Yahoo! Mail Spam Protection? Any way to enhance spam protection for free - right now it sucks!?

What can I do to prevent spam?

Yahoo! Mail is committed to eliminating spam and offers several tools to help you keep spam out of your inbox. Yahoo! has consolidated several of these tools under the "This is Spam" link next to the From: address in every message.

The most effective way to prevent spam from entering your inbox is to use SpamGuard. Help increase SpamGuard's effectiveness by sending examples of spam to Yahoo! to review. Yahoo! will use the messages you send using the "Spam" button to constantly improve the SpamGuard technology.

Yahoo! Mail offers you the ability to create filters for your account. You can create filters to deliver emails to a special folder or to the Trash that:

contain specific words or phrases

are from a sender's domain

containing other characteristics you find in spam

Yahoo! Mail allows you to prevent future email from a specific email address from being delivered to you at all. Note that many spammers frequently change their email address to avoid this technique.

You can choose how long you want to keep messages in your Bulk Mail Folder. You can choose to drop all messages in your Bulk Mail Folder or keep messages for 1 week, 2 weeks or 1 month. The default is one month.

To edit this feature:

Click "Mail Options"

Click "Spam Protection"

Here you will have the following two choices:

"Immediately delete these messages upon receipt".

"Save these messages in the Bulk folder" and select the desired timeframe from the drop down menu.

Important: Occasionally, valid email messages may be perceived as spam and delivered to the Bulk folder. Please note that if you select this option, you will not have an opportunity to review the messages in your Bulk folder before they are deleted.

Click "Save Changes"

Outside of the specific tools that Yahoo! Mail offers:

Never respond to unsolicited email (i.e., spam). To the individuals who send spam, one response or "hit" among thousands of mailings is enough to justify the practice. \

Never respond to the spam email's instructions to reply with the word "remove" unless you trust the company sending the email. This is a ploy to get you to react to the email and will alert the sender that your email address is open and available to receive mail, which greatly increases its value. If you reply, your address may be placed on more lists, resulting in more spam.

Never click on a URL or web site address listed within a spam email. This could alert the site to the validity of your email address, potentially resulting in more spam.

Never sign up with sites that promise to remove your name from spam lists.

Although some of these sites may be legitimate, more often than not, they are address collectors. The legitimate sites are ignored (or exploited) by the spammers, and the address collection sites are owned by spammers. In both cases, your address is recorded and valued more highly because you have just identified that your address is active.

What should I not do with spam?

Never open an unsolicited email (i.e., spam) unless you have the "Block HTML graphics" setting on. This setting will prevent spammers from being alerted that you have opened the message.

Never respond to spam. To the individuals who send spam, one reponse or "hit" among thousands of mailings is enough to justify the practice.

Never respond to the spam email's instructions to reply with the word "remove" unless you trust or know the sender. Many spammers use the "remove" or "unsubscribe" links as a ploy to get you to react to the email. This may alert the sender that your email address is open and available to receive mail, which greatly increases its value. If you reply, your address may be placed on more lists, resulting in more spam.

Never click on a URL or web site address listed within a spam email. This could alert the site to the validity of your email address, potentially resulting in more spam.

Never sign up with sites that promise to remove your name from spam lists. Although some of these sites may be legitimate, more often than not, they are address collectors. The legitimate sites are ignored (or exploited) by the spammers, and the address collection sites are owned by spammers. In both cases, your address is recorded and valued more highly because you have just identified that your address is active.

How do I block mail from a specific sender? Blocked addresses are email addresses that you do not want to receive any mail from. All incoming mail from these addresses will be automatically disposed of, without bouncing back to the sender. When you remove an address from your Blocked Addresses list, you will once again be able to receive mail from that address.

If you receive a message from a sender and want to block that sender, please follow the directions below:

From your inbox, check the box next to the message

Click the "Spam" button at the top of the page.

The message will be marked as spam and the sender's email address will be added to your Block List.

