The Problem with Spam Filters
While I am thrilled that anti-spam technology exists, I do find that it’s not always perfect. Just as you’ve noticed, sometimes spam lands in your inbox with your other good mail and sometimes good mail lands in your spam folder. When this happens, the spam filters are doing their job but not quite well enough. For example, if you regularly have to check your spam folder for good mail, you are still being exposed to all that unwanted e-mail - exactly what you were hoping to avoid.
Adjust Spam Filtering
Fortunately, spam filtering tools offer a means for adjusting the spam settings. Doing so involves a bit of trial and error. The trick is to get the right balance where most of the spam is tossed out and all of your messages routed to your inbox. You may have to sacrifice having a few spam messages land in your inbox in order to be sure that your legitimate emails come through safe and sound.
Adjusting the Spam Filter in Windows Live Mail
Not knowing exactly what e-mail or spam technology that you are using, I’ll give you an example of how you can adjust the settings in Windows Live Mail. Other e-mail programs and security tools will have their own unique steps but are similar in general.
First, go to Tools and select Safety Options. Several levels of junk mail protection are offered including: no filtering, low, high, and safe list only. In addition to these various options, you can also opt to permanently delete all identified junk mail instead of having it sent to your junk mail folder. In this case, changing the setting to low will route only the most obvious spam to the spam folder.
Deleting Spam Folder
To delete the contents of the spam folder, you usually just need to right-click it and choose “empty folder.” You can also set folders such as the Deleted Items folder to automatically delete everything when you close the program. For example, in Windows Live Mail, go to Tools > Options> Properties and click the Advanced tab followed by Maintenance. Here, you’ll see a setting for automatically deleting Deleted Items on exit. It’s possible that your e-mail client has a similar setting for the spam folder.
Why is Broadband so Slow?
Slow broadband connections can be related to computer viruses and malware chewing up your bandwidth as well as configuration setting errors within the modem itself. First, run a complete anti-virus and malware scan to rule out the possibility of malware. If you don’t have a good security solution, consider the products from Paretologic.com. You can even try a free scan to rule out malware but it’s a scanner only. If malware is found, you’d need to upgrade to the removal tool.
Next, contact your ISP and let them know that your connection speed is not what it should be. They should be able to help you troubleshoot the connection and configure your modem to work as promised.
Celeste Stewart | October 3rd, 2008
You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
