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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week - March 23, 2005 |
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When that
playful moment turns into the right moment, you can build an Outlook spamtrap
that lasts much longer than 36 hours or - Building your own spam traps with Outlook – part 3- What
exactly are spammers selling in their spam? Here's what AOL says are
the most common spam topics: -Viagra and similar drugs -Online pharmacy -Get out of debt -Sexual enhancement -Online degree or diploma
-Low mortgage rates and insurance rates -Work from home -lots of porn variants -"As seen on
Oprah" I don’t recognize
AOL as an authority of much of anything, but this list is supposedly based on their
experience blocking trillions of spam emails sent to their user base. We’ve built a spamtrap to block spam that has certain words in the
subject. Today we’ll build another trap to block spam based either on
the domain name it comes from, or from a specific email address. One thing you have to
realize is that most spam contains forged email addresses and domain names
– they aren’t real. But I have noticed that spammers do tend to
use many of the same domain names in their spam. Another huge problem on
the internet today is people who send jokes to everyone on their email list.
I usually inform people who do this that I really don’t want my mailbox
plugged up with their jokes and would they please only send me legitimate
email. Usually they ignore this, and usually I then put their email name in
one of my spam traps. Open
Outlook and click on Tools, Rules and Alerts - New Rule, and click Start creating
a rule from a template – click
on Move messages from someone to a folder Click Next – and in the next
window click only the
choice for With specific words in the
senders address At the
bottom of this screen – under step 2 – click on the highlighted Specific words in the senders address
- let’s type a
spammer domain hit54.com – then click Add then click ok Next if
you want to block somebody who keeps sending you garbage, you can add their
email address here. Now click
on Move it to the specified folder
choice – and click on the Junk
Email folder – and then click ok
again Now at
the bottom of this screen under the Step
2 section at the bottom you will see the rule that you just created,
which should say something like: “Apply
this rule after the message arrives, with hit54.com in the sender’s
address– and move it to the junk email folder. “ Now click on next 3 times to get to the last screen which
lets you Name this rule –
call it spam domains and click Finish . Now
it’s important to watch your junk email folder for mail from these
domains, or specified email addresses, as you can’t actually send email
to yourself from these addresses. Now
we’ve built 2 Outlook spamtraps to block mail
based on words in the subject, or from specified domains or email addresses.
This should cut down on some of the obnoxious mail you get. Another thing you
can do is to go to the Microsoft site and download the latest junkmail filters for your version of outlook. Bill
Gates of Microsoft has announced that he has a plan to end all spam sometime
in the future ..we’ll see. In the meantime, it
is satisfying to see at least some of the spam you would normally receive get diverted. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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