Filtering SPAM with Netscape Messenger 4

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.

In this tutorial, you'll find out how to filter unwanted SPAM from clogging up your Netscape Messenger inbox. This tutorial will also allow you to move messages from specific people to the mail folder of your choice.

Message Filters

In Netscape 4.x, click on the Edit menu and choose Message Filters. You will see a box that looks like Figure 1.

Figure 1

This box will list all of the rules you set up to filter your e-mail. Right now the box is empty because we have not yet set up any rules. For your first rule, click on New.

You will now see a box that looks like Figure 2. We want to automatically delete any e-mail messages we receive with the letters "XXX" in the Subject line. First, type a name for the filter - we chose "XXX Filter". Next, type XXX in the box next to Contains, just as it is in the image below. We have just set up the criteria, which says to find any message where the "subject of the message contains XXX".

Now, we want to perform an action on all messages that adhere to that criteria. In this case, we want to delete all of those messages -- click on the menu next to then, and choose the Delete option. The dialog box will now look exactly like Figure 2.

Figure 2

When you click OK, it will bring you back to the Message Filters box shown in Figure 1, only now you will see a rule displayed with a check mark next to it. As long as you see a check, Netscape Messenger will automatically delete any e-mail with XXX in the Subject! XXX is used in subject of many unsolicited pornographic e-mails. To stop that rule from being used, simply click on the check mark -- it will turn into a dot to let you know that the filter is no longer "on". If you want to get rid of a rule forever, simply click on the Delete button.

The Filter Rules box in Figure 2 lets you set all kinds of criteria. You can perform actions on e-mail based on:

• Who it was sent by
• Which address is was sent to
• Who was CC:'d (carbon copied) in the message
• What words appear in the subject
• What words appear in the message itself
• The date of the message
• How many days old the message is
• Whether the message has been read, unread, or replied to
• What priority was set in the message

By clicking on the More button, you can make complex criteria. For instance, you can perform actions on messages that contain "XXX" in the subject, but do not contain the word "joke" in the message. TRhis way, you can choose exactly which messages are performed by the filter.

Once you've set your criteria, you decide what you want to happen to the message(s) that meet that criteria. You can:

• Move the message to a particular mail folder
• Change the priority of the message
• Mark it read or unread
• Delete the message
• Ignore the message

The Priority option is useful if you constantly get large amounts of e-mail, but you need to see messages from certain people right away. For instance, you can set messages from your boss' e-mail address to High priority, so they get bumped right to the top of the list. You can also set jokes and other forwarded e-mails to a low priority.

You can set however many rules you want. They will be applied in order, from top to bottom, so choose carefully which filters appear first. Some other subjects you should filter out to avoid SPAM are ADV:, $$$, and Make Money. All in all, filters are a great way to manage your e-mail automatically, and Netscape Mesenger's Message Filters provides one of the most advanced ways to perform this task. Fight the SPAM!

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