>Just to be difficult, I'll have to say that it has occurred to me that >there is a flip side to this having all the likely spam candidates in a >Probably Spam folder as some have described. If its easier to just scan >the titles looking for exceptions, then it would seem to me that its also >easier to overlook the occasional valuable email that may be hiding there >with the junk. Its a matter of mindset- if its in my inbox, then it >deserves a look. If its in my Probably Spam folder, it doesn't deserve as >close a look. > >Right now I'm involved in a grade dispute with a student who claims to >have submitted an assignment, but I have no record of it. I'm glad I >don't have to wonder whether I accidentally deleted her paper with the >spam. > >Bill
First, give thanks that you receive so little spam. Second, you can be more pro-active in separating spam from "good" mail through rigorous mail actions and an up-to-date address book. Consider, most "good" mail you receive is from people you know (who are presumably in your address book) and mailing lists/discussion groups (e.g. Em@ailer Talk) to which you subscribe. Presumably you don't regularly receive mail from people not in either of the two categories noted above with messages that interest you. Obviously this other mail is spam. So, make sure your address book is current. Then create a mail action. Make the first four criteria From; To; CC; reply to are in your address book and route them as appropriate. This handles 90% of all your mail and probably 99% of "good" mail. Now to identify and route spam; consider the vast majority of spam comes in HTML format (except for those well-spoken Nigerians who love all-cap plain text; God bless 'em!). Create another mail action. Click on "Field" then in the "Header" field type "content-type"; choose "contains" then type in "html" So reading left to right Field "internet head" "contains" "html" You may specify actions as you wish, but here are my settings if you are aggressively anti-spam: set priority to 20 (when I open my autolog file, I always click sort on "priority" immediately. This puts highest priority mail items first and spam at the bottom; my version of Chris's visualization trick); file messages in Deleted Mail (don't have to bother to manually delete; they are deleted when I quit EM); run Apple Script "strip enclosures" (this deletes the HTML files associated with spam and which Emailer can't read anyway). Concerning your issue with your student specifically and regular correspondents in general, tell them never to send you HTML mail. Don't mention spam, that will just upset them. Tell them truthfully EM can't handle HTML mail. This is a little extra protection against accidentally deleting "good" mail, though it comes in HTML format. Be stricter with your students when it comes to HTML mail. It's rare that mail makes it to my "In" box more than once a week. Berndt -------------- Standard Disclaimer -------------- No offense to any living matter capable of receiving and processing this information and being paranoid enough to interpret it wrongly. ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
