Using Google Gmail or Yahoo Mail as a Spam Filter

To get rid of spam mail you need to install a spam filter - See Coping with Spam Mail

The annoying thing is - you still end up downloading all this spam before your spam filter sorts it out. Wouldn't it be nice if it was sorted before you downloaded it.

If your ISP can pre-filter your email for you - make sure you have this turned on - but if your ISP doesn't offer this service or wants to charge you for it, then you can let Google Gmail or Yahoo mail do it for you.

What do you need:

• You need 2 email addresses.
  You can get these from your ISP or sign up for your own domain name which as well as giving you your own personal email address allows you to have multiple addresses. This shouldn't be a big deal as most ISPs offer multiple email addresses on one account.
• You also need to sign up with Google for their Gmail service or Yahoo for their mail service.

What you need to then do is only ever give out one of your email addresses (this will be the one you have been using and are already getting spam on). Never give out your other email address.
You need to forward your email from your 1st ISP email address to your Google Gmail or Yahoo mail account.
Next you set up forwarding from Gmail or Yahoo to your 2nd email address.
Then you pick up your mail always from the 2nd email address.

This way you use the automatic spam filtering built into Yahoo or Gmail to filter out the spam before it arrives in your inbox.

It also gives you a second useful facility of being able to view your mail in your Gmail or yahoo Inbox while away from home.

It works really well. Gmail has filtered out 87 junk mails for me today that otherwise I would have downloaded. And you can always check in the Spam filter of Google or Yahoo to ensure that the mail really was junk - though after a while you learn that it really does work.