Introduction Series Part 1: Spam
Spam is a big issue these days and there is barely anyone on the Internet who has not encountered spam in one form or the other. While often associated with emails, spam has many forms and can also be encountered in chat rooms, as mobile phone messages, on social networking sites, in computer games and virtually any other location where messages can be exchanged.
There is little that we as Internet users can do about spam. While some programs aim to protect against spam there is none that protects you against 100% of spam you encounter.
Even if you are careful when it comes to handing out your email address, you may receive spam to it eventually. All it takes is a friend's computer that got compromised for example, or a spammer who uses computer algorithms to guess email addresses, or a hacked server where your email address was stored on.
Spam is a numbers game: the more spam gets sent out, the more money is earned. Since there are virtually no operational costs involved, other than those for maintaining the email lists and sending out the messages, it is quite attractive to criminals.
Currently there are no 100% surefire ways of fighting spam. While you can install plugins, extensions and filters to block the majority of spam, there is still a chance that some will slip through.Most programs that you use for that purpose need to be trained before they can block a high percentage of spam effectively. Some implement heuristics in addition, but that often means that legitimate emails land in the spam folder as well from time to time.
Some email providers, Google Mail or Outlook, have become really effective in protecting user inbox's against spam. It is rare that users of these services encounter spam in their inbox, but it does happen nevertheless.
There are certain things that one should do when spam is encountered. The most obvious one is that you should never ever reply to spam messages. The reason here is that replying provides the spammer with information that the email address exists, and that someone is checking that email regularly for new emails. Some spammers try to lure you into doing so by adding unsubscribe links to their emails. Guess what? You won't be unsubscribed if you click on those links but provide the spammer with valuable information.
It is also important to never react in any way to spam messages. Do not follow links that you find in them, and never buy anything that they have to offer even if the offer is more than tempting.
The best course of action is to ignore spam whenever it occurs. While you may have some success reporting it to Internet Service Providers, Government authorities or third parties that fight it actively, it is usually not worth it.
I personally prefer to filter spam email addresses that send recurring spam so that they land directly in the trash folder of my email client.
Take a look at my article "how to fight spam" if you want to know how to fight it.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!