[WEB4LIB] FW: RE: Preferred public email accounts

[Louise Alcorn]

Hunter--

For what it's worth, I have had a Yahoo! account since soon after they began offering them.  Earlier this year I was going to be out of the country for a month and didn't want my account filling up, as I'd have limited access.  For about two months preceding my departure, I made a point of using the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of most junk emails.  I noticed multiple emails being produced from the same lists, which I never remembered signing up for (of course).  Once I'd been persistent about this, my number of overall Bulk Mails went down significantly, and has mostly stayed down.  I agree that occasionally something I want ends up in Bulk Mail, but it is rare.  The companies I do regular business with, or whose "coupons" I actually want, tend to get through to my Inbox.  And with the new interface, I can "empty" my Bulk Mail folder with a single click, which is nice--especially when I'm reaching capacity :-)

The porn email is, of course, the exception to the above success story.    If on rare occasions it shows up in my Inbox, I block it and send it to Yahoo as spam.  Pointless, of course, since these porn companies change their email addresses every day (!).  I did send a message to Yahoo! support mentioning that I'd like to be able to block and notify about spam *without* having to look at the message itself (basing solely on the subject line, which you can usually identify as porn spam).  No response as yet.  Perhaps the next upgrade?

I've watched many of my patrons struggle with the interface on Hotmail, and I've tried to familiarize myself with it so I can answer their questions, but I think it is unnecessarily frustrating and poorly laid out.

My $.02 worth, payable in installments.
Louise


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Louise E. Alcorn     --    Reference Technology Librarian
West Des Moines Public Library
4000 Mills Civic Pkwy
West Des Moines IA 50265
(515) 222-3573      louise.alcorn at wdm-ia.com
http://www.wdm.lib.ia.us

>>> "Kevil, L H." <KevilL at missouri.edu> 10/04/02 01:10PM >>>

Hi Keith,

How do you manage to keep your trash mail so low?

Yahoo's SpamGuard does catch most spam and place it in the bulk mail folder. But I find we still have to scan it because some messages we do want are sent there.  But for the trash that gets into the Inbox, you have to open the message before you can mark it as spam, and some of those messages are very offensive. 

Hunter

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Higgs [mailto:dkh2 at po.cwru.edu] 
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 11:51 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: Preferred public email accounts


While it's not the only option out there I would have to agree with this
evaluation of Yahoo. Their spam filter has actually gotten quite good
and gets better all the time.  In fact, the now have tools for you to
tell them that a particular message is spam so they can enhance their
filter.

I now see less than 4 spam messages a month in my Yahoo account. It used
to be several per day.  Contrast that with the (literally) hundreds that
are handled every day by my client side filtering on this account.

D. Keith Higgs <mailto:dkh2 at po.cwru.edu>
 Case Western Reserve University, Webmaster - University Library
 Additional Information at http://www.cwru.edu/UL/ 
"Follow the white rabbit."


> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib at webjunction.org 
> [mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Bill Teschek
> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 12:29 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Preferred public email accounts
> 
> 
> When your patrons ask for advice on what free, web-based email 
> service to sign up with, what do you advise them? I'd like to find a 
> service that is obscure enough not to generate great volumes of 
> spam (like hotmail does) but stable enough to be unlikely to 
> disappear some day in the near future. I've been suggesting yahoo 
> as a better alternative to hotmail, but would like to explore some 
> other options.
> 
> Bill Teschek
> Assistant Director
> Lane Memorial Library
> 2 Academy Ave.
> Hampton, NH 03842
> bteschek at hampton.lib.nh.us 
> (603)-926-3368
> (603)-926-1348 (fax)
> http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us 
> 
> 
> 
>