My Blocked E-Mails, Dont Get Blocked...

[trt]

Unless its me, my Outlook Express, block addresses/person dosent and never worked.
Even when I get the message on some, that says click here to unscribe etc.

I am on Win8.1, and Firefox

[Buenchico]

First point:
Unless your emails are coming from a reputable source (such as Amazon) you should NEVER click on an 'Unsubscribe' link. Spammers often program their computers to simply guess at people's email addresses but what they'd really like is to have a list of addresses which they know to be genuine. Clicking on 'Unsubscribe' effectively sends a spammer a message which says "Hi! Yes, I'm real. Please send me lots more spam and add my email address to the list which you'll be selling to other spammers".

Next:
'Unsubscribe' links in your emails (whether from spammers or bona fide sources) have nothing to do with the blocked addresses in Outlook Express, so you can't expect OE to take any notice of them. (i.e. clicking on 'Unsubscribe' simply sends a message to the sender of an email. It doesn't instruct OE to do anything).

Lastly:
If your problem relates to spam, OE's 'block sender' function probably won't help much anyway. Let's say that you receive a message, apparently from '[email protected]', inviting you to view details of how you can improve the size of your manhood. If you go into the detailed headers for that email you'll almost certainly find that it wasn't sent from '[email protected]' at all but from a totally different email account (probably one which has been hijacked from a legitimate internet user).

Then the next day you get exactly the same message, also apparently from the ever-helpful Gloria. However if you go into the detailed headers again, you'll find that it's been sent from another hijacked email account.

The next day it happens again but the message has been sent from yet another account, and so on. So even if, as soon as you received the first spam email, you'd told OE to block the sender, you'd still keep getting the spam because OE thinks that all of the successive emails are coming from different senders.

The standard rules for avoiding spam are:
1. Keep one 'private' email account just for use by your friends and family.
2. Use different accounts for internet shopping and for forums like this one. (Then, if the servers at Amazon and AB get hacked, the spammers will only gain a 'throwaway' email address, rather than your 'private' one. You can simply stop using the 'throwaway' account if it gets spammed and open another one for your internet shopping, etc).
3. Avoid using email addresses which spammers' computers can guess might be real (such as [email protected], [email protected], etc). Instead use 'unguessable' addresses, such as [email protected]

If you need one or more new email addresses I recommend GMX:
https://www.gmx.co.uk/

If you're using any email client such as Outlook Express (rather than a web-based service, such as that at Outlook.com) a free program called Mailwasher can help to tackle spam, as it 'learns' what you do or don't want to receive:
http://www.mailwasher.net/

[trt]

Thanks Chris,

Will have a go later.

[brainiac]

Chris, noticed you posted your (as always) extremely helpful answer at 05.51. Having trouble sleeping?!