Dealing with Spam

Imagine getting the equivalent of 6 MORE WORKING WEEKS back each year. That's what I did. Having had the same email address since 1996, and the fact that I check about 10 email accounts, I can say that I receive a lot of SPAM in my inbox. The problem with anti-spam software or filters is that it may just block or filter an important email that is worth thousands of dollars in business to you.

So automatically deleting emails before you see them, simply does not make good business sense. This means however, that every piece of email still has to be checked and deleted taking up to half an hour or even an hour sometimes. That is a lot of hours over a year. Say 250 hours or 6 working weeks.

Recently I have been recommending some software, which has impressed me no end. The software works in Outlook and Outlook Express and has effectively filtered 95 spam emails out of every 100 spam emails I get into a separate SPAM folder.

This means that if your email is incorrectly filtered, that you can still get to see it before you delete it, but you don't have it interrupting your concentration throughout the day.

How I control my SPAM Problem step by step is explained below. Read On..

1. Click on the Spam Fighter Banner at the bottom of this page. Download and Install the software - it's free to try for 30 days. Once Installed (you only have to do this once) check your email and if any emails are filtered as SPAM they will go into a new folder call SPAMFIGHTER.
2. Next, go to the spamfighter folder.
3. Click on the first email once and look at the email preview screen below it. You can see straight away whether it looks like spam or not. The human brain is very fast.
4. By holding down the shift key and pressing the down arrow button you can see and process 10-20 emails every 10 seconds. Or up to 120 in one minute.
5. This will highlight all of the emails filtered as SPAM.
6. Then while continuing to hold the shift key down, press the DELETE key which will delete the emails permanently from your email program and also off the server (if, like me, you leave emails on the server for a few days). That's it!

You may need to use the up arrow when you come across a valid email and then delete your spam a chunk at a time.

What about the Good Emails?

Initially, you may happen to have a few good emails filtered into the spamfighter folder. To handle this, highlight the email and click the UNBLOCK button that will now be appearing in your Outlook email program. The software will learn what not to filter.

Or when you have spam emails that do not get filtered, click the BLOCK button and this will teach your system what to block and also share the nature of that email with a central SPAMFIGHTER server which will help others to not receive this email.

The software costs $40 AUD to register and it will save you up to an hour a day of time if you get loads of email like me. This is time you can convert into more billable hours!

The good thing is that you can try Spamfighter free for a month first before deciding whether to buy it. That's what I did.

Easy to Set Up

When you receive email directly off our server. For GTP clients this is when your incoming mail server setting is mail.gtp.com.au in your Outlook or Outlook Express program.

May be More Challenging

When you have an Office Firewall or where you use Exchange Server for Email, Spamfighter has a different solution for exchange servers.

Filtering Email Tagged as [SPAM]

The other strategy involves using filters or rules in your email program in combination with our server which uses SPAM ASSASSIN to tag the subject line of potential SPAM as [SPAM] in square brackets.

By using the "Tools > Message Rules > Email" feature in Outlook you can have email tagged as [SPAM] put into another folder for faster processing.