Building a spam dam

oes your cocoa need a heat up? Spammeister can wait.

Okay, here's a list of helpful hints on putting together that white list. Enjoy!

• Write down a list of all the email addresses you want to let in. This is your white list.
• Create filter rules to let only the email addresses on your white list through your spam dam.
• The specifics on doing this vary between the various email software available. But the process is similar enough that an example of Spammeister setting up a rule to let Uncle Bob through using Netscape 6's email software should be enough to get you started:
• Uncle Bob's email address is unclebob@myisp.com. This is my white list.
• I go to "Filter Rules" (Edit menu; Message Filters; click New in the Message Filter dialog box).
• I change the first list box to "Sender".
• I change the second list box to "doesn't contain".
• Then I add "unclebob@myisp.com" in the text box.
• What does this rule say? Any message with a sender that doesn't contain unclebob@myisp.com in that message field is blocked.
• Under "Perform this action" I set the list box to "Move to folder" (the default).
• There's "New folder" option I select and use to set up a folder named "Spam".
• I select this folder from the list box.

So now any message that fits the rule -- that is, any message not from Uncle Bob -- will go to my Spam folder. There I can review the messages that fail my test. The genuine spam I can report to Spam Cop and then delete. The messages from senders I want to recieve email from in the future I add to my white list. I just create a new rule like the one for Uncle Bob. Easy, huh?

Now, like anything, you can make this as simple as I illustrated here or as complicated as you like. There are people who set up autoresponse messages that go to anyone not on the list with instructions on how to submit an email -- for instance, maybe with a special subject line set up to pass through your filter -- to alert you that there's another good guy that needs to be added to your white list. Personally, Spammeister doesn't like this approach. For example, why risk sending email to spammers notifying them that your email address is valid? But each to his own.