How to Easily Get Rid of E-Mail Spam (4/28/02)

How to Easily Get Rid of E-Mail Spam

by Robin Nobles

Picture this scenario. You rush to your computer, hoping to find
e-mail from friends or family members, orders from clients, or
questions about your products and services.

You download 52 pieces of e-mail. Wow! Except there's one small
problem. 49 pieces of that e-mail is useless spam.

What is spam? Spam is e-mail that you haven't given permission to
receive or don't want to receive.

For example, let's say that you buy a SonyT camera, and you sign
up for their free newsletter. You've give SonyT permission to
send you that newsletter, so it's not spam.

Instead, spam is when someone steals your e-mail address from a
message board or list, and then sends thousands of e-mail out
advertising a product. You didn't ask for that e-mail to be sent
to you, so it's doing nothing but taking up room in your e-mail
box and time when you have to sort through and delete it.

I recently heard of the neatest e-mail client that helps to
combat spam, MailWasher. http://www.mailwasher.net/

When you first log on to the Net, you start MailWasher, which
downloads the subject lines of your e-mail. You can tell the
program to run your e-mail through the black list of e-mail
spammers to detect which e-mail is legitimate and which isn't.

Then, it categorizes your e-mail, putting it into areas such as
"friends," "normal," "possible spam," and "black list."

If MailWasher thinks that a piece of e-mail might be spam, it
also marks it for "bouncing," which is one of the coolest
features of all. Instead of just deleting the e-mail from your
server, it bounces it back to the spammer, who (we hope) will
eventually remove your e-mail address from their list.

After MailWasher has finished categorizing your e-mail, you look
through the list. If the e-mail is from someone you know, you
mark it as a "friend," and the program will add it to your
"friends'" list. If the e-mail is spam, you can add it to your
black list of spammers.

After you've chosen what to do with the e-mail, you hit the
"Process Mail" button, and MailWasher begins bouncing back the
spam to the original owners and deleting it from your server.

After MailWasher processes the spam e-mail, it automatically
opens your e-mail software program where you can actually
download the remaining e-mail into your program-only the mail
that you really want and need to see.

The more you use the program, the more you "train" it to
recognize friends and spammers, so it categorizes e-mail even
more efficiently.

I've found few programs that are this handy, helpful, and easy to
use. And, the cost is right: free to try! It's a shareware
program, and the creator asks that you pay him a fee if you like
and use it. How much you pay him is up to you.
http://www.mailwasher.net/


Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists,
(http://www.academywebspecialists.com) has trained several
thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses
(http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and is the content provider
for (GRSeo) Search Engine Optimizer software (http://www.se-
optimizer.com). She also teaches 3-day hands on search engine
marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search
Engine Workshops(http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.