The Ultimate Guide to Eliminating Spam Email
do you have the name of a program that will auto send a response to the email sender to ask them to identify an animal before the email will be delivered, or something like that? something to pre-filter an email before it reaches your in-box?
Posted by: ramona, 15:58:26 on 2007-02-17
An addition to #8 – if you want to visit those kinds of sites, get yourself a “Live Distro” of your favorite operating system, and boot your computer using a CD, DVD, USB drive or other bootable media. Your hard drive is ignored during these Live Distro sessions, so nothing bad can happen to your regular computer. Here’s a great page about it:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD
Posted by: Emmy, 01:34:38 on 2007-01-14
It’s a better article than most I’ve seen on this subject, but it still doesn’t mention the single most effective technique – a Bayesian filter (one that you train yourself). It copes with individual taste (some people actually want viagra!), it’s easier to set up than whitelists and blacklists, easy to fix when it makes a mistake, 99% effective at blocking spam (actual measurement) and very rarely blocks wanted messages.
Posted by: Phil McKerracher, 02:20:51 on 2007-01-13
As long as we insist on playing defense we will always be at a disadvantage. Lobby legislators to treat the damages of spam, viruses and phishing in the loss of revenue as serial vandalism, with each instance punishable individually. if someone took a spraypaint can and defaced every building along 5 blocks, that would be vandalism and the only legitimate punishment would be to make the vandal pay off the ACTUAL damages.Until the punishment is high enough to be a disincentive, we aren’t going to see this get better.in a perverse way, I’d like to see the children of President Bush and Nancy Pelosi have their businesses disrupted and their identities stolen and egregiously abused in order to raise the profile of the problem. Legislators, like most government folk, are technological troglodytes, cave-dwellers insulated from the issue.
Posted by: Aaron in LA, 22:09:33 on 2007-01-12
I actively try to prevent SPAM from reaching me. once your email address has been compromise, all you can do it attempt to filter it. yet the spammers’ full time JOB is to try to get past your filters, and unless your full time job is filtering, you will loose. I use a different address for every business and site I deal with. Sometimes I use an address on a domain I own, and sometimes I use a “disposable” address. This may more than you want to do, but I get hundreds of emails a week from all my email addresses, and I usually get ZERO SPAM even sent to me. Sometimes an address gets compromised and then I get about 2-3 SPAM messages sent to me (filtered into my SPAM folder). Occasionally one gets past my filters (I use POPfile). Based on over 10 years of experience, these are my recommendations.1. do not depend on filters3. Most important point. PROTECT YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESSES! Additional ideas: a) I highly recommend using a “disposable” e-mail service, which will allow you to use different email addresses for different purposes and hide your real address. Free and paid service is available from SneakEmail.com, SpamEx.com, plus many others. b) use separate email address for I. Friends, II. Friends who forward emails, III. Business (your work), IV. Business your regularly deal with (phone, gas, city), V. legitimate web sites (del.icio.us, Amazon, Ebay), VI. all other web sites. c) use a email program that allows you to change your outgoing address, and be consistent. d) learn to use your email filters. e) get your own domain, and manage your own addresses. f) only use email address which you control, so you can delete or turn it off if it gets compromised.4. “plussed” address advantages include not having to set up separate email accounts. be aware that the other disadvantages are a) if you are using a mailing list, you may not be able to post to it with a plussed address. b) unlike “disposable” email addresses, you cannot turn the address off if you start getting spammed.10. no. Unless you really know what you are doing, don’t even try tracking your SPAM. Most return addresses are either fake, or somebody else’s address from the SPAMMERs database. (That’s why you get those ‘return to sender’ messages that you didn’t send). Never reply to or ‘bounce’ SPAM. you will likely be punishing another innocent person. Even if it a legitimate company that you have recently dealt with, be careful.Numbers 2, and 5-9 will not help you eliminate SPAM.plus:11. if others forward e-mails to you with your address visible, it will be harvested by spammers (when others re-forward it).12. Don’t use addresses ’sales’, ‘info’ (IE sales@example.com). you WILL be SPAMed.13. if you choose a short name, or one or two common words as your account on any popular free account or well know ISP, you WILL be SPAMed.14. if you get your own domain names, plan on changing your “official” contact email every year or so, it will eventually start getting SPAMed.Some day I’ll write this up better. –1Jerry
Posted by: 1Jerry, 19:53:00 on 2007-01-12
I use Apple Mail and the bounce feature doesn’t work well because these SPAM guys usually have multiple emails and they will send one campaign out with that one email, then cancel it. SO if you bounce it, it will just bounce back to you.
Posted by: Heather, 17:38:51 on 2007-01-12
The first section of this post reads more like an Iron Port sales pitch then anything real useful that non iron port users can do. I think the author should take a vendor neutral approach the next time he or she decides to write up a section about using filters. everything else in the article however sounds very good.
Posted by: Angel G., 17:08:29 on 2007-01-12
Please take a look at knujon.com as a place to report spam. we will file complaints for you and will see that sites which are not legitimate will have their domain name cancelled.
Posted by: Bob Bruen, 13:50:37 on 2007-01-12
Umm…. example.com is real too!:-)
Posted by: Justin Lott, 13:14:24 on 2007-01-12
You have used @mydomain.com. Don’t do this as that is a real domain, belonging not to you but to someone else. you should use @example.com or @anything.example.
Posted by: alan Clifford, 00:27:34 on 2007-01-12
If you are using Apple Mail, should you use te bounce feature?Pleease respond in this forum.Thanks,Gary
Posted by: Gary, 00:15:05 on 2007-01-12
I think you have the fastmail link incorrect. I use fastmail. It’s fastmail.fm. It’s the best email service ever. you have unlimited aliases that you can destroy at will if compromised. I swear by it.Otherwise, great advice for fighting spam!
Posted by: chris, 19:20:34 on 2007-01-11
None of these are good ideas, except: GMail.Note: you can’t deal with spambot software by exposing the spammer! Duh!
Posted by: BWilde, 19:20:06 on 2007-01-11
I think you have the fastmail link incorrect. I use fastmail. It’s fastmail.fm. It’s the best email service ever. you have unlimited aliases that you can destroy at will if compromised. I swear by it.Otherwise, great advice for fighting spam!
Posted by: chris, 19:20:03 on 2007-01-11
“Initially, spam filters were created that used a dictionary method to filter spam if certain words were present (e.g. “Viagra” or “Sex”). It was not until years later, that IronPort (recently acquired by Cisco) devised a more robust, effective spam filtering method using a two-layer defense model…”This is marketing spin. The first two points in the article are pushing Ironport products. This skewed perception of spam filtering evolution is unfortunately typical of a vendor-driven article.The rest of the article is okay, which is a shame when it is sat in an article so transparently (and yet not admittedly) designed to sell Ironport’s products.
Posted by: Spam Links webmaster, 09:54:06 on 2007-01-11
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The Ultimate Guide to Eliminating Spam Email
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