There are a few important rules to remember in order to minimise your risk of receiving spam in the future:
| 1. | Never open a spam mail and remember to turn the preview pane off, so only those messages you deliberately open are displayed. The pictures in spam mails are usually made so spammers can see if you open them and that means lots of spam. To turn the preview pane off: |
Outlook Express: Click View Menu > Layout and remove the check mark beside Show Preview Pane.
Outlook Express 6.0 offers a "Read all messages as plain text" option. This is a good alternative to disabling the preview pane.
Outlook 2000/XP: Click View Menu > Preview Pane.
Outlook 2003: Click View Menu > Reading Pane > Off.
| 2. | When you run SPAMfighter for the first time, it would be a good idea to clean your Inbox for previous recieved spam. You can do this by clicking "More" -> "Clean Folder". Choose which folder to clean, and SPAMfighter will search and filter all your spam mails into the SPAMfighter folder. |
Note: See also section 6.7 Cleaning out a mail folder
You are now protected against spam, and there is basically nothing else you need to do with regard to SPAMfighter. If you feel SPAMfighter is currently not effective enough, you can increase the sensitivity of the spam filter (See section 6.5 Increasing spam filter sensitivity)
Note: When you change the sensitivity of the filter, there is a risk that SPAMfighter might filter out legitimate emails. It is therefore important that you add all approved email addresses and domains to your whitelist (See section 6.3 Adding contacts to your whitelist) and generally keep an eye on your SPAMfighter folder for the first month or so, in order to catch any genuine emails and add the senders to your whitelist. In this way, SPAMfighter will quickly learn which emails you want to receive.