cc said:
I'm getting 5-15 "spam" emails daily to names (email addresses) that are
SIMILAR to mine, but not me. (For example, (e-mail address removed),
(e-mail address removed), (e-mail address removed)...)
I've used the "Create Rule" tool to try ands permanently delete these when
they come in, but it doesn't stop them.
Any ideas or suggestions to stop these?
You cannot stop anything outside your computer; i.e., you can't stop them
from being sent. You can only handle them upon receipt. Outlook doesn't
have a rule to "delete from server" as does Outlook Express. You have to,
at least, download the headers and then [permanently] delete them from
Outlook's message store.
You could define a rule to [permanently] delete or junk folder any mails
where your specific e-mail address is not included in the To or Cc headers.
However, most newsletters, order confirmation servers, and other bulk
mailers won't show you in the To or Cc headers, so you'll have to whitelist
them or periodically check the junk folder (if you moved the suspect mails
there). You could also define a rule that deletes or moves mails from
senders not in your address book (i.e., contact-type folder). Outlook
doesn't let you list more than one contact-type folder per rule, so if you
have N contact-type folders for known good senders then you need to define N
rules to check for known good senders (and end each with the stop-clause
since you don't need to waste time exercising other rules when you already
know you want to keep the message).
If you don't want spam, and if you don't want to bother defining thousands
of rules but are limited by Outlook's rule set, get some anti-spam software.
SpamPal and all its plug-ins are free. There are commercial (i.e., paid)
programs but SpamPal works better than most of them. SpamBayes is free (but
*only* give you a Bayesian filter).