If this option is not working, please ensure you have enabled this feature in your Spam Protection settings. To check the settings, click on "Mail Options" and then on "Spam Protection." On the Spam Protection page, please make sure "Add the sender's email address to my blocked addresses list" is checked and then click on the "Save Changes" button.

To manually add an address to the list of blocked addresses:

Click "Mail Options" on the top-right navigation bar of your Yahoo! Mail page.

Click the "Block Addresses" link located in the first column on the left.

Enter the new address in the "Enter email address to block" field, and click "Block Address."

The address will then appear on your list of blocked addresses

In your Yahoo! Mail account, you may block up to 500 email addresses.

To remove ("unblock") an address:

From the Blocked Addresses list, check the box to the left of the address you wish to remove.

Click the "Delete Checked" button at the bottom of the Blocked Addresses list.

Top of Form

What are filters, and how can I set them up? Filters automatically sort your incoming messages into folders that you create or alert you of new email on your mobile device. They do so according to rules that you set up. The benefit of filters is that you don't need to read through each message to decide where it goes. For example, you could create a filter so that messages from your family members are automatically delivered to a personal folder called "Family," or messages from coworkers trigger a text alert on your mobile phone.

You may create up to 15 filters in your free Yahoo! Mail account. If you need more filters, check out Yahoo! Mail Plus. One feature of the Yahoo! Mail Plus service is a limit of 50 filters.

To create, edit, or delete a filter, click the "Mail Options" link on the top-right navigation bar, and then choose "Filters" located on the left side of the page, under the Management column.

You can also add a mobile alert for a particular sender by clicking on the "add mobile alert" link in the message header of the message view. This link will prompt you to register your phone to activate this service. Once you register, the link will pre-populate the filter page to enable you to easily add a mobile alert for this sender.

Creating a New Filter

To create a new filter, click the "Add Filter" link on the Filters page.

Choose the field you want to match in the incoming message. For example, select the one of the following headers: From:, To:/Cc:, Subject:, or Body to match.

Choose the criterion by which you want a match to be made. For example: contains, ends with.

Enter the text string to compare. For example: @rocketmail.com, Love, InfoBeat.

Choose the destination folder to which you would like the message delivered. For example: Personal, News, Admin.

If you have more than one filter, you'll also see "up" and "down" arrrows to the right of the filter list. Use these buttons to select the placement of your new filter within your existing sequence of filters. Filter order is important because Filter 1 will be the first filter applied to an incoming message, Filter 2 will be the next, and so on until a match is made or all filters are passed. If no filters match an incoming message, it will be delivered to your inbox.

Be sure to click the "Add Filter" button to put your new filter into effect.

Editing or Deleting an Existing Filter

Once you reach the Filters page, click radio button to the left of the filter you would like to edit and click the "Edit" button located on the top-right side of the Filters page. After making the desired changes be sure to click "Add Filter" for your changes to start taking effect.

To delete one of your filters, click radio button to the left of the filter you would like to delete and click the "Delete" button located on the top-right side

How can I report spam from the Inbox without having to view the message?

Yahoo! Mail provides two methods to report spam that you receive in your inbox. Yahoo! uses the information you send to discover the latest tricks and techniques spammers use to evade our filters and to update our SpamGuard technology to catch them.

You can report spam without ever opening the message. To do this, select the message in your inbox that you wish to report, then click the "Spam" button. This is a good idea because you should never open a spam message without blocking HTML graphics.

If you do open spam by mistake, you can still report the message to us. Simply click the "Spam" button located above the message.

On the Spam Protection page, you can choose the defualt behavior of the "Spam" button. You can choose to both report the message to Yahoo! and block the addresss to prevent yourself from ever receiving mail from that address (or domain) again.

I reduced mine, and if you would like to try it after signing in to you email click on Options (top far right side) under Mail options click on Spam Protection , under Spam filter, tick on immediately delete these messages upon receipt. At the bottom of the page, on the left side click on save changes. Done. I hope it is helpful, and have a happy New Year