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February 1, 2003
Maintaining Email Sanity with Rules and Filters
By Wesley A. Fryer
Do you look forward to checking Email or do you dread it? Actually many might say they dread it. The growing volume of information available in our twenty-first century "network economy" makes checking Email a chore. The proliferation of less-important messages like SPAM (Email from unknown sources, usually trying to sell something), newsletters, and jokes forwarded by well-intentioned friends begins to overwhelm the more-important messages from friends and professional contacts. The result is chaos in the inbox. Educators at all levels need help maintaining sanity when it comes to Email, to maximize precious minutes devoted to electronic communication. Helping educators handle Email is important to their technological prowess. Technology integration is a noble goal, but if teachers are drowning in Email, their motivation to move further along a continuum of technology literacy may be weakened.
This article presents an overview of Email rules, or filters, available in most Email software, to assist in managing wanted as well as unwanted Email. After reading this article you will also want to check my online tutorials which include the specific steps for setting up mail rules and filters in six different programs.
Where is all this SPAM coming from?
The more time you spend surfing the Internet, the more Email you seem to receive. This is not a coincidence. Every time you download something that requires a name and an Email address to be submitted, register at a Web site using an Email address, or include an Email address on a mail-in product registration form, your Email address can be subscribed to mailing lists and likely shared with other companies collecting Email addresses for marketing purposes. Tech savvy marketers have set up many Web sites to automatically harvest Web surfer Email addresses (take information from the surfer computer's memory and insert it into a database) without any permission on the surfer's part to share that information. Internet Explorer and Netscape, the two most popular Web browsers, surreptitiously pass along a wide variety of information to Web sites without the knowledge of the user, if they are configured with default settings.
If a person's Email address is listed on a Web site with a contact link (created with the hypertext code "mailto:myname@school.edu," a virtual invitation to SPAMmers has inadvertently been created. Web based programs, called "robots" literally scour the Internet searching every page for "mailto" links like these, and create mammoth databases of Email addresses sold and shared with online marketers. Depending on the privacy policies of the company providing an Email address, the address may be sold and shared with other companies, with or without prior consent of Email users. In these ways, the quantity of Email received by even casual Internet users can increase quickly.
Drowning in Email? Here's Help!
If you feel the number of unwanted Email messages you receive is out of control you may want to take drastic action. Although inconvenient, the best way to quickly change the amount of SPAM is to change your Email address. This can be done by contacting the network administrator or ISP (Internet Service Provider) managing the Email account, or if the account is a free one (like Yahoo Mail or Hotmail) signing up for a new account with a different username. It is not necessary to change service providers: simply request a new username. After the address is changed, notify those people with whom you want to continue communicating (and you might want to include a polite request to minimize the number of forwarded jokes and other leisure-time reading). A very important warning: do not request or authorize temporary forwarding of Email that was sent to the old address, otherwise this procedure will be worthless. If desired, the old account can be accessed periodically for several weeks to make sure you didn't miss any important Emails. In this case, check the old account with a "Web mail" interface instead of a program that will download all Email to the computer hard drive, like Eudora or Outlook Express. Essentially, the old Email address should be shed like an old skin and left behind forever.
Armed with a new Email address and a heightened awareness of Internet Email privacy protection, Web users can change their online behavior to minimize the number of times their Email address is harvested by Web marketers. Some suggestions include:
- When filling out a Web form to register software or download something else, read the privacy agreement carefully and UNCHECK the box that authorizes the company to share your Email address with others offering similar products.
- Look for the TRUSTe logo indicating the company's professed commitment to privacy. But be aware that TRUSTe does not police Web sites for privacy policy adherence, so the logo does not offer any guarantees. Still, a professed commitment is better than none.
- Consider entering a false name and Email address when filling out a Web form if you do not want to be contacted by the company. The format for the Email field is usually validated, requiring that the typed address be in proper "Email format," but the address does not have to be a real or working one. Enter a name like Joe Joe and an Email address of joe@joe.com.
- Consider surfing the Internet with Javascript disabled on your Web browser. Javascript is required for many of the fancier Web site graphics and features, but most sites are still accessible without it. Be aware that Javascript is one programming language utilized by Web site designers to harvest information about you without your knowledge. Disabling Javascript can foil some of these attempts. To turn it off go to your Web browser preference settings.
- Consider entering a false name and Email address in the options presented in your Web browser and Internet control panel preference settings. As long as the Web browser is not used for Email (for example, using Netscape Mail), this name and Email address information does not need to be correct. Web forms "auto-filled" by the browser will need correction, but this is a small price to pay for heightened anonymity.
- Use mail rules, described below, in your Email program to organize and filter received Email messages.
An Overview of Mail Rules/Filters
Mail rules provide a mechanism for computer users to process Email messages automatically based on specified criteria. This will permit you to organize and pare down the number of Email messages regularly received. Mail rules can be used in many ways. Some of the common ones include:
- Automatically deleting offensive / inappropriate Email
- Organizing messages depending on the sender's Email address or text included in the message, either in the subject line or the message body. For example, all messages from my mailing list with the words "Tools for the TEKS Update" can be moved into a separate Email folder for later reading.
- Categorizing messages as suspected junk mail or by the category assigned in the address book (if categories are available)
- Adding or deleting a sender's Email address automatically to an Email distribution list in the address book
The steps for creating and invoking mail rules vary slightly depending on the software used, but the procedure is essentially the same:
- Click on a mail message to be processed by a new rule
- From a menu, choose to create a new rule
- Specify the CRITERIA the rule will look for (the IF condition)
- Specify the ACTION to be taken if the criteria is met (the THEN condition)
- Apply the rule to Email already received and/or apply it automatically when new mail is received.
The number of mail messages in the inbox can be dramatically reduced while still retaining important/desired messages from known contacts.
To determine the specific steps required to create Email rules/filters in your Email program, consult the help menu. Because different programs use different terms, you'll need to search for "rules," "filters," or "agents,". The basic principles and procedures for Email rules in all programs are similar, however. Many Web-based Email services, including Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, also allow mail filters to be created in the account options menu, so Web-based Email (accessed through a Web browser like Internet Explorer) can be filtered also.
Some Email programs provide "junk mail filters," a mechanism that helps identify unwanted Email. Whether using a junk mail filter or a mail rule of your own creation, use caution when choosing to permanently delete Email with an automated function. One alternative is to make the filter or rule move suspicious Email to a separate folder and periodically review its contents before deleting. This can reduce the chance of inadvertently deleting important Email.
It is said "There can often be too much of a good thing," and that is certainly the case with electronic communication. By creating and regularly updating appropriate Email rules and filters, educators can effectively stem the powerful tides of information in the inbox and still benefit from the power of digital communication in our information age.
Ready to set up Email rules/filters for yourself? Online tutorials are available for Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Microsoft Entourage ( Macintosh only), Yahoo Mail (Webmail), and Lotus Notes.
Added Information as of October 2002:
Rather than taking the time to create your own Email rules and filters, consider using inexpensive, shareware programs like Spamfire for Mac OS X or Spameater Pro for Windows. Both use hundreds of filters created by others to pre-screen Email before it is downloaded to your Email client.
Email: Wesley Fryer
Wesley Fryer is the Director of Distance Learning for the College of Education at Texas Tech University. He provides instructional technology training and support to K-16 educators as a consultant and through his free web site, 'Tools for the TEKS.'
Texas Computer Education Association
Copyright 2002, TCEA. Reprinted with permission.
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