Creating a New Mail Rule from Scratch

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NOTE: The next section deals with pornography so certain words have been changed.

How to Create General Mail Rules

Figure 8.

You'll notice the word "and" is underlined two times in the third box. We want to change this to the word "or", in other words, delete the email if ANY of the phrases are found in the From line OR the Subject line OR the body of the message. Click on "and" and a little window pops up (figure 12). Check the BOTTOM radio button that says 'Messages match any one of the criteria', then click OK.

Now, we are going to add key phrases for the From, Subject, and Body. Move your mouse over the description of the rule (in the third box down). Click on 'contains people' for this lesson (you can do the same for 'contains specific words' on your own later). The Select People window appears. (figure 13) You can see some of the (altered) terms I used, and of course there are many others.

Be aware that the 'Contains People' portion can include both names (John Smith, etc.), phrases ('End hair loss'), or actual emails (joe@marketingcenter.com), or even domains (just marketingcenter.com). More about that later.

When you're done, click OK for each of the message boxes. Instead of Naming this rule 'New Mail Rule #2', let's call it 'Pornography' so we know what it deals with. I have rules on Get Rich Quick, Weight loss (like I really need it), etc.. Whenever a new email gets through (or keeps getting through and I'm finally irritated enough), I go to my Mail rules and add something to the appropriate rule that will keep that message out.

Blocking Entire Domains

You can also block emails that come from a specific domain. You can't do this for emails from yahoo, for example, because that would block legitimate emails. But if the email comes from "great-deal@freeoffers.com", we can put a stop to every email that freeoffers.com sends. Just type in each domain name in the "Where the From Line Contains" section for one of your mail rules.

Final Tips

1. Unfortunately you really can't exclude just the word sex. If you did that, your friend from Middlesex, England couldn't get an email through to you.

2. You could include the word 'Adult' as something to block, but only in the Subject line (most people don't use that word in their subjects). But if you include Adult in the body, a confirmation for "three adults and two children" for the flight would be deleted.

3. If you include the term XXX, know that some people use that to mean kisses, but emails from these folks usually wind up being forwarded stories or the like anyway.

Hopefully in the future, I will have the time to write an article about ways to proactively shut down spammers who continually send spam email even when you ask to be removed from a list. By the way, I don't recommend you ask to be removed from email lists (except subscriptions you signed up for originally), because that will just confirm your email is valid, and you'll be removed from that list and put on another "hot lead" list.

Samuel Fullman
Compass Point Media.