There are several ways to reduce the amount of junk e-mails you see in your inbox. Follow these simple rules and you should see a dramatic reduction in the amount of new unwanted e-mails that you receive.

1. Do not hand out your e-mail address indiscriminately
   Providing your e-mail address to some web sites means they may add you to their mailing list and sell your address to any company or individual that wants to pay for it. If you are unfamiliar with the company operating the web site, it is best not to provide them with your e-mail address. If it is necessary to provide an e-mail address, you may provide a fake address. You may also set up a e-mail account with one of the free web-based e-mail services such as Hotmail and use that account address anytime you are submitting a form on a suspect web site. If you must use your primary e-mail address when submitting a form, check the web site's terms and conditions of use policy. Most commercial organizations provide this policy to let users know what the company intends to do with information gathered on the site.
2. Avoid replying to the sender with REMOVE in the subject line
   Messages you receive may include instructions (such as to reply with REMOVE in the subject line) on how to remove yourself from future mailings from the individual or organization. Unfortunately, many senders include these instructions in order to try to confirm that they've reached a working e-mail address, not to remove you from mailings. Unless you are unsubscribing from a mail distribution list that you signed up for or you know the message sender, the best practice is to discard these messages without responding. Some messages contain a phone number to call, but many contain no information on how to stop future mailings. Often if you reply to these messages, you find that the return address or phone number is invalid or is that of someone other than the real sender.
3. Alter your e-mail address when posting
   Organizations that sell e-mail addresses use computer programs that scan Web pages and newsgroups to harvest e-mail addresses. If you display an e-mail address on a Web page or when posting to newsgroups, alter your e-mail address in such a way as to trick search programs but not confuse users. For example, if your e-mail address is username@cumberland.edu, change it to usernameNOJUNKMAIL@cumberland.edu. Most users will know to remove NOJUNKMAIL from the address before using it, but search programs will not.

Automatically move junk mail from your Inbox using Microsoft Outlook

1. On the standard toolbar, click Organize () or you can click on Tools then Organize on the menu bar.
   
   
   
2. Click Junk E-Mail in the resulting window that appears above the Inbox.
   
   
   
3. In the bulleted items for Junk and for Adult Content messages, in each of the first lists, click move. When you click move, the second list on each line will change from a list of colors to a list of folder destinations.
   You can leave the default destination (Junk E-Mail), click Deleted Items, or click Other folder and choose or create one.
4. Click Turn On to enable the feature.
5. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for both the Junk and Adult Content lines.
6. Click on the "X" in the upper right-hand corner to exit the dialog.

Some messages may get past the filters that Outlook uses to weed out unwanted mail. If an e-mail message comes through that you wish to be added to the list of unwanted e-mails, right click on the message, select Junk E-mail then the description that applies to the message. Delete the message. This setting will add the e-mail address of the sender to the filter list, but will not apply the rule to the current message. In the future, messages from that e-mail address will have the Junk or Adult Content filter applied to it.

Custom Rules

In addition to using the built-in Outlook filters, you can create custom rules to filter out specific types of unwanted messages. Custom rules include additional words or phases that are not included in the Filters.txt file. Just as with the built-in feature, you can specify that the rules you create move messages from your Inbox to the junk e-mail folder, to your Deleted Items folder, or to any other folder you specify.

To create custom rules:
On the Tools menu, click Rules Wizard, and then follow the instructions on your screen.