There are plenty of ways to protect your web mail account from spam, too. We'll take a moment to look at the spam filtering tools offered by three of the most popular web mail services: Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo and Google Mail.

In Windows Live Hotmail, select Options, More Options. Click on the Filters and confirmation link to select a level of spam filtering and other spam settings. Click the Save button to apply your preferences. By clicking on the Safe and blocked senders link, it's possible to construct a list of approved senders whose mail will always be allowed through the spam filter, draw up a list of senders from whom mail will always be blocked and, if you subscribe to newsletters, specify which group mailings should be allowed through.

Windows Live Hotmail will automatically send suspected spam to the Junk folder. Click on this to check which messages have been quarantined and restore any thai have been misclassified using the Move to, Inbox option. To report a message in the Inbox as spam, check the box to the left of it and click the Junk button.

With Yahoo and GoogleMail.it.s possible to report spam, check on quarantined messages and restore wrongly quarantined emails in much the same way. Yahoo Mail has its own spam blocker called SpamGuard. To specify any email addresses you never want to receive mail from, select Mail, Mail Options and click Blocked E-mail Addresses. Next, enter the addresses one at a time in the Add a blocked address textbox and click the Add button. Upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus and you can protect your e-mail address from spam using disposable e-mail addresses to sign up to new services. If a disposable address starts to attract spam, delete it. Any future messages sent to this address will be bounced back to the sender.

When using GoogleMail.it.s also possible to create a bespoke rules-based filter to send e-mails from certain addresses containing certain keywords, or that have attachments, directly to the Trash folder. To do this, click on the Create a filter link located to the right of the search textbox on any GoogleMail page. Enter e-mail addresses you don't want to receive e-mails from, subject lines of e-mails that should be sent straight to Trash or keywords GoogleMail should use to block messages. Click the Next Step button and on
the next screen check the Delete box, then
click the Create Filter button.