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Have you been receiving more than your fair share of spam email?
Spam email has become a huge problem on the internet. Unscrupulous mass marketeers will send you email ranging in topics from money scams to enlargement of various body parts. Some Internet Service Providers (ISP) have joined in the fight against spam email by providing filters that help to stop spam email from reaching your inbox.
There are two courses of action you can take if spam is getting out of hand for you. First, you might consider changing to an Internet Service Provider that provides spam filtering software such as Kerrville Telephone Company if you live in their area of coverage. Second, you might consider installing a spam filtering software package on your computer.
You can download and install Spamweasel from http://www.mailgate.com/. Follow their instructions to install Spamweasel and then make sure to consult their Help Files to complete the configuration process.
Oops! Did I mention that Spamweasel is FREE?
After you have installed and registered Spamweasel, you'll want to examine the configuration options. Shown below is the "Rules" tab of the configuration panel. From this panel you can enable or disable any rules or change their priority level.
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From the "Action" tab of the configuration panel, you can set the specific actions to be taken when spam violates any particular rule from the previous "Rules" tab. There are also global settings that you can set from this tab.
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From the "Patterns" tab of the configuration panel, you can adjust settings such as "Friendly from addresses" or "Friendly Subjects".
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From the "Words" tab of the configuration panel, you can add to settings such as "Adult Words " or "Likely Spam Words".
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After you have set up Spamweasel and set your initial settings, it may take a week or so for you to fine-tune the settings and get them just right so Spamweasel doesn't intercept any messages from friends or relatives (in some cases this might be a good thing!).
In the meantime, there is an "Archive Viewer" that you can use to see what emails have been intercepted. If Spamweasel intercepted an email you want delivered to your Outlook Inbox, simply drag-and-drop it onto the "Spamweasel Pending Queue" and it will be delivered to your Outlook.
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So take a bite out of spam email and start fighting back by not letting it get through in the first place!
(If the Tip-of-The-Week generates additional thought-provoking questions on your part that you would like us to personally answer, give us a call at 895-5016 to set up an appointment, or consider using our online AskBrightIdeas.com service.)
