The Battle Against Spam

This is for MS Outlook.

Since, by federal law, all mass emails must have an unsubscribe link at the bottom, wouldn't it make sense to filter all emails with an unsubscribe link?

I started off with 302 bulk email messages.

I first applied the following filter:
[quote]If the body or subject contains: unsubscribe
subscribe
subscription
XXX
(a few other XXX terms I can't repeat)
sponsor
sponsors
promotional
promotion

Move to the Bulk Mail folder unless the body contains "shut down" or "deleted" or "delete".
<hr></blockquote>

I made the exceptions as they will not filter mail that says "We are going to shut down our services on January 10th" and they sometimes have the words above in them.

That one rule alone removed 228 messages.


Cool eh? ;)

That is a cool tip, I remembered you posted that one before but this one is better. And it will work with any email client that has filtering abilities. Also some webmail services like Hotmail have filters that you can use to do the same thing.

Now I'll add my own tip: if you use Hotmail, you are NOT allowed to add some senders to your block list (the main one being Hotmail Member Services, as well as some other MSN mass mailing). However, you can block these by using the advanced filters instead. No more annoying messages from MSN...

The only problem I can see with some of these words in text, it is possible to get mail from someplace you would want to read, and it would be hit by the filter. They get you coming and going...

[quote]Originally posted by Ya_know:
<strong>The only problem I can see with some of these words in text, it is possible to get mail from someplace you would want to read, and it would be hit by the filter. They get you coming and going...</strong><hr></blockquote>

exactly, that's why I have to check my Spam folder every few days.

Thanks that tip is very effective and cool. I put in a qualifier at the top of the rules list and called it "Junk Mail Qualifier" and it basically said, "Apply this rule after the message arrives:
Where the From line contains (people in my address book)Stop processing more rules" so that I can see correspondence from people I like. :D

This would work for you too Ya_know it doesn't have to be an address book entry, you could list people you want into the 'From line contains' part.

But... if you have a huge list of people not on your address book that you don't want to hit the filter, it could become quite a chore to maintain.

Also, I'm doing this in Outlook Express and I don't know what everybody has and if it works the same. Although I think come Monday, this is going on my work computer too :)

I just did a filter that looks for the words "to unsubscribe" in the body. No matter what email comes with this phrase, i prolly don't want it cause I don't sign up for mailing lists.

Great idea Jungleman.