Spam Tips: The Good,the Bad, and the Ugly

One of the necessary evils in today's world is email filtering.  I'm sure all of you have noticed that you get a message from Spam Blocker Services each day.  The folks at Spam Blocker are the service we use for our email domain -- PrairiePride.org -- for spam.  This keeps them pretty busy.  Spam is still a huge problem today. We typically block just over half of all the incoming email.  However, I've even seen te block percentage go as high as 90%.  So, the Spam Blocker guys do a reasonably good job of getting the spam before it gets to us.  Without them, we'd be swamped.

However, they also give us some pretty cool tools that I'm guessing not a lot of people know about.  Besides getting that email each day which shows you what's been blocked, they also include the following features:

• Setting up your own white list (accounts that you don't ever want blocked)
• Viewing your quarantined emails in real time in Outlook
• Search and retrieval of 10 days worth of quarantined email

Here's how you use these features.   Adding an address to a white list is a really good feature.  This allows you to ensure that the white listed address will never be filtered when sending to your account.  This white list just works for your account.  So, this address may get quarantined when sending to other Prairie accounts.  I would recommend using a personal white list for personal or professional contacts.  If it is a parent's address or someone else who might send to a lot of other people at Prairie, you'll probably want to send that on to me so I can white list it for everyone.  Here's how you setup a white list.  The first thing you need to do is to get you account credentials (password) from them.  

1. Go to Spam Blocker
2. Locate the login area -- enter your full email address, i.e. cbarnum@prairiepride.org, in the username
3. Click the "forgot password" button.  They will have you verify your email and send your password to your email
4. Once you get the password (it should only take a minute or two to arrive) login to the site. Once you are in, you can change your password.  I would strongly recommend changing it to the same one you use for Campus, email, etc...
5. Click the button on the left side of the page that says "Your White List." 
6. Enter the address you wish to not be filtered and click the "Add To White List" button.

One thing to remember about the SpamBlocker Services password, however, is that it is a completely stand-alone system.  So, if you update your email password, this change will not automatically.   If you want to keep your passwords consistent, you'll need to update it manually.

Another cool feature is that you can check your quarantine at anytime, without logging in by setting up a folder in Outlook.  This is a real time saver.  Here are the steps for that. I gleaned most of these instructions right from the Spam blocker site.

1. Login to the Spam Blocker site
2. Click the "My Preferences" button
3. Scroll down until you see the instructions labeled "Add Quarantine Folder to Outlook.
4. The following are instructions from that site:

1. Copy the Outlook URL above (this will be shown right above these instructions once you are logged in) by highlighting the entire entry and then copying to clipboard.In Outlook, create a new folder. Choose "Mail and Post Items" as the folder type when asked, and give it a name like "Spam Blocker" or "Quarantine
2. Once created, Right-click on the new folder and choose "Properties"
3. Select the "Home Page" tab, and paste the URL above.
4. Check the box on that same tab marked "Show Home Page by default"Click OK to save changes. Then open the folder.

Hopefully, this will help you better use some of the tools in the spam filter.  As always, drop me a note with any questions you might have.