Help! I am deluged with SPAM!

If you are receiving too much spam (unwanted emails), we can label probable unwanted emails as SPAM so you can save time and effort in handling your daily emails.

Contact us any time with the email address which is affected and please tell us how you currently receive emails at this address so we can advise the best course of action; eg you use Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Webmail (Horde) or Blackberry etc? If you have more than one email address, please check carefully which address is being spammed. If your mail software does not make it clear, right click the spam mails and one of the options should be Properties and this should tell you which address was spammed.

There are two choices with the unwanted emails.

1. We can set the server to delete the emails immediately. This is particularly recommended for Blackberry users as it will reduce your data bill with your service provider, mobile users and if you still need to use a dial-up connection. But please note that the software is not infallible and may permanently delete genuine emails.

2. The second alternative is to screen your incoming mails using "Message Rules". We label the spam in the subject line so you can instruct your email software how to handle these messages. You set up mail rules and instruct your email software to handle emails labelled *****SPAM***** in a different way to normal mails.

Below are instructions for Outlook Express but other mail software will have "Message Rules". Check your software's help files for "Message Rules".

• Open Outlook Express
• Click Tools
• Select Message rules
• Select Mail
• Select New
• Choose "Where the Subject line contains specific words"
• Choose "Move it to the specified folder"
• Click the underlined words: "contains specific words"
• Type *****SPAM***** and then click Add
• Click OK
• Click the underlined word: "specified"
• I would suggest you send it straight to the Deleted items (you can still check these from time to time in case genuine emails are here) or create a new folder called Spam
• Select your required destination folder
• Click OK
• Give the Rule a name such as "Spam filter"
• Click OK