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Filter and Block Spam using GMail

by Oscar Sodani
April 11, 2006

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

With a little imagination, you can put GMail's spam filter to work for you - even if you use your ISP's email account or if you run your own mail server! You don't have to use GMail to make use of their spam filtering.

Google's GMail has one of the most robust spam filtering processes in the world. The sheer bulk of mail that goes through their servers lets them identify and block spam like no other tool can. By using GMail's filtering, we have essentially removed spam from our lives completely, without having to change our email address or our email program.

 





Here's how it works:

The first step is to make sure you have access to 2 email accounts with your currentl provider. For instance, if I'm using email through my Internet Service Provider (i.e. Earthlink, Comcast, RCN, etc.) I would have my main address, let's say Oscar@ISP.com - that's the address I give out to people.

Ask your ISP for a second email account. Almost all ISPs allow you to have 5 or more email addresses - now you can make use of one of the extras! In this case, I'm going to choose OscarFiltered@ISP.com - I do not give out this address to ANYONE.

Now, setup a GMail account, if you don't already have one. You'll need an invitiation to join GMail - to get one, ask a friend who is using GMail to send you an invite. Alternatively, search Google for any number of websites that provide invitations. If you still don't have any luck, post a message in our Community Forums and someone will be glad to send you an invite.

Once your GMail account is setup, login to GMail. In this instance, I have created a new GMail account called Oscar@gmail.com.

Click on the Settings link, then the Forwarding and POP section. Check the option for "Forward a copy of incoming mail to:" and type in your second email address, i.e. OscarFiltered@ISP.com. Below that you can choose to let GMail keep a copy of all of your mail in the GMail inbox. I like GMail to keep a copy - if something catastrophic ever happens and I lose all my email accounts, I know that GMail has a backup copy for me. Click Save Changes, and logout of GMail.

That is all you need to do on the GMail side - you should write down the GMail userID and password somewhere, just in case you need it in the future, but it's likely you will never need to login to that account again.

The next step is to ask your ISP to forward all your mail from your first account to your new GMail account. Most ISPs provide this service. In this instance, I would ask my ISP to forward my Oscar@ISP.com email account to Oscar@gmail.com.

The final step is to configure your email program to check the second account (i.e. OscarFiltered@ISP.com) instead of the first account (Oscar@ISP.com).

See what we've done here? Our original address, Oscar@ISP.com, is forwarded to Oscar@gmail.com, which is then forwarded to OscarFiltered@ISP.com. When our mail hits GMail, GMail will remove the spam before it forwards the mail back to our ISP.

  1. Someone send an email to Oscar@ISP.com
  2. My ISP forwards the mail to Oscar@gmail.com
  3. GMail removes the spam
  4. GMail forwards the "good" mail to OscarFiltered@ISP.com
  5. I check my OscarFiltered email account though my own email program. 

You do not need to tell people that you have changed your email address. The trickery is that while you are using the same email address you have always used, your email program is now checking the Filtered account.

Enjoy your new spam-free life!
 

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