Configure Outlook against Spam

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saROMan

QA Juggler
This tutorial is designed to provide a quick and easy way to filter your unwanted junk email, often referred to as SPAM (Self Promotional Advertising Message). Similar to junk mail that you find in your residential mailbox, you will probably receive unwanted junk mail in your email box as well. By following the steps in Outlook® 2003 you will be able to redirect unwanted emails from your "inbox" to a "SPAM" directory for later review or deletion.

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2003

Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 has many new features to block junk e-mail (spam). The most notable feature is Microsoft's Junk E-Mail Filter with Microsoft SmartScreen Technology. SmartScreen Technology is based on a machine-learning Bayesian technology that uses a probability-based algorithms to determine whether email is legitimate or spam. To educate the SmartScreen "filter", more than 100,000 Hotmail spam fighters submited or classified their actual e-mail as either spam or good e-mail and sent that e-mail to Microsoft to be processed. The bottom line - Microsoft had LOTS of email to tweek their new technology against spam. In my personal experience, the filter does a pretty good job at screening out spam with very few false positives.

There exist 5 key features in Outlook® 2003 to help you combat spam:


Junk E-Mail Filter
Safe Senders List
Safe Recipients Lists
Blocked Senders List
AutoUpdate



Junk E-Mail Filter

In previous versions of Outlook it was up to the end user to create his/her own spam filter. In fact, the Outlook® 2000 and Outlook Express® tutorials show you step by step how to do this. However, Outlook® 2003 has a predefined spam filter.
The following proceedures were tested with Outlook 2003 which is bundled with the Office 2003 software suite. You can determine your version by opening Outlook and clicking on Help > About Microsoft Office Outlook.


1 Open Outlook by double-clicking on the Outlook icon located on your desktop.

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2 Click on Tools > Options.

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3 Click on the Junk E-mail... button.

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The first "Options" tab is where you control the junk filter.
No Automatic Filtering essentially turns off the junk e-mail filter.
Low will only filter junk e-mail if it scores a high spam confidence level (SCL) rating.
High will filter junk e-mail if it scores a medium SCL rating. The lower the rating, the less likely the e-mail is spam.
Safe Lists Only turns off the junk e-mail filter and will only allow e-mail to be delivered to your inbox if the sender or the recipeint is listed in the "Safe Senders" and "Safe Recipients" lists. You might use this option if you have the attitude "If I don't know the sender of the e-mail, it's spam". This may be ok for personal e-mail but this is definitley not an option for businesses attracting new customers.
The last option allows you to "Permanently delete" junk e-mail. If, after you have been using the junk e-mail filter for some time, you notice that the filter has never filtered one of your legitimate e-mails into the Junk E-mail folder, then you might consider simply deleting the filtered spam e-mail rather than keeping a copy for your review.

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Safe Senders List

Continuing from the previous step, clicking on the "Safe Senders" tab yields a control panel which allows you to add and remove contacts who are your friends and colleagues. This list overrides the Junk E-mail filter and protects any messages sent by your friends or colleagues from beign filtered into the Junk E-mail folder.

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To add a contact, simply click the "Add..." button, enter the person's e-mail address, and click "OK". You may also include entire domains by adding "example.com" which will treat all e-mail arriving from example.com as a safe sender.

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The "Remove" and "Edit..." buttons allow you to remove a contact or edit the email of an existing contact.
The "Import from File..." and "Export to File..." are used to backup and restore your Safe Senders list.
Placing a checkmark next to the "Also trust e-mail from my Contacts" essentially adds all the e-mails of your contacts to this list. You won't visibly see the addition of your contacts e-mails to the list but they will not be filtered against. It's always a good idea to keep this checked. You wouldn't have a spammer in your list of contacts would you?

Safe Recipients Lists

Continuing from the previous step, clicking on the "Safe Recipients" tab yields a control panel which allows you to add and remove e-mails and domains for which you would like to accept e-mail delivery. It is designed for newsgroups and discussion lists in which you participate but where the messages are not specifically addressed to you. Simply add your newsgroup email or domain and the newsgroup messages will not be treated as junk.

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Blocked Senders List

Continuing from the previous step, clicking on the "Blocked Senders" tab yields a control panel allowing you to add e-mail addresses or domains which will always be treated as junk e-mail. This can be considered a "blacklist" of spammers. Be careful in adding domains because if you add hotmail.com, for example, all email@hotmail.com will be treated as spam.
Personally, I don't spend too much time updating my blocked senders list. Spammers typically change their email and domain quite often - usually hours after a spam campaign. By tenaciously adding their e-mails to the "Blocked Senders" list, you will quickly find that you have a list of e-mails that no longer exist. However, this list is useful if you have a repeat offender that continues to spam you time and time again.

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The "Remove" and "Edit..." buttons allow you to remove or edit a spammers e-mail address.
The "Import from File..." and "Export to File..." are used to backup and restore your Safe Senders list. They also are useful in sharing your list with your friends and colleagues.

AutoUpdate


Microsoft continuously updates the Junk E-Mail Filter. Therefore, you will want to use the Office Update feature to keep Outlook up to date.
Click on Help > Microsoft Office Online.

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On the right hand side of Microsoft's web site, click "Check for Updates".

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Microsoft's description of the Junk E-mail Filter can be found Here

Microsoft's Outlook 2003 home page, including the "Check for Updates" link.



Source : Here you can find tutes for Outlook® 2000, and Outlook Express® as well .
 

tuxfan

Technomancer
Great work saROMan. Here's some addition to this for Linux users.

Spam Fighting in Ximian Evolution, the Outlook clone
 
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