Create a Junk Mail Removal System
Scott Spanbauer
Tired of the daily slog through your in-box, trying to separate the spam from the good stuff? Reader Christian Dysthe of Gonzales, Texas, writes in with a simple suggestion: Use an e-mail filter to move messages not specifically addressed to you to a folder set aside for suspected spam. Dysthe notes that a spam message's To: field seldom contains your address--or anyone else's for that matter.
It sounds easy enough, but getting filters to work involves trial and error. Your in-box may receive e-mail forwarded from several accounts, and some legitimate messages may not be addressed to you specifically. Private and public mailing lists are likely sources, and e-mail newsletters and messages copied (cc:) or blind-copied (bcc:) to you may not contain your address either. No matter what e-mail program you use, let the filter run for a day or two, and observe the results; then adjust the filter to improve the results by adding exception addresses--e-mail addresses that are automatically approved without having to satisfy the filtering conditions--to your filter's source and destination conditions. Fight the urge to send suspected spam directly to the trash folder. Some messages--bcc's, most notably--will always slip through. Open and peruse the spam folder occasionally to find misplaced legitimate messages, and then delete away.
Here's how to set up a spam filter in each of three popular e-mail programs.
Outlook 2000: Create a folder to hold your spam ( File, New, Folder), and give it an obvious name, such as Spam or Junk Mail. Click OK. Now create a rule that looks for spam and moves it to the folder: Choose Tools, Rules Wizard, click the New button, and select Next to check messages as they arrive in your in-box. In the next screen, choose where my name is not in the To box, click Next, and check move it to the specified folder. Click the resulting specified hyperlink in the rule description box (see Figure 1), 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 use either of these latter two conditions, click the resulting people or distribution list link in the rule description box, and add any addresses that you know aren't spam sources or destinations; then click OK, Next, and Finish to create the rule.
Outlook Express 5.x: Creating a spam filter in Outlook Express requires fewer steps than in Outlook, but here the process leaves suspected spam in the in-box and moves the good stuff to another folder. Create a destination folder ( File, New, Folder) and name it Filtered Mail; then click OK. Choose Tools, Message Rules, Mail, and click the New tab (but if this is your first rule, you won't need to click that tab). In the Conditions box, check Where the To or CC line contains people (scroll down to find it) and, optionally, Where the From line contains people; then click the resulting contains people links in the rule description box. Itemize e-mail addresses, mailing lists, newsletters, and other known nonspam sources and destination addresses as appropriate, and click Add. Click Address Book to enter names from your address book. Once you've entered all the acceptable addresses, click OK. Now check Move it to the specified folder in the Actions box, click the specified link in the rule description box, and click OK twice to save the rule.
Netscape Messenger 4.7x: Create a spam folder. Select File, New while in a folder or Explorer window, and then select Folder and enter a name. Now open Messenger and start your filter ( Edit, Message Filters). Click New, select to or CC from the first drop-down list of criteria, click doesn't contain in the second, and type your e-mail address in the last field on the line. Click More to enter additional filter criteria (additional e-mail accounts, known source or destination mailing lists, and e-mail newsletter addresses, for example). Choose Move to folder, select the spam folder you just created from the last drop-down list, and then click OK twice to save the filter.
Unholy 'Hosts' File Hang-Up
My desktop PC won't access such Web sites as www.weather.com, www.newyorktimes.com, and even www.microsoft.com, no matter which browser I use. I get the standard 'The page cannot be displayed...' message. Oddly, I can get into some inaccessible sites if I drop the 'www' from the address. It isn't a phone-line or ISP problem because I can get in when I dial into the same account using the same line from another computer. Someone suggested that I reinstall Windows. Is there an easier fix?
Seth Shaw, Colebrook, Connecticut
Your problem could stem from other causes, but everything you mention points to a Hosts file gone awry. Back before the Web, computers needed the Hosts file to correlate domain names such as 'pcworld.com' with the numeric IP addresses that allow data to move from one machine to another over the Internet.
Internet service providers and office network administrators now use Domain Name System servers to track the ever-changing domains and their associated IP addresses. The Hosts file remains on PCs, however, enabling us to inadvertently mangle our Internet access by adding addresses to the file, and letting Internet utility authors bypass sometimes-poky DNS servers to speed Web-site access. My guess is that you're a victim of the latter.
The problem is that a domain's IP address tends to change over time. If you don't regularly update your speed-up utility, the out-of-date address mappings listed in the Hosts file prevent access to the domain. Meanwhile, the DNS server continues to handle domains not listed in Hosts, which explains why you can get to some sites but not to others.
Remedying the problem is easy: Search your hard disk (using Start, Find or Start, Search) for a file called 'hosts' (don't enter an extension). The only entry not starting with '#' should be '127.0.0.1 localhost' (see Figure 2); if there are other lines without '#', delete them. Or if you want to avoid editing the file, rename it something like 'hosts.bak'--and forget about it.
Explorer 6 and Your E-Mail
If you're a Microsoft Network subscriber and you decided to give the slick MSN Explorer 6 browser a try, you may have discovered that installing the browser moves your existing POP3 MSN mail account to a Web-based Hotmail account (POP3 is the standard Internet mail retrieval protocol). Your e-mail address remains unchanged, but all new incoming mail messages appear in MSN Explorer's Inbox instead of in your existing mail program (such as Outlook or Outlook Express). If you don't want that arrangement, don't download and install MSN Explorer--you can use the MSN service without it. If you've already installed MSN Explorer, you can revert to your previous account type at an MSN account configuration page. For details, see this Microsoft Product Support Services article.
AOL Plus Just Won't Go Away
Lots of readers wrote in to say that February's tip on removing AOL Plus was really great, but that no matter how often they tried, AOL Plus returned when they logged back in. (They described AOL Plus as "a mindless annoyance" and as "ridiculous clutter.") If you use AOL 5 or 6 software and log in over a high-speed Internet connection, you will always get an AOL Plus window on your screen.
Until America Online gives you more control over pop-up windows, your only recourse is to minimize the AOL Plus window and pray that it stays that way. The 'Remove AOL Plus' keyword does help if you're taking your laptop on the road. Removing the AOL Plus software should work in that case, as long as you log in only over a dial-up line.
Send your questions and tips to nettips@spanbauer.com. We pay $50 for published items. Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC World.
Download of the Month: Jazz Up Your E-Mail With IncrediMail
Sending HTML mail, with its multitude of fonts, backgrounds, embedded graphics, and sounds, is a bad idea. It costs your recipients time and effort to download and display, and its inherent scriptability presents a serious security risk. HTML messages also clog the Internet with useless froufrou. But you're not going to listen to me. HTML mail is fun, and--to judge from the volume of it that I receive regularly--it's not going away anytime soon.
So instead of using your current mail program's tasteful, meager HTML templates, why not go whole hog? IncrediMail dresses up your missives with background images, quirky animations, and silly sounds. You can download the free 5.63MB program from PCWorld.com's Downloads or from IncrediMail's site.
Once you have gotten the digital equivalent of the whoopee cushion out of your system, you can always go back to your staid old text-only mail program. Please.
Share Outlook Express
Do several people check their e-mail on your computer? Adding others' mail accounts to your Outlook Express Inbox means everybody gets to read everybody else's mail and makes finding new messages more difficult. You can solve both problems by segregating users via Identities. To create a new mail user, select File, Identities, Add New Identity, choose OK to switch to the new identity when prompted, and complete the account configuration. To switch to or log off of an identity, choose File, Switch Identities.