E-mails

Creating E-mail Filters in Yahoo!…

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

A lot of guys have complained regarding unsolicited e-mails. It reached a point where I got fed up hearing all the negativity & decided to do something ’bout it. That’s when I stumbled on the filter functionality. I’m going to explain how to set up e-mail filters in 11 steps.

STEP 1:

  • Open your Yahoo! e-mail account.


STEP 2:

  • Click on the down arrow key next to the “Options” link & click on “Mail Options”.

STEP 3:

  • Once done, the Mail Options window will appear. On the left-hand pane, all the configuration options are listed e.g. “General”, “Signature”, “Spam” etc… Click on “Spam”.


STEP 4:

  • After clicking “Spam”, check “Automatically send suspected spam to my Spam folder”.
  • On the “Empty Spam folder” option, open the drop down menu & select “once a week”.
  • On the “Block images” option, select “Always show images, except in spam folder”.
  • Once finished, click on Save Changes.

STEP 5:

  • After configuring the Spam options, click on “Filters”.
  • Once the Filters Configuration window appears, click on “Create or edit filters”.

STEP 6:

  • Once the following window has loaded, click on “Add”.

STEP 7:

  • On the Filter Name, type “Bidii Afrika”. (This can be any name)
  • In the field next to the To/Cc header, type bidii-afrika@googlegroups.com (This can be any e-mail address)
  • Under the “Trash” option, open the drop down menu & select the “Trash” folder.
  • Click on Save Changes.

STEP 8:

  • If the filter has been properly configured, the following window will appear:


STEP 9 (Second Filter i.e. for practice sake):

  • On the Filter Name, type “Young Professionals”. (This can be any name)
  • In the field next to the To/Cc header, type youngprofessionals_ke@googlegroups.com (This can be any e-mail address)
  • Under the “Trash” option, open the drop down menu & select the “Trash” folder.
  • Click on Save Changes.

STEP 10:

  • If the filter has been properly configured, the following window will appear:

STEP 11:

  • Once the e-mail filters have been configured, click on “Back to Mail Options”.
  • After the window has loaded, click on “Check Mail” to return to reading your messages.

Suspicious E-mails…

Greetings,

It has come to my attention that e-mails such as the ones below are circulating to my family & friends:

Dear friend,
I would like to introduce a really good company that mainly do the electornic products trade.
Now the company is doing promotion,all of it’s products are sold nearly as same as their cost.
It redeners the best service to customers,it provide you original products which is
good quality,and what’s more,the pricewill give you a big surprise!
It is realy a good opportunity for doing shopping.Just grasp the opportunity,or there will be no more than that!
The web address: [insert above address here and this is a link which I have not clicked]


Hi friend,

i would like to introduce a good company who trades mainly about electornic products.Now the company is under sales promotion ,all the products are sold nearly at its cost.If order more,they will give big discount for you.(20% to 30% discount).They provide the best service to customers,they provide you with original products of good quality,and what is more,the price is a surprising happiness to you!
It is realy a good chance for shopping.just grasp the opportunity,Now or never! Website [insert above address here and this is a link which I have not clicked]

If you receive such e-mails, please ignore them & delete IMMEDIATELY from your Inbox!!! I can’t determine whether your accounts have been compromised or not, however, I can offer two explanations as to how they can be so:

  1. Someone has seen you type your password over your shoulder (This is the simplest technical explanation).
  2. Your computer has been infected with some kind of phising worm that has recorded your keystrokes & used your e-mail accounts to send unsolicited junk e-mails to your entire address book.

For now, if you’ve been compromised, just e-mail your contacts with a simple explanation of what happened to your account & assure them that you now have complete control of your account. Advise them as well to secure their accounts to prevent this from happening to their e-mail.

Next, enhance your account’s protection to prevent this from happening again, moreover, ensure that you’re the only person who has access to your account. Here are the steps:

  1. Change your password as well as your secret question & answer regularly to increase the privacy of your account. You can use several combinations of letter cases & numbers to make your password harder to decode.
  2. Properly log out of your account after your (Gmail, Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite etc) session by clicking the “Sign Out” button on the upper-right side of your Inbox.
  3. When using a public terminal, always clear your Temporary Internet Files (cache) & close the browser that you were using before ending your Internet session.
  • Start Internet Explorer.
  • On the “Tools” Menu, click “Internet Options”.
  • Under the Browsing History, click “Delete”.
  • In the Delete Browsing History window, click “Delete Cookies”.
  • When you’re prompted to confirm the deletion, click “Yes”. It may take several minutes to delete these files if you have a lot of them.
  • For other browsers, please refer to the Help files of that browser…

The following precautions are also very beneficial:

  1. Don’t share your password to anyone even if they claim that they’re persons of authority.
  2. Be sure not to click “Remember My Password/Remember Me On This Computer” at your e-mail login page if you’re using a public computer (i.e. cyber cafe). Enabling this feature will allow users to automatically sign in to your account & bypass the username & password authentication portion.

If you’re wondering where to get good security solutions for your PC/Laptop, download the following:

Incase of any further inquiries, don’t hesitate to drop me a line…

Sending e-mails…

Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every e-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That’s right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel!

How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps:

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That’s right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second You MUST click the “Forward” button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don’t click on “Forward” first, you won’t be able to edit the message at all.

(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don’t see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that’s it, it’s that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say “Undisclosed Recipients” in the “TO:” field of the people who receive it.

(3) Remove any “FW:” in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading. Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view; you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent.

(5) Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses.

A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition. (Actually, if you think about it, who’s supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don’t believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just isn’t so!)

(6) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say that something like, “Send this email to 10 people and you’ll see something great run across your screen.” Or, sometimes they’ll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (Trust me; I’m still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!) I don’t let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed. (Could be why I haven’t won the lottery??)

(7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that’s been circling the net for YEARS! Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at Snopes.