CoJo,
I'm sorry I can't answer the specific question you asked, but I can provide some advice for continuing to use OE.
1) Your ISP will probably let you create another e-mail address to use. If so, abandon your current one. You can set up a message rule to delete all mail using that account from the server if you like. You may or may not have to do this. With some ISPs, each e-mail account has its own storage. Once it fills, further messages will be rejected, but this doesn't affect the other accounts. Other ISPs provide storage space that is split between all accounts, blocking them all when it is filled, so you'll have to make provisions to delete the spam from the server. After a while, say a couple of months, you might be able to resume using the abandoned account if spammers take that e-mail address off their lists as a result of the e-mail bouncing.
2) If you can set up multiple e-mail addresses, use a tiered system. Have one for personal use, which you give only to friends and family. Use a second one that you give to companies, say to register for products or services. Finally, have a third for use publicly on the Internet if required. That way you can manage your e-mail more easily.
3) Instead of trying to keep up with creating rules for all the spam based on a gazillion keywords, use the
Blocked Senders List. This will block all messages from a particular sender, regardless of what's in the subject or message body. If you specify just the domain portion of an e-mail address (the part after the '@'), you can block e-mail from everyone at that company. Just be careful how you use it -- don't block an ISP's domain like
worldnet.com. If you do, you won't receive e-mail from people that you want to if they use that same ISP.
4) Instead of using black lists to delete e-mail you don't want, the technique you're using now, use white lists to accept those that you do. By using white lists, you can also get OE to automagically sort your e-mail. Specify people you want to get e-mail from in one or more rules which moves their messages to one or more specific folders. Place this rule at the beginning of the list. Make another rule that moves all e-mail to a spam folder, and place it at the end. Because message rules are processed in order top-to-bottom, by the time any messages make it through the list, all of your desired messages should be neatly tucked away. By moving the messages to a spam folder instead of deleting them, you can scan it for e-mail that shouldn't be there and create new message rules to handle it. Periodically empty the spam folder. One caution: don't do this while you're receiving new messages (and thereby placing some of them in the folder); OEs database can become corrupted if you do. It's best to empty this folder while you're offline, especially if it contains a large number of messages. This guarantees that you won't start receiving new messages while the deletions are ongoing.
5) Install an AS (anti-spam) utility. If you search the
avast! forums and elsewhere on the Web, you'll find recommendations. A good place to start is with Technicals excellent thread
Links! for almost everything ...) at
http://www.avast.com/forum/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=1509.
Regards,
Hornus
