Newbie question on junk filter

[Mel]

I've got one of those Freeserve email addresses where any string of text
before the @ reaches my inbox so long as it contains my unique Freeserve
string after the @ .

Within minutes of signing up to Freeserve I started receiving junk messages,
all with the same, seemingly random, name before the @ followed by my unique
address after the @ .

Outlook often labels these incomong messages as 'spam' but still they make
it into my inbox.

My question is, surely the fact that all these junkmail outfits use the
identical name before the @ can be exploited for filtering??? Sadly I am
too IT clueless to know how to achieve this!

As far as I can see, Outlook lets me specify 'safe senders', 'safe
recipients' and 'blocked senders' but not 'blocked recipients' if you see
what I mean?

I could probably narrow down the 'safe recipients' list but would then lose
the 'unlimited number of email addresses' functionality. This however can
be a great boon if you want to spot who sends you unsolicited junk mail. I
once joined Weight Watchers UK, gave them my email address as
'weightwatchers@<myuniquestring>' , ticked the box that I wanted no email
adverts and ever since, have received hundreds of 'loose weight fast' junk
emails to that address. But I digress ...

Any tips as to how to blow a specific recipient email address out of the
water gratefully received!

M

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

My question is, surely the fact that all these junkmail outfits use the
identical name before the @ can be exploited for filtering??? Sadly I am
too IT clueless to know how to achieve this!

Nope, because unfortunately they don't all use the identical name before the
@.

Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft Outlook FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/outlook.htm

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for assistance.
Please post questions and replies here in the newsgroup. Mahalo!

 

[Mel]

Nope, because unfortunately they don't all use the identical name before
the @.

Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft Outlook FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/outlook.htm

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for
assistance. Please post questions and replies here in the newsgroup.
Mahalo!

Thanks but I am still not quite clear about this, it looks to me as if most
mass emailers send junk to one particular version of my address let's call
it

will.smith@<my unique string after the at sign>

Surely Outlook must be capable of filtering out just the emails sent to
will.smith ???

M

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Sure, but you don't really think that most spam worldwide actually goes to
will.smith@[domain] do you? If that were true then only the Fresh Prince
(and namesakes) would be receiving much spam and the rest of us would be
fairly happy.

The reality is that will.smith@[domain] gets roughly the same amount of spam
that marshall.mathers@[domain] or missy.elliott@[domain] gets. For some
reason your system is showing you more will.smith@yourdomain spam or maybe
some spammer decided that (e-mail address removed) was a valid e-mail
address and sold it to a bunch of lists.

You can block (e-mail address removed), certainly, but it's not going to
stop all spam.

Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft Outlook FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/outlook.htm

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for assistance.
Please post questions and replies here in the newsgroup. Mahalo!