# Deleting non-English spam emails

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deleting-non-english-spam-emails/322807>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 22, 2005, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deleting-non-english-spam-emails/322807 "2005-09-22T00:21:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![stanger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@stanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stanger)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deleting-non-english-spam-emails/322807/1 "2005-09-22T00:21:53Z")

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I use WinXP and Outlook Express for my email. I get a lot of spam emails that have the subject line and entire email in Russian or Japanese/Chinese writing.  
How do I setup a rule or something in Outlook that tells it to reject any email that has these non-English characters in the subject line or message?

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deleting-non-english-spam-emails/322807/2 "2005-09-22T00:55:56Z")

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The way I do it in Eudora is to filter for Charsets. Such emails will have a header that says something like

“Charset=koi8”

I am not an Outlook user but if you can filter on unspecified headers in Outlook as you can in Eudora, just trap for mention of the various non-English charsets as you get them.

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**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deleting-non-english-spam-emails/322807/3 "2005-09-22T03:52:14Z")

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AHunter3 - would it be possible for you to post your entire list of charsets that you look for?

I’m a Eudora user and these foreign buggers have been driving me crazy for the longest time.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2005, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deleting-non-english-spam-emails/322807/4 "2005-09-22T15:39:54Z")

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This will nuke most of them:

charset=windows-125 in any header  
charset="Windows-125 in any header  
charset="Windows-125 in the body  
charset=Windows-125 in the body  
charset="koi8 in any header  
charset=koi8 in any header  
charset="koi8 in the body  
charset=koi8 in the body  
charset="iso in any header AND body contains ;\<!  
BIG-5 in any header  
Body contains “Œ” and body contains “õ”  
Body contains “å” and body contains “à” \<—— make personality “Suspect”  
Body contains “ä” and personality = “Suspect”

The latter handful deal with non-English spam that is written using the conventional character set; you may not wish to implement these, depending on your assessment of the likelihood of getting legitimate email with these symbol combos.