setting up an email filter

[factor-fiction]

I use the facility to set up filters on my email based on the address of the sender, words in the title or words in the text (eg Viagra) so as to Delete them straight away without them ever going in my In box or spam box. It generally works pretty well.

However I also get quite a lot of phishing emails pretending to be from organisations I may or may not already deal with (Paypal, SLC, my bank). Now I can read the email and tell straight away whether it's genuine (hardly ever is) but I'd rather just filter them out at source.

The problem is that some of these phishers seem to be able to disguise their email address and make it look as if the email really has come from Paypal etc.. Even when I hover over the sender's address it looks like a genuine address. So, when I select the "filter emails from this sender" it actually puts the genuine Paypal address in the filter box,, and so I can't proceed.

How do they spoof their address? And is there any way to get the filter to find out the sender's real address

[VHG]

I use Googlemail (gmail) and that makes a fantastic job of sorting out spam and junk mail.

Without me ever having to set up anything it puts all that type of mail in a Spam folder and deletes it after 30 days.

In the couple of years it has been doing it it has only ever put two "wrong" emails in the Spam folder.

But I check my spam folder every couple of days so if it is not spam you just press the "Not Spam" button and it puts it back in your in box.

[factor-fiction]

Thanks. Yes, my basic spam filter finds most spam items but I'd rather stop some even going to spam as, like you, I need to check my spam emails as sometimes genuine emails (eg my Tesco e-vouchers) I want seem to end up in there.

[Buenchico]

If you're using an email client (Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, etc), rather than a web-based email system, using Mailwasher should help:
http://www.mailwasher.net/

Chris

[factor-fiction]

Thanks Chris. My my main email system is sky so I'm stuck with their filter, and I also have some other webmail addresses which I tend to use when dealing with people I don't know and can dispose of when spam takes over.

I'm just interested how they manage to spoof the email address so it looks as if it really comes from halifax.co.uk etc. If I click on the reply button (not that I would reply) the address in the To field iseems to be halifax.co.uk etc so if I did reply I wonder if it would go the halifax or to the spammer's email address.