Dealing with that unwanted e-mail

By Lim Tri Santosa

JAKARTA (JP): Consider the Disney-Microsoft gimmick, which claims recipients will receive US$5,000 or a free vacation at Disney World if they help test a new Microsoft e-mail tracking system by forwarding an e-mail message. Millions of people received it, including myself. The lure of something for nothing is pretty powerful. It did no harm, except to waste some time.

Another pestilent phenomenon is chain e-mail, "send this to everyone" mail, "virus warnings", and the like. These campaigns often claim they are done for a good cause. Spreading them around causes nothing, but resource drains, bother, and sometimes panic to the people you send them to.

Self-Defense Method

To begin with, your e-mail is just that -- yours, and as such has value attached to it. It is like your name, you are not going to change your name frequently, are you? In most cases, an e-mail address is a resource that you must pay for as part the cost of connecting to the Internet. If you have been on the net a while, unsolicited e-mail advertising, commonly known as spam, has probably seriously bothered you. If you haven't had any yet, it is highly likely you will be bothered in the future as it is a growing problem. Receiving one or two such messages a day is annoying. Receiving dozens of them is a genuine drain on your time and resources, and one you should not have to put up with.

Most users think that their Internet Service Provider (ISP) should protect them from spammers. The ISP administrator cannot handle all users' incoming junk e-mail personally, besides, new spams spring up every day. I no longer think complaining helps. Spam victims have complained a lot, but the complaints really don't do anything to stop spam. Why? One answer is the rapid growth of Internet and the opportunity of e-mail, which creates a constant stream of new victims.

Precautions like filtering e-mail with your e-mail software is not useful. Why? Because it has several shortcomings, including the fact that you still have to pay for the time and bandwidth to download the spam to your computer to be filtered. You have to keep up with the latest spammer tactics and keep your filters updated; and most users don't have the time or the skill to do this kind of job. It is a poor way to stop spam. Well, now what?

The best approach is terminating them before they reach your e-mail inbox on your computer. Yes, break the chain on the Internet Service Provider incoming-mail server (POP Server). It is a self-defense method.

E-mail Remover

E-mail Remover can save you the trouble of downloading unwanted e-mail. It connects to your ISP and retrieves mail header information (sender, subject, date, etc.), letting you pick mail you don't want to receive and deleting it from the mail server.

It will optionally run your regular e-mail client when it's done so that you can transfer and read the mail you do want. E- mail Remover is a handy little tool in the never-ending battle against spam -- and it's free. You can download the latest E-mail Remover version 2.4 at http://www.davecentral.com/5142.html (this site is a legal website, all freeware in this website are virus- free guaranteed).

Freeware is 100 percent free of charge software that you can use as long as you want without any time limit or other limited features. Best of all, you are also allowed to distribute or copy it to your friends. The platform system for running this software is either Windows(r) 95/98 or Windows(r) NT.

The best key feature of E-mail Remover is small and simple, basically contained in a single executable file (eremove.exe). No installation is required. You simply unzip the package (eremov24.zip) to any subdirectory and click on the eremove.exe. Efficient and safe, it doesn't create any "ini" files in the Windows(r) registry, purely stand-alone "exe" files; thus you need not worry that this program will cause a slow down in your Windows(r) system or interfere with other Windows(r) programs.

It also supports unlimited accounts (in case the user has multiple accounts with various ISPs). Having a user-friendly interface, the sorted e-mail is similar to a spreadsheet table; even a novice user will become accustomed to it in a matter of minutes.

When you use E-mail Remover for the first time, E-mail Remover will ask you to enter your e-mail account information. You need to provide E-mail Remover with your POP mail server (you can get this information from your ISP administrator), your user identification (usually the part of your e-mail address to the left of the @ sign), and your account password.

How does it work? If you receive promotional catalogs or brochures by post, you have the option to just throw them in the trash can after glancing at the name of the sender or the heading titles.

Yes, it is like sorting mail; just pick what you want to read. E-mail Remover lists all the messages quickly and lets you choose which ones to delete. It works by retrieving e-mail header information, including any file attachment size from the POP Server, and lets you preview the first few lines of your message by clicking the button on the right of your mouse.

The preview ability can help a user peek at an e-mail message from an ambiguous sender, thus the user can decide whether it is necessary to let it go or delete it. After deletion, it can launch your regular e-mail program to download the remaining mail. Thus, this program doesn't replace your favorite e-mail program to download wanted e-mail from POP Server.

I have done some tests to check how powerful this freeware is. I asked my friends who have access to the Internet to bombard me with as much e-mail as possible. Truly, I admit it is like suicide; receiving about 450 e-mail messages with a total size of almost 30 MB in one day! But I easily managed to delete all the unwanted ones.

Beware: you cannot run your e-mail program before you exit E- mail Remover, otherwise you will not be able to download your e- mail from the POP Server.

Let me explain, if you run your e-mail program and E-mail Remover at the same time, POP Server will notice that there are two clients trying to log onto the same account and the server will prohibit it.

The number one place that used to be the target of spamming is the Usenet newsgroup. Usenet typically can spread your message worldwide in a matter of hours, and advertisers easily avail themselves of it -- with your attached e-mail address. Do not use newsgroup, otherwise be ready to face the consequences. If you want to go to the relatively unfettered nature of the Internet jungle, then E-mail Remover is a tool that you must equip yourself with.

I still remember computer columnist Zatni Arbi's story about a friend at Intel Corp., who informed him that some smart guy there sent him 67 e-mail messages with an attachment of 1.4 MB in data each. Well, with this software, I am not afraid of anyone who intends to bombard me with e-mail or any other cyber gimmick. By the way, one thing my girlfriend said about the Disney vacation was: "Gimmick or not, everyone has the right to dream." Oops.