Somebody asked me the other day: why do they get spam? Without diving into the philosophical aspects of spam (though, that is an excellent topic for a post for some other day), I figured, I’ll explore what features Hotmail offers to control spam.
Here is my step by step walkthrough. It can take a few clicks but the features and the control you get over what email reaches you is absolutely amazing!!
There are two broad categories your anti-spam actions will fall under. First, the actions you take to setup your Hotmail account to protect against spam – this is covered here.
Second, the actions you can take every day to keep your protection up to date – to be covered in a follow up post
Here we go.
1. I signed into Hotmail and clicked on the “options” link as shown by the “straight” red arrow.
2. Clicking on the “options” link opened a drop down list. I scrolled to the bottom of the list and clicked on “More Options” as shown by the red arrow.
3. Next, I was taken to the following page. I have circled in red, the anti-spam gold mine:)
4. First, I clicked on “Filters and Reporting”.
5. Clicking on “Filters and Reporting” led me to this page.
“Choose a junk e-mail filter”
Hotmail sets the junk e-mail filter by default to “standard”.
Because I use this account as my primary account, I changed the “Choose a junk e-mail filter” option to “Exclusive”. I only want to receive emails from my contacts and safe senders.
“Delete junk e-mail”
I prefer to keep my “Delete junk e-mail” option as “later”. This ensures that junk e-mail remains in the junk e-mail folder for at least 10 days. That is enough time for me to visit the junk e-mail folder and move any emails that might have been junked but I am interested in them.
“Report Junk Messages”
And, I do want Microsoft to do an even better job at fighting junk e-mail. So I leave the “Report Junk Messages” option as “Report Junk”. The more junk e-mail I report, the less spam I will get.
6. Next, I clicked on “Options” again.
7. This time, I clicked on “Safe and blocked senders”
8. On this page, I noticed 3 different links. “Safe Senders”, “Safe mailing lists” and “Blocked senders”. First, I clicked on “Safe Senders”.
9. This was a page where I could tell Hotmail about all the people I know or senders (domains) whose email I want to receive.
10. After I was done adding my list of “safe senders”, I went back to the previous page by clicking on “Safe and blocked senders” at the top of the page.
11. This time I clicked on “Safe Mailing Lists”.
12. This was a page where I could add all the mailing lists I was part of and from whom I wanted to receive email.
13. Next, I clicked on “Safe and blocked senders” to go back to the previous page.
14. This time, I clicked on “Blocked Senders".
15. On this page, I could add all the domains from whom I did not want to receive any email.
15. Once I was done adding domains/senders I did not want email from, I went back to the previous page by clicking on “safe and blocked senders”.
17. At this point, I had completed the 1-time setup to control my junk e-mail. The next step is to learn how to control and manage my inbox on a day to day basis.
18. Ready to take it to the next level? Here is what I have done to virtually eliminate spam from my inbox. I get maybe one spam mail a week. Read about it.
19. The last frontier of spam management is here:).
Stay hooked!
PS: I used the Windows Snipping Tool to take these screen captures (Start->All Programs->Accessories->Snipping Tool). Works like a charm:)
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