Unwanted E-Mail?

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Delete it from your in-box without opening it. 

The first rule of dealing with  unwanted e-mail is: Delete it from your in-box without opening it.  Look at the "from" and the "subject" fields in the in-box. Delete items from people you don't know. Delete Items with odd or questionable subject lines.

Never open an e-mail attachment from an unknown source.

The second rule of dealing with unwanted e-mail is:  Never open an e-mail attachment from an unknown source. An e-mail attachment may appear in the text or header of the e-mail as a link to a web location or as a picture file or possibly as another type of document. It will be something you need to "click" on or drag your mouse across. Don't do it. This is one way computer viruses are propagated. 

Unwanted e-mail is a common concern.  Within a few days of the first time you use an e-mail account you will start receiving items about subjects in which you have no interest. Anyone on the planet can put anything that they want to in your e-mail. It costs them practically nothing to do so. But it requires your valuable time to sort through it. This is called "spam."

In general there are three sources of spam:

1. Legitimate notices from organizations with which you have a relationship and to whom you have given your e-mail address.  A sub-category of this source is other groups to whom these may have sold your address. 
2. A second source is hackers, mass spammers, and cyber-terrorists who subvert the usual controls and deliberately flood the Internet and e-mail channels. These vermin attempt to hide their true identity. Their mailings may or may not contain viruses or other harmful content.  
3. The third source is, sadly, individual persons -- maybe someone you know and love.  These dear souls are impressed by inspirational, funny, outrageous, cute, or otherwise interesting stuff.  And they send it to you so that you can also be inspired, outraged, or whatever.

In general there are two ways you can avoid the irritation of an in-box overflowing with spam:

Take advantage of the spam identification and removal features provided by your internet service provider. Every provider has a vested interest in helping you to keep unwanted, possibly harmful, content out of the system.  Go to your provider's web site and review what they make available. At the very minimum almost every service will provide a means for you to identify a particular piece of mail as unwanted. When you do so, their automated systems will perform an analysis and make attempts to restrict future deliveries to you from that source. You need to use this feature with discretion. If you, for example, make an on -line purchase from a merchant, that merchant will likely solicit your e-mail address. Perhaps you really are interested in some of the stuff they may send you. 

Take advantage of the filtering capabilities of your e-mail client software. Microsoft Outlook calls this feature "rules." You can look at the caller id on your telephone and decide "I don't want to talk to this caller right now." You can tell you computer to look at the e-mail header information and put it in specific places (or in the trash) based on your criteria.  This can be very simple or complex based on your desires.  

Here is one example: In Outlook, click on Tools>Rule Wizard>New.  The wizard will guide you through the steps to make a series of simple rules. You add complexity by having more than one rule and by controlling the sequence in which the rules are applied.

For example, there are several very sweet, dear persons whom I would never dream of hurting or slighting at all. These individuals forward to me certain items that appear in their own mail boxes. They also occasionally send personal notes that I do want to read and respond to.  I had to give Outlook two rules for each such person. Here are the rules:

 First rule:  Apply this rule after the message arrives 'sent only to me and from [myfriend] move it to the [read this] folder and stop processing more rules.' 

Second rule: Apply this rule after the message arrives 'with [myfriend] in the sender's address move it to the [spam from myfriends] folder except if sent only to me.'

This is how the rules work:  First, you need to create "read this" and "spam from myfriends" folders. Obviously, name them whatever you wish. Also, replace "myfriend" with the name of your friend. The wizard will provide easy tools for you to do this. It is a little subtle, but both rules are needed. The first rule moves items from myfriend that are addressed only to me to a folder that I remember to check daily.  Outlook makes this easy by bolding the name of the folder in the folders list so long as it contains mail I have not yet read.   The second rule puts items from myfriend that were not sent only to me in a special place. I periodically look at the "spam from myfriends" folder to make sure the rules have not kept me from seeing something I really wanted. Then I delete the contents of that folder. If I needed more sophistication than this, I could write other rules to review the contents of the "spam from myfriends" folder.

This section is last because it probably does not apply to everyone. To know whether you need to proceed, please take this simple test:

If you answered "yes" two or more times, you need to read the following: 

You are under no obligation what-so-ever to read, forward, or respond to unsolicited e-mail!  Your computer and your internet access are for you to use or not use as you choose. Many people employ the filtering mechanisms described above to restrict all e-mail except that from specifically identified persons. Never apologize to anyone for ignoring or not reading an e-mail they sent. If someone sends you dozens of items that you routinely have to glance at and then ignore, they are imposing on your time and energy. They are using automation technology to fill up your in-box.  They should not feel any surprise, hurt, or resentment that you use similar automation technology to help manage your time. 

Revised 20 June 2007

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