Using Google SPAM filters for your own mail

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by: Wim Conradie
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Word Count: 617

The ultimate anti-SPAM solution
By filtering your email through Google's spam filters

Google currently has the best known anti-spam filters. The idea of this document is to explain how to make use of spam filters for any email account(s).

The basic steps:
1. Create a free Gmail account
2. Setup your normal email account to forward all incoming mail to your Gmail account
3. Enable your Gmail to work with Outlook (or any other mail client)
4. Setup Outlook (or any other mail client) to download the mail to your computer
5. Change the FROM address to your normal email account
6. Optional (recommended): Forward all other email accounts to this Gmail account

1. Create a free Gmail account

Go to http://mail.google.com/mail/signup
Follow the instructions

2. Setup your normal email account to forward all incoming mail to your Gmail account

If not sure, contact your service provider, who supplied you the email account, to help. Normally you will have an account where you can log in to change settings such as forwarding options, out of office reply, passwords, etc.

For Matogen clients:

- Simply visit http://yourdomain.com/webmail (kindly take note that the 'yourdmain.com' web address should be replaced by your own website's name)
- Enter your user name and password (please take note that the username is your full email address and not just the part before the "@")
- Click on "Forwarding Options", and then on "Add Forwarder"
- Enter your Gmail email address and click on the "Add Forwarder"

3. Enable your Gmail to work with Outlook (or any other mail client)

Google calls this "Enabling POP", because the protocol that is being used to download your email is called POP3. To do this:

Log into Gmail
Click on the "Settings" link at the top right
Go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP options

Choose "1. Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on"
Choose "2. When messages are accessed with POP archive Gmail's copy"
Click on "3. Configure your email client"

4. Setup Outlook (or any other mail client) to download the mail to your computer

Click on the appropriate email client (most people use Outlook 2003)
Click on the 2nd link to help you with configuring your mail client.
Open your Outlook (or other mail client) on your computer and follow the exact instructions that Gmail gives you to setup your account.

5. Change the FROM address to your normal email account

The place where you entered your "From address", change it to your normal email account (not the Gmail account). In Outlook this is the send field from the top called "E-Mail Address" just under "User Information"

Important: Your "from address" and your user name are not the same! The username should still be your Gmail address, because Outlook uses this to connect to Gmail.

Your "from address" is only used to show the recipient of the email who it came from and is completely independent of any email accounts. You can even insert a completely false email address there and still send it, but be aware of getting blacklisted for faking email accounts.

6. Optional (recommended): Forward all other email accounts to this Gmail account

If you have a lot of email addresses within the same area of work, forward all of them to this one Gmail email account. When a person sends mail to any of them, it will be filtered through Gmail (all spam removed), and then downloaded to your Outlook. When you reply to it, it will look as if you replied from the one normal email account (not the Gmail account).