Page 1: Introduction/Outlook Express Edition
<B>Introduction :</B>
Do you peruse the Internet a lot? Do you find yourself signing up for free stuff, contests, or to get informational e-mails? If you do you are probably unwittingly getting on a lot more e-mail lists than you think. A lot of these companies resell or trade your e-mail address and you may find your e-mail download message queue getting larger, and annoying, with junk e-mail or more commonly referred to as Spam. Once on these lists it is hard to get off and trying to 'unsubscribe' may lead to getting more, after all you did read and respond to the first one.
Even changing your e-mail address may not be the answer. You would then have to let all your family, friends, and companies you want to correspond with know your new address. You could also setup your e-mail program with all the rules and lists to scan your e-mail for the good and bad, but how exactly do you setup those rules and lists. Well, read the rest of this review and spend very little cash ($19.95); then save time and automate that task with <a href="http://www.sunbelt-software.com/product.cfm?id=930">iHateSpam</a>.
<center>
</center>
<B>Getting Started :</B>
Depending on your preference you can download iHateSpam from the Internet or purchase a retail version on CD-ROM. If you are currently running Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, or XP with Microsoft Outlook (2000/2002/XP) or Outlook Express (5 or 6) you are ready to install iHateSpam. You can also filter Hotmail when checked in Outlook XP and Yahoo with a Yahoo POP access (which requires a fee).
<center>
</center>
<B>Outlook Express Installation Process :</B>
From the above screen you will select which filter package you will need. You are then presented with an installation wizard that will display the license agreement, prompt for name/company, and request desired installation destination. The setup takes only a few seconds, depending on your computer setup.
The first filter I tested was the Outlook Express option. The first time you run Outlook Express, after the installation is completed, you will be prompted for several choices you will need to make. The following thumbnails show some of the sequence of screens and choices you will need to make.
<center>
</center>
<B>Outlook Express Filter Operation :</B>
Depending on your choices the spam identified e-mail will be placed into your 'Deleted Items' folder and displayed in red. This way you can easily identify e-mail placed there versus the ones you delete from other folders, which are displayed in black.
<center>
</center>
E-mails that are not detected as spam by the program can be highlighted and by clicking on the 'Is Spam' icon (found in the menu bar along the top of the Outlook Express screen, see below) will be identified as spam. The first time you click on this icon you will be presented with a popup screen where you can select not to see this popup and informed how to automatically quarantine e-mail from this address (and others) by clicking on the 'Add Enemy' icon.
<center>
</center>
All of this filtering takes place by checking each message with rules and against the Friends/Enemies lists. Those messages not identifiable by these methods will be placed into the Inbox folder where you will have to determine its appropriateness.
<center>
</center>
Of course the opposite is true. You will need to look at the quarantined messages to make sure that an important message is not identified as spam. You may think that doing this defeats the purpose of having the messages filtered, but you will probably only have to do this the first few times. By setting your Outlook Express program to automatically empty the 'Deleted Items' folder on exit you can keep the folder ready for the next message check.
<center>
</center>
<B>Outlook Express Varied Options :</B>
Many other options are available to help you customize the filtering process to your preferences. You can also enable 'Learning' so that you can provide feedback on messages you receive and receive 'Suggestions' to tune your settings.
<center>
</center>
There are two nice features available from the menu bar. One is 'Bounce', where you can send a response back to the sender with an "address not found" message. Using this option may not always work as a lot of spammers use forged message headers that prevent them from receiving any e-mail. The second is 'Report', where you can let the spammer's ISP know of this abuse and to report it to the spam-fighting group; http://www.spamabuse.org.
<center>
</center>
Do you peruse the Internet a lot? Do you find yourself signing up for free stuff, contests, or to get informational e-mails? If you do you are probably unwittingly getting on a lot more e-mail lists than you think. A lot of these companies resell or trade your e-mail address and you may find your e-mail download message queue getting larger, and annoying, with junk e-mail or more commonly referred to as Spam. Once on these lists it is hard to get off and trying to 'unsubscribe' may lead to getting more, after all you did read and respond to the first one.
Even changing your e-mail address may not be the answer. You would then have to let all your family, friends, and companies you want to correspond with know your new address. You could also setup your e-mail program with all the rules and lists to scan your e-mail for the good and bad, but how exactly do you setup those rules and lists. Well, read the rest of this review and spend very little cash ($19.95); then save time and automate that task with <a href="http://www.sunbelt-software.com/product.cfm?id=930">iHateSpam</a>.
<center>
</center>
<B>Getting Started :</B>
Depending on your preference you can download iHateSpam from the Internet or purchase a retail version on CD-ROM. If you are currently running Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, or XP with Microsoft Outlook (2000/2002/XP) or Outlook Express (5 or 6) you are ready to install iHateSpam. You can also filter Hotmail when checked in Outlook XP and Yahoo with a Yahoo POP access (which requires a fee).
<center>
</center>
<B>Outlook Express Installation Process :</B>
From the above screen you will select which filter package you will need. You are then presented with an installation wizard that will display the license agreement, prompt for name/company, and request desired installation destination. The setup takes only a few seconds, depending on your computer setup.
The first filter I tested was the Outlook Express option. The first time you run Outlook Express, after the installation is completed, you will be prompted for several choices you will need to make. The following thumbnails show some of the sequence of screens and choices you will need to make.
<center>
</center>
<B>Outlook Express Filter Operation :</B>
Depending on your choices the spam identified e-mail will be placed into your 'Deleted Items' folder and displayed in red. This way you can easily identify e-mail placed there versus the ones you delete from other folders, which are displayed in black.
<center>
</center>
E-mails that are not detected as spam by the program can be highlighted and by clicking on the 'Is Spam' icon (found in the menu bar along the top of the Outlook Express screen, see below) will be identified as spam. The first time you click on this icon you will be presented with a popup screen where you can select not to see this popup and informed how to automatically quarantine e-mail from this address (and others) by clicking on the 'Add Enemy' icon.
<center>
</center>
All of this filtering takes place by checking each message with rules and against the Friends/Enemies lists. Those messages not identifiable by these methods will be placed into the Inbox folder where you will have to determine its appropriateness.
<center>
</center>
Of course the opposite is true. You will need to look at the quarantined messages to make sure that an important message is not identified as spam. You may think that doing this defeats the purpose of having the messages filtered, but you will probably only have to do this the first few times. By setting your Outlook Express program to automatically empty the 'Deleted Items' folder on exit you can keep the folder ready for the next message check.
<center>
</center>
<B>Outlook Express Varied Options :</B>
Many other options are available to help you customize the filtering process to your preferences. You can also enable 'Learning' so that you can provide feedback on messages you receive and receive 'Suggestions' to tune your settings.
<center>
</center>
There are two nice features available from the menu bar. One is 'Bounce', where you can send a response back to the sender with an "address not found" message. Using this option may not always work as a lot of spammers use forged message headers that prevent them from receiving any e-mail. The second is 'Report', where you can let the spammer's ISP know of this abuse and to report it to the spam-fighting group; http://www.spamabuse.org.
<center>
</center>