Specifications

Filter the crabby junk
out of your e-mail
The Crabby Ofce Lady
Everybody sees a lot of
it, everybody is sick of it,
everybody wishes it would just
go away. No, I’m not talking about Paris Hilton; I’m
talking about junk mail. And, as you can imagine, I get
a lot of e-mail myself asking me the best way to deal
with all that nonsense.
Luckily for you, Outlook 2003 has a built-in Junk
E-mail Filter to help you with this. And while nothing
is 100 percent effective against spammers, phishers,
and your great Aunt Cuthbert and her (apparently)
endless supply of forwarded chain letters promising
love, wealth, and 100 bottles of Veuve Clicquot, this
lter is a powerful way to reduce the junk and soothe
your temper.
What IS the Junk E-mail Filter?
In Outlook 2003, we introduced the new Junk Mail
Filter, which sorts suspicious e-mail messages into the
separate Junk E-mail folder. I like to think of it as a
mailroom sleuth; a postal worker with ambitions.
Now, there are two main parts to the Junk E-mail
Filter for Outlook 2003: The Junk E-mail Filter Lists
and the built-in technology that evaluates whether an
unread message should be treated as a junk e-mail
message. Whatever is used, when something is agged
as junk (every e-mail message’s naked-in-front-of-
your-high school nightmare), it’s berated, spat upon,
and then promptly moved to your Junk Mail folder
for you to review when you’re good and ready to deal
with such a ninny.
NOTE While there is no specic Junk E-mail Filter
in Outlook 2002, Outlook can search for commonly
used phrases in e-mail messages and automatically
86 these messages out of your Inbox and punt them
to either a junk e-mail folder created by Outlook, to
your Deleted Items folder, or to any other folder you
specify. Read more about how to manage junk and
adult content mail in Outlook 2002.
The lter lists: Path to a sparkling Inbox
In a word or two, the lter lists contain e-mail
addresses and domains that you deem worthy of your
Inbox. Regarding the lists, ve of the most useful
collections of e-mail addresses, here is what they are
and what they do:
Safe Senders This is a list of domain names and
e-mail addresses from which you want to receive
messages. In other words....SAFE. And since the lter
assumes (brazenly, in my esteem) that people whose
addresses are in Contacts and the Global Address
Book are considered safe by you, they’re considered
safe by the lter, too.
Safe Recipients This is a list of mailing lists or other
subscription domain names and e-mail addresses that
you belong to and want to receive messages from.
Messages sent to these addresses will not be treated as
junk e-mail.
Blocked Senders I adore this one. It’s a list of
domain names and e-mail addresses that you want to
be blocked. E-mail addresses and domain names on
this list are always treated as junk e-mail or spam.
NOTE If a name or e-mail address is on both the
Blocked Senders list and the Safe Senders, then the
Safe Senders list takes precedence over the Blocked
Senders list; in other words, better safe than sorry.
Blocked Encodings This list allows you to block a
language encoding or character set in order to lter out
unwanted international e-mail messages that display
in a language you don’t understand. (While I’m here,
can someone explain to me why half the population of
Greece as well as Taiwan have been writing to me?)
Blocked Top-level Domains Here’s a list that allows
you to block top-level domain names. Why waste time
adding senders, one by one, when you can wipe out an
entire domain?
That juju we like to do
Now, about that second one, the technology Microsoft
Research has developed to sort useful, desirable mail
from junk mail: This is based on several factors, such
as the time the message was sent and the content and
structure of the message. This lter, unlike the lists
discussed above, doesn’t single out any particular
sender or type of e-mail message. Rather, it uses
advanced analysis to determine how likely it is to be
thought of by you as a junk e-mail message. Frankly,
it’s all a bit over my head but what I can say is, it
works.
And listen, while the setting for this lter is on low by
default, you can set it to whatever you like. And since
Outlook doesn’t automatically toss these suspect junk
mail messages (unless you specically customize it
to), you can take a day hike into the junk mail folder,
see what’s in there, and make sure it is junk before
tossing it.