Free Anti-Spam Software/Technique That Works Surprisingly Well!
© 2009 Anthony Toigo
Within the past year, I have been using Gmail’s secure send and receive servers for my mail repository and spam filtering. As a result, the overall incidence of spam has been reduced dramatically. I also have shared this technique with friends who also report similar amazing results.
One friend shared with me that he was processing over 500+ spam emails on Monday mornings and that it was such a waste of his productive time in his business. This 500 spam email result before Gmail was implemented took place while using one of the more popular spam filtering firewall software programs. He claimed that that did work but not effectively enough. 500 spam messages was just too much to have to sort through. He was actually considering changing his email address before we added the Gmail account. Now, after placing Gmail in between his ISP and his Outlook inbox, that number is several nuisance emails to deal with in the morning instead. It works that well. And now, my friend gets to spend time running his business and now making more money instead of wasting his valuable time dealing with spam.
Spam continues to remain an ever increasing issue for just about everyone. If you are like most and like myself, you have changed email addresses on more than one occasion. If you own your own domain like many do, and if you are using email for business, it becomes even that much more difficult or more like impossible to change your address. Although, some of the email service providers seem to be doing a descent job of filtering out the bad stuff, it is never an exact science. Either the spam gets past the filter or the filter screens what is not spam
New technologies are on the way that will virtually eliminate spam completely through sender/receiver authentication that will absolutely identify and verify who it is that is sending you mail and who you are as the receiver. But until that happens, we will have to continue to do the best we can with what we have. Server side spam monitoring and management such as Spam Assassin etc and PC installed anti spam programs do work but they can cost money and are not always completely effective.
If you are spending an inordinate amount of time sorting through spam to make certain that something important has not been flagged incorrectly and filtered I would highly recommend that you adopt this technique. In business, losing an important email can mean the difference between making a sale or not and whether you get to make the car or house payment that month or not. Mission critical is the key phrase and email has in fact become “Mission Critical”.
In this article, I will provide a simple method that is fairly easy to set up and that will work for most small enterprise and personal email account customers who are able to forward their email from their ISP mail server to an alternative address. This will be accomplished using Gmail as the collection repository in lieu of your normal email provider’s server. Your existing host ISPs server will simply act as a relay going forward once everything is set up properly. Gmail will then begin to collect your mail where you can pick it up using a secure login once the transition has been completed.
Below is the description of each step and what the procress should look like. At the end of this document are more specific step by step instructions that are what I use and what I provide to my friends when they wish to employ this feature for themselves.
Step One: You must first verify with your ISP that they can and that they are willing to forward your email to another address. Without this you will not be able to make this work. Simply the forward is called a relay without storage at your ISP.
Step Two: After verification, you will need to go to http://www.gmail.com and select “Create New Account” Try to secure an address that makes sense to you. But don’t worry too much about the name because it is not really that important and will not be the name that will show up when you send email from your mail client.
Step Three: After you have set up the new account with Gmail, you will need to go back into that account and change some basic settings and to also create and verify your true real email address and set that as the default reply to address. Gmail is very good about this and makes it very convenient.
Step Four entails clicking on the link in Gmail that shows the step by step procedure to set up your particular email client if you are using one. They currently support the most popular clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express as well as Apple Mail and Entourage Mail etc.
If you have done everything correctly, you should now have two email accounts at a minimum on your computer. Once you have followed the setup process in step four, it is time to test to make sure that everything is working properly with the new account. Send outgoing test emails to your existing account from the new account to verify that the email signature is your real address. Also test the incoming by sending a test email from your existing email address account.
After performing the necessary tests, it is now time to contact your ISP to request the switch over to forward your email to the new Gmail account. You must give them the exact account email address information to insure that your mail will be forwarded properly and that it will be a smooth transition for you. After the forward has been done, all of your mail should now be deposited into your Gmail account for collection from that point forward and it should not be collecting in the account with your ISP anymore.
Gmail will immediately eliminate any mail that comes from known servers that are spam and not ligitimate. This in itself will eliminate a large majority of spam from ever reaching your account to begin with. These known servers never distribute legitimate email anyway. The next level of filtering will place suspected mail into a spam folder that is accessable from the Gmail interface that you can get to through your web browser.
There is a training period that usually takes about 1-2 weeks that will probably require you to check the spam folder on gmail for ligitimate mail. Simply log in to Gmail, select Spam and go through the list, clicking the check box on email that you want to receive. After this, mouse click the button that says “Not Spam.” This will train Gmail to now recognize that mail as ligitimate and move it to the inbox where it will download to your inbox on your computer.
You will also have to occasionally tell gmail that particular mail is spam that arrives in your inbox. This does happen on occasion but not too frequently.
And that’s pretty much it! I hope that this is a helpful tool for you and that is saves you a lot of time that will free you to do other things that are more important to you.
Please provide feedback here in the comment forms provided as to the results you achieve from using this technique and Gmail’s excellent email servers and services.
Also, if you use this technique and find that it helps free up a substantial amount of your time and allows you to be more productive and profitable, donations are always appreciated and accepted at: (craigslist [at] toigo.net)
Thanks for reading,
Tony
The Step by Step Process:
Note: Always select “Save Changes after any changes have been made and when that selection is available to you.
For setting up your new Gmail account:
Go to http://www.gmail.com
Select “Create an account’
Fill in your name etc and desired email address
follow the simple steps provided by Gmail by filling in all information including your email address as a backup.
Select “I accept , Create my account”
For setting up your default email address which is your usual address, follow these instructions.
Log in to your new Gmail account
Select “Settings”
Select “Accounts and Import” Tab
Go to section labeled “Send mail as:”
Fill in your real email address in the section “Send mail from another address” in the pop up window that will launch. It should have your name filled in already. Adjust as necessary and fill in the proper email address.
After clicking “Next Step”, click “Send Verification” Then go to your email client and check for the verify email and acknowledge it by following the instructions within it. They will instruct you and provide a verification code that you will need to copy and paste into the send verification window. After pasting the code, click “verify”
In the Settings – Accounts – Send mail as section, select “Default” for your true email address.
For setting up POP access:
Log in to your new Gmail account
Select “Settings”
In the POP Download Section-
Select “Forward And POP/IMAP”
Ignore the Forwarding settings and leave them at the default “Disable Forwarding”
Select “Enable POP For All Mail (Even Mail That’s Already Been Downloaded)”
Selection 2: I tend to leave at the default setting where Gmail keeps a copy for me. Note: This setting is helpful if you want redundancy for email storage and if you tend to keep email for a long time. This can be great if forbid, your computer were to crash someday. Choose the setting that suits your own habits and preferences.
Click “Save Settings” or “Save Settings”
Section 3 Configure your email client: click on the hyper link provided in Gmail for your particular instructions and follow them.
When you have completed everything and all is working smoothly and well, you will want to either eliminate the original pop 3 accounts in your email client or simply disable them from attempting to access download mail from your ISPs mail servers. Also note that it is important to make sure that the new Gmail outgoing email account is selected as your default mail sending account.
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© 2009 Anthony Toigo
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