Mail, junk mail and Viruses

So I guess I count myself as new and a switcher (even though I've had my Mac for a few months I haven't tried to flood it with freeware and junk as it does most of what I want).

My question is can I stop the Mail programme (I'm using Lion) from downloading junk from my ymail and gmail accounts. I do have a virus checker (the free Sophos one) as there are Windows machines at home and at the office and as I've been burnt in the past I'm cautious. This has picked up fairly frequently trojans downloaded as part of of spammy messages (the fedex type etc). I don't think I've ever had these downloaded before and am fairly sure they come from the spam folders of the online mail services which are pretty consistant at filtering them out. What can I do to prevent their download other than stop using the mail programme?

Thanks

If they're being downloaded in the Inbox, then they're not being caught by Yahoo or Gmail in the spam folders.

How do you have Yahoo and Gmail setup? Are they setup as POP or IMAP?

MobileMe was always pretty good (not perfect) about keeping out the spam, and GMail is also pretty good about this (they don't like anyone else muscling in on their territory!).

It sounds to me like there are two thing you could do to reduce spam:

1. Set up some filters. For example I block *any* email that has a .cn (China) heading anywhere in it. Boy did that cut down on the spam! I also block any email not directly addressed to me except from people in my Address Book. Toss any email with more than two dollar signs, if the content has the word "pharmaceuticals" or "viagra" etc ... I'm sure you can think of some more.

2. Turn off "Display Remote Images in HTML mail." This is a HUGE help. You can still turn remote images back on with one click in messages where you want to see the images (this has no effect on, say, someone sending you photos).

3. Adopt a separate, "public" email address. Use this other email address for anything on the web where email is required, keeping your "real" email address for friends and family only. Don't ignore the "public" one, but nothing urgent is going to go there, so it can be checked leisurely from time to time and mostly junked.

I never run my gmail yahoo mail or the likes to my own computer. For one thing web-based emails like those are for junk mails, signing up for crap online.... Only keep my "real" email for my computer to download.

MobileMe is exceptional with junk mail. I get maybe one or two that have slipped by over the past 3 years. So it's 99% effective. Gmail... I get about 100 every hour. Yahoo... well.. I dont think I've checked that in years... probably doesn't exist anymore.

My point? Leave the gmail/yahoo/hotmail as internet emails. don't set them up on your computer.

MACyMouse said:

I never run my gmail yahoo mail or the likes to my own computer. For one thing web-based emails like those are for junk mails, signing up for crap online.... Only keep my "real" email for my computer to download.

MobileMe is exceptional with junk mail. I get maybe one or two that have slipped by over the past 3 years. So it's 99% effective. Gmail... I get about 100 every hour. Yahoo... well.. I dont think I've checked that in years... probably doesn't exist anymore.

My point? Leave the gmail/yahoo/hotmail as internet emails. don't set them up on your computer.

Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure I agree with you. I've had a GMAIL account for years and have very little spam. (In my Inbox.) Probably 99.9% of all spam goes directly into the spam folder. That's not bad. Our company also uses GMAIL for over 140 users and they have provided the best service over AT&T and many others we have used. As long as the spam goes into the spam folder I really don't care the volume of it. I just hit the delete button, problem solved or ignore it and it gets deleted automatically. I've never had a virus or malware in all the years I have been computing. (It's a lot of years.) And now since I have converted to the Mac I doubt that the record will change anytime soon.

Regards,

Pat