In the Conditions list box, scroll to and check Where the To or CC line contains people and, optionally, Where the From line contains people. Click the resulting contains people link in the Rule Description box, and fill in your e-mail addresses, mailing lists, newsletters, and other known nonspam sources or destinations as appropriate. After entering these addresses, click the Options button, select Message does not contain the people below, and then click OK twice. Finally, check Move it to the specified folder in the Actions list box, click the specified link in the Rule Description box, and click OK twice to save the rule.

Mozilla 1.x/Netscape 7.x: Create a spam folder ( File, New, Folder), give the folder a name, and then choose Tools, Message Filters. Click New, and enter a name for the filter; then select to or CC in the first drop-down list of criteria, and choose doesn't contain in the second list.

Type your e-mail address in the last field on the line. Click More to enter additional filter criteria (such as other e-mail accounts and known source or destination addresses of mailing lists and newsletters). Choose Move to folder, select the spam folder that you just created in the last drop-down lists, and then click OK twice to save the filter.

Tweak Your Filter

After creating the filter, inspect the contents of your new spam folder. You'll undoubtedly find that a few pieces of nonspam ended up in your junk e-mail net. Before dragging them back to the in-box, be sure to add the messages' To: or From: addresses, as appropriate, to your filter. To avoid deleting nonspam messages sent to you via the blind carbon copy (bcc) field, add known sender addresses to your list of exceptions (if your program supports exceptions). Some programs, including Outlook, allow you to check to see whether the sender is in your address book, ensuring that nonspam sent to you via bcc will stay in your in-box (see FIGURE 1). After a few days or weeks of testing and revising, you should have a filter that catches spam, and only spam.

You'll notice that you still have a lot of spam in your in-box. To block the rest of this junk mail, you'll need to create a few more rules. One of the most obvious is a rule that snares messages containing typical spam terms in the Subject line (the most common seem to be 'Viagra', 'mortgage', and several others that we can't print). Collect the spam that your first rule doesn't block for a few days or weeks, note the most frequently used words or phrases in the spam messages' Subject lines (ones that aren't commonly used in nonspam messages), and then create a second rule that moves these messages to your spam folder. As with the first rule, monitor the results and refine the rule before you create any additional rules.

Because a lot of junk mail messages arrive as garish Web pages, another way to minimize the onslaught is to filter out HTML-format e-mail. In this filter, search for messages with headers containing the words 'multipart/alternative', or 'text/html'. If you have a case-sensitive e-mail program (Outlook is), you may want to search for 'Multipart/Alternative', 'Text/HTML', and other variations as well.

To avoid missing important nonspam messages, unsubscribe from any HTML-format e-mail lists or newsletters you receive, and then subscribe again to the text-only versions. You may have a few friends who enjoy sending you HTML-format e-mail. No problem--just add them and any newsletters you want to receive in HTML format to your exceptions list.