Ms Office Tune Up

TIP

If you block image downloads, you can configure Outlook to always display images from someone you trust.You do that by adding that person to your Safe Senders list.If you have a message from that person, click the message and then choose Actions, Junk E-mail, Add Sender to Safe Senders List. If you don’t have a message, choose Actions, Junk E-mail, Junk E-mail Option, select the Safe Senders tab, click Add, and then type the person’s address in the Add Address or Domain dialog box. (If you want Outlook to trust everyone from a certain domain, type the domain name, instead.)

? Never, I repeat, never, respond to spam, even to an address within the spam that claims to be a “removal” address. By responding to the spam, you prove that your address is legitimate, so you’ll just end up getting more spam.

If you do get spam despite these precautions, Outlook’s Junk E-mail feature is your next line of defense. This feature is a spam filter that examines each message you receive to look for telltale signs of spamminess (as anti-spam types call it). If Outlook determines that a mes­sage is spam, it automatically shuffles the message to the Junk E-mail folder so that you don’t have to deal with it directly. Fortunately, the default level used by the Junk E-mail fil­ter is, for most people, a good tradeoff between protection and convenience. That is, it catches the vast majority of spam, but it also only rarely flags legitimate messages as spam (this is called a false positive). However, you can change the filter’s protection level if you find that you’re still getting lots of spam in your Inbox, or if Outlook is generating too many false positives. Choose Actions, Junk E-mail, Junk E-mail Options to open the Junk E-mail Options dialog box, display the Options tab (see Figure 12.3), and then choose one of the following protection levels:

• No Automatic Filtering-Shuts off the Junk E-mail filter but still moves messages from blocked senders to the Junk E-mail folder (which I discuss later in this section). You should go with this level only if you use a third-party spam filter or if you handle spam using your own message rules.

• Low-Moves messages with obvious spam content to the Junk E-mail folder. This is the default protection level.

• High-Moves messages with at least slight spam content to the Junk E-mail folder. This level should catch all incoming spam, but it also can generate a few false positives. You should need to move up to this level only if your spam situation is out of control. If you do choose this level, be sure to check the Junk E-mail folder several times a day to look for false positives.

TIP

Checking the Junk E-mail folder is never fun because it means dealing directly with messages that are usually either offensive or annoying (or both).To make this distasteful chore less onerous, turn off the Reading pane (by choosing View,Reading Pane,Off) the next time you display the Junk E-mail folder. (Outlook remembers this setting and turns off the Reading pane automatically the next time you display the folder.)

NOTE

If you see a false positive in the Junk E-mail folder, let Outlook know. Right-click the message and then choose Junk E-mail, Mark as Not Junk. In the Mark as Not Junk dialog box that displays, leave the Always Trust E-mail From “address” check box activated (where address is the address of mes­sage sender).This tells Outlook not to mark messages from that sender as spam in the future. Outlook does this by placing the address on your Safe Senders list.

If the message is sent to a mailing list, the list’s address displays in the Always Trust E-mail Sent to the Following Addresses list. In this case, activate the check box beside the address to tell Outlook to include that address in your Safe Recipients list.

? Safe Lists Only-Handles all messages as spam, unless a message comes from an address or domain that you’ve added to your Safe Senders or Safe Recipients lists. Outlook uses these lists as so-called whitelists (the opposite of blacklists), that defines who can legitimately send you email. This is a useful level if you receive only nonspam email from people you know or from mailing lists you subscribe to.

Figure 1 : In the Junk E-mail Options dialog box, use the Options tab to set the junk email protec­tion level.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Pages: 1 2