Coping With Spam Mail

Unless you are extremely careful and don't use your email address online, then you will inevitably start getting junk mail - commonly called spam mail.

Where does the name spam come from - it's from that original Monty Python SPAM sketch. The one where everything you ordered came with SPAM. Well it's the same with email - you end up getting something you didn't want - spam!

So how do you cope with it. Some ISPs (like Telewest) have built in spam-filters, so if that is the case - then just make sure it's enabled. Even so some junk will get through. If your ISP doesn't supply a spam filter then there are a number of free ones as well as ones you have to buy. Even if your ISP does supply a spam filter, you can use your own personal one as a back-up to provide a second level of filtering.

Good spam filters learn to recognise junk emails and automatically filter them to junk folders. To begin with you need to "train" them to know what is junk, but pretty soon, they filter the majority of it out for you. Occasionally you will find the odd email that shouldn't be in the junk folder, but not often, and you can easily retrieve them.

A couple of good free spam filters which learn as they go are:

SpamBayes
Please note this does not work with Outlook Express but works extremely well with Outlook and it's FREE.

Cactus Spam Filter from codeode
This works with the majority of email clients including Outlook and Outlook Express and it's FREE.