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The War on Spam Continues  - or

Enhancing Outlook 2003 Junk E-mail Filters

category: spamming

Outlook 2003 has a very good and completely automatic junk e-mail filter. If you click Actions, Junk E-mail, and then Options, you will get a dialog box where you can express just how serious you are about spam. If you feel the way I do, you will choose the radio button next to High: Most junk e-mail is caught, but some regular mail may be caught as well... Outlook will then move messages that appear to be junk e-mail, as they are downloaded, into a special Junk E-mail folder. This functionality works very well, and when you add the Safe Senders and Blocked Senders list options, shown on the same dialogue, you almost have the spammers where you want them. In this context, however, almost is a big word.

In ever-increasing numbers, spammers, led by stock tipsters of all people, are figuring out how to circumvent whatever magic Microsoft has put into its automatic filtering algorithms. It is now, at least for me, necessary to enhance the basic High automatic filtering capability. If you wish to join me, here's how.

Click Tools and then Rules and Alerts and you'll get a dialog box allowing you to click and create a New Rule. A Rules Wizard will pop up and for our purposes I suggest that you click the radio button marked Start from a blank rule. Now Step 1 of your new rule will be highlighted reading: Check messages when they arrive. Ignore the step 2 box and click next.

Now, click in the box next to the condition(s) you would like your rule to check. Let's start with clicking the box next tospecific words in the subject or body. When you click the in the box, a Step 2 appears defining our rule, as far as we have created it,: Apply this rule after the message arrives with specific words in the subject or body. Tellingly, the words specific words are blue rather than black and are underlined like a link. Click that link and begin entering key words from your spam like StOck, stOck, Viagra, viagra, or whatever your inbox tells you is appropriate. The words you've entered are called search text and you can always enter more words later as you need to. Let's move on; click OK, and then Next. The Wizard will now ask you what you would like to do with any message(s) selected by your list of search text, or key words. Click the box next next to: to move to the specified folder, and once again the Step 2 information box shows us how our rule looks so far. This time the words moved to the specified folder have been added to our rule and the word specified is shown as a link. Click on the link and then, in the popup, choose the Junk E-mail Folder as your specified folder, highlight it and then click OK. And finally, click Finish.

You can have as many active rules as you like, but remember that the rules are executed in sequence from top to bottom.

She said on 04.12.05 @ 12:09 PM CST