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Computers 101

Q:
I keep getting e-mail from people with advertisements for porn sites. How can I get off these lists?

A:

Well, it's tough. There's not really a good answer to that one. I don't think anyone has a sure fire way to keep them from sending that junk to you once they get your address.

That said, there are some things you can do to minimize it.

1. Never, ever, reply or respond in any way - just delete the e-mail. When you ask to be removed, all it does is tell them they have a "real" e-mail address. After all, anyone who would send out junk like that probably doesn't really care if you're angry about being on the list. So, don't respond to junk mail. Just delete it.

Besides, most of them use a fake e-mail address, so you can't reply to it anyhow.

2. Be careful what you sign up for and tell your friends not to sign you up for stuff.

You don't want to accidentally sign up or get on a list that freely sells its subscribers to anyone who will buy (no, we don't - in case you're wondering) and they didn't inform you of this.

Unfortunately it works the same way online as it does in the real world of direct marketing. You purchase something and give your phone number away. The place you make your purchase from then sells your information and suddenly you start getting telemarketers calling constantly (especially at dinner).

So, maybe you signed up for or purchased something on the web and the company sold your e-mail address. Now your address is on a CD with millions of others that's being sold for $150.00 to whoever wants to buy it. (And no, we don't do that either)

My advice on this one is to make sure whoever you're giving your info to will respect your privacy and not sell your information to a third party. If you're one of the thousands of people who have purchased software from us in the past, you probably noticed that we have privacy policy that promises we won't give your info away. Make sure any site you give you info to has a similar policy.

3. Another way to get your e-mail address on these lists is to post stuff somewhere. You post a classified ad or stick a link on a free for all links page and your address is sitting out there for the taking. There are little programs that "harvest" e-mail address from all over the net, so any time you post something, you risk getting added to a list somewhere.

Chat rooms, especially on AOL, are good targets for these e-mail harvesters too.

Sometimes it's a good idea to maintain a free e-mail address for this kind of thing, so you can avoid getting lots of spam in your regular e-mail account. Check out Yahoo or Hotmail for these.

4. And finally - tell people to use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) to forward you e-mail. Have you ever gotten something forwarded to you with hundreds of e-mail addresses in the header? If so, your e-mail address may be getting unintentionally passed all over the net. Tell people to BCC forwarded messages to you so your address isn't exposed to the world.

Got a suggestion on this topic? Send it to me:

steve@worldstart.com

Tip of the Day

Filtering Your E-mail

Web Link - http://www.worldstart.com/tips/mailfilter.htm

So, you want to filter the "bad stuff" out of your e-mail huh? I don't blame you!

You can set up "message rules" or filters in most e-mail clients. These can grab an incoming message and make it history before you ever lay eyes on it. You can have the message rules set up to check for certain subject lines, e-mail addresses, or even words.

Since we've been on the subject of trying to get the porn e-mail our of our lives, I'll show you how to do that using Outlook Express. Please note that most e-mail clients work in a similar way (in Netscape, you set this up using the Edit menu, Message Filters).

Here's the steps - it's not at bad as it looks:

1. Click the Tools menu, Message Rules, Mail.

2. On the screen that pops up, click the New button (for newer versions of Outlook Express, you don't have to hit the New button - the screen you need pops up automatically).

3. At this point, there should be a screen that lets you set up your rules. Check the options you want to filter. As soon as you check them, you'll get a new item under the Rules Description section. Click the underlined area to set the actual stuff you're filtering for.

For instance, if you're trying to filter out porn e-mail, click the checkbox in the first section, "Where the message body contains specific words".

Now, click the link in the Rules Description box for "Contains specific words" (this looks just like a regular web page link).

On the window that opens, type in the words you want to filter. I'll leave the selection of those words to you since this is a G- rated newsletter :-)

A word of caution though. Pick your words very carefully. If you choose a word like "naked", you'll never get an e-mail that contains that word, even if it was used in a harmless way like "the naked baby streaked through the yard" or something similar.

A few clicks of the OK button and you should be back to the message rules screen.

4. Now, you'll need to decide what you want done to the message once it gets filtered. This is done in the second section of the screen, "Select the actions you want to rule".

In this case, you're probably best to scroll down to the Delete From Server checkbox. That should prevent it from downloading. Or you can just send it to the Deleted Items folder, that works too.

That should help you keep the porn spam out of your inbox, but keep in mind that you can also use message filters to send stuff to specific folders you create. For example, if you have 3 e-mail accounts, you can set up a filter that sends each address to a different folder.

The possibilities are endless.

Cool Site of the Day

Influenza

Find out the current rate of flu suffers in your area. Look at where the flu is

most prominent in the country. See if you have flu symptoms, find out what predominant flu symptoms and their treatment.

http://www.flustar.com

Do you have a cool site that you want to share? Send it to Amanda! Here's her address:

amanda@worldstart.com

Oh, and we're looking for non-commercial sites. We generally don't run sites that are strictly for shopping.