Spam? No problem, says Flo Samuels of Hayward, Calif. After 18 months with the same spam software, the data analyst has seen what once was a flood of unsolicited e-mail turn into a mere dribble.
Her solution: SpamKiller, a $40 software product that offers her the flexibility to decide which e-mails make it into her inbox.
Like countless others on the front lines in the war on spam, Samuels isn't pinning her hopes on an anti-spam bill passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate last month.
She's taken matters into her own hands and begun eradicating spam on her own. And she's winning the war, she says.
"I fire up my Internet connection and do my thing while Spamkiller does its thing in checking e-mail on my ISP server," she wrote. "I soon get a window that tells me what has passed my criteria and gives me the opportunity to check what was killed. I think it's great. And it really, really works."
A few weeks back, I decided that I'd also had it with the hundreds of spam e-mails that made it into my inbox at work every day. I really like the Bulk Mail folder feature on my personal Yahoo account and wanted to find a way to link work e-mails to the Yahoo system.
First, I had to drop some cash to increase the capacity of my Yahoo inbox so it could handle the amount of mail. Then, I had to set up some folders and establish delivery rules to keep work mail separated from personal mail.
From Outlook, I redirected all work mail to the Yahoo account for sorting and spam filtering. After that, a good 90 percent of the spam--sent to both the work and personal accounts--ended up in the Bulk Mail folder.
Hey, it worked for me.
Around the same time, fellow tech reporter Jon Fortt was testing the waters of how to get work e-mail into the Entourage e-mail client on his home computer, a Mac. He went the same route as I did, forwarding work e-mail to a personal account. But his downloads to his home hard drive; mine is stored on Yahoo's servers.
Mine cost $40 per year. Jon's was free.
My cubicle neighbor Michael Bazeley listened to me moan about my swamped e-mail for weeks and sent me dozens of test e-mails as I tried to transfer messages and deliver them into specific folders.
That prompted a search for his own solution.
About a month ago, he found a software program called "I Hate Spam" (www.ihatespam.net) and installed a 30-day trial version. Now, he comes in every morning, launches Outlook on his work PC and announces that his spam will now be automatically located and placed into a separate folder.
It's the same concept as mine, but it works within Outlook.
I Hate Spam also allows users to "clean" any folder in Outlook, report the spam to the spammer's ISP and to the folks at spamabuse.org or even bounce it back to the spammer, making it appear that the e-mail was sent to an inactive account.
Sure, the occasional spam still gets through. Everyone has come to realize that the determined spammer will get past filters, software and fake addresses--and probably a federal law, as well.
hello there & you too