Managing

SPAM has become an unfortunate part of the email world. New laws may help diminish it, but it will never totally go away. Many of us bring SPAM upon ourselves by the sites that are visited and the 'free' offers, lotteries and other contests that are responded to. Spammers obtain valid addresses in several other ways: if you send an opt-out reply to a SPAM email, that validates your address; you may get an email from someone you've never heard of, accusing you of sending SPAM or a virus, or that you have an overdue bill - again, if you respond, your address is validated; lists of email addresses can also be obtained through unscrupulous means and then sold to spammers - the recent AOL scandal where millions of names were sold by an employee is a prime example; finally, as was shown in the AOL case, there is an underground network of spammers and lists are sold from one spammer to another. There are basically two types of spammers, 'straight' and 'spoofers;' the latter is a problem that has exploded over the last several months. A 'straight' spammer will use his own address, usually fictitious, in the email From field; a 'spoofer' will use someone else's valid email address in the From field. In either case, thousands of shotgun-approach copies are sent out, clogging our boxes with SPAM. This is made possible by the existence of unethical or ill-equipped email services that do not review mail content or authenticate the sender. We, at Communications Advantage, can assure you that we do not tolerate SPAM and are doing everything we can to curtail it.

There are several ways to 'fight back' against SPAM: (1) Change your email account; (2) Setup your mail server SPAM filter; (3) Use your desktop email package tools, primarily the Blocked Senders List and Message Rules; (4) Download/Setup a 3rd party desktop SPAM filter package. There are pros and cons with all approaches and user maintenance is required in all instances - there is no escaping having to do some added tasks.

These instructions will cover the first two choices in detail with some incidental references to the last two methods.

Change Your Email Account
This is a quick method to 'shake loose' from the spammers - you can be 'reborn' on the internet. Communications Advantage has registered 20+ new domains, most of them pointing to cities in Amador and Calaveras Counties, for use by you, our customers. The new account can reflect and enhance who you are/where you are; Click here for a complete list of email domains. All you need to do to change your email account is to call our office and, in about 10 minutes, our staff will walk you through the changes. After the change is made, you should send an email to everyone in your address book, informing them of your new address - do this twice, immediately upon the change and again in three days. We will delete your old account after five days. You should also setup the SPAM filter, details in the next section, on your new account

Setup Your SPAM Filter
Dial-Up to the internet and start your browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.). In the address bar (or Location, et al), enter the name of your mail server and press the Enter key or click on GO. The mail sever name is comprised of everything to the rightof the '@' sign in your email address with 'mail.' placed in front of it. If you're on cdepot.net, mail.cdepot.net is the server...for amadorca.com, mail.amadorca.com is the server, etc.

A logon box will appear. Enter your full email address and password, and click Login.

Your Personal Mail menu will appear...click on I Want To Control My Junk Email

Your spam filtering will either be Off or On..if it's Off, click on I want to Turn ON My Spam Filter

Your spam control panel will appear next..we'll break it into pieces and discuss the sections but not in the order that they appear. To review/set any of the parameters, click on the highlighted topic, make your entries and then click the OK or Cancel button which are present on each topic screen

Filter Options - First Topic - Filtering looks at several items: email source address (compares to a known/suspected spammers file); subject line entries; text content; reverse look-up on source domain/internet address, etc. As each piece of mail is matched against the filter criteria, points are accumulated on 'hits' and the total is compared against the threshold for the selected option. It is recommended that Standard Filtering be used - it may catch a few 'good' emails (the 'Never Block List,' discussed below, bypasses this possibility) but Light Filtering will allow too many 'bad' emails to pass.

Delivery Options - Third Topic - The Delete Spam option will immediately delete emails that exceed the point limit. With this option, we also recommend the 'Never Block List', where practical (discussed below), to pass on 'good' email that may have accumulated filtering points. The Tag and Deliver option will send all spam with '**SPAM**' inserted in the subject line to your desktop email package. We recommend this option only if you have a voluminous email address book and use in combination with Message Rules (another web page will be developed to cover this approach). The last option, Quarantine Spam, is the least likely choice as all spam will be placed in Webmail Quarantine folders and will require frequent connection, review and deletion.

Blocked Languages - Fourth Topic - If your only language is English (the default), check all of the boxes. If you are multi-lingual and communicate in other languages, then uncheck the applicable boxes.

Email Address Rules - Second Topic - The Always Block List can be used but this is more easily handled at the desktop with a 'Blocked Senders' list which is a function in all major email programs. The Never Block List is a list of email addresses of people/firms you want to hear from - these addresses will bypass filtering. If you have few addresses, say 10 to 50, then this feature will work nicely. If you are running a business with hundreds of addresses in your address book, then this approach may prove impractical; other methods, including filtering with Message Rules/Blocked Senders via your email package or a third-party desktop spam filter (there are several that are free on www.download.com), may be better choices. To enter an email address, click in the box next to the Add button, type in the address and then click on Add. You'll see that the address moves below the add box; repeat this cycle until all addresses have been entered. If you have several contacts on a given domain, you can use a single '*' wildcard entry to allow all users on that domain to bypass filtering, e.g., *@suttercreek.com. Review your entries - if you find one in error, click in the check-box next to it and click Remove, and re-enter via the Add cycle.

To exit the Spam Filter, click on Sign Out. To return to the Personal Mail menu, click on Main Menu