How to filter email and prevent junk arriving in your inbox

Thunderbird users can customise how junk email is received and dealt with. If the Junk filter is enabled (go to the Tools menu, then Account Settings, then Junk Settings, then 'Enable adaptive junkmail controls for this account') all suspicious email will carry a green junk icon, leaving you the choice of deleting it, or clicking the button - 'This is not Junk'. In the case of the latter, future emails from that sender won't be treated as spam.

Within the Junk Settings menu, there are further options to move new spam to a Junk folder automatically, which I would strongly recommend, and to delete junk mail older than a specific period. To prevent trusted emails being marked as junk, there is also an option to 'Not mark mail as Junk' if the sender is in your personal address book.

It is also possible to train Thunderbird to identify what's spam and what's not. To do this effectively, you will need tomakr all mail as either Junk or Not Junk by right-clicking the message and selecting the corresponding option from the list. The associated keyboard shortcuts (we like them!) are J for Junk and Shift+J for Non Junk. The more you teach Thunderbird, the more Junk will automatically find its way into the Junk folder - but don't forget to periodically check the Junk folder.

Outlook Express can also be trained, but in a different way, using Message filtering. Rather than simply blocking a sender, you can instruct Outlook to deal with certain email in a certain way. Within the Tools Menu, click Message Rules, then Mail. Create a new 'rule' for the progam to follow by clicking the New button and selecting certain conditions and actions. For example, you could select the following condition:

'Where the Subject line contains specific words - loan, Nigeria, increase'
do the following Action: 'Move to the specified folder - Junk'