In battle to block spam, two products stand out

The Boston Globe ^ | 4/21/2003 | Hiawatha Bray

[Clara Lou]

I use Spam Pal with both IE Explorer and Mozilla. Works great without a glitch. I just have it deliver my spam directly to "deleted" mail instead of a specially created spam-file, check what it's delivered there, and, as it rarely mismarks anything as spam, I just empty the trash. Spams Pal is very nice. I rely on it.

[ikka]

Completely FREE, will always be so: SpamAssassin, click here

[justlurking]

I use Razor (http://razor.sourceforge.net), which runs on a Unix server and queries the same servers used for SpamNet/Cloudmark. I have a number of compromised email addresses that only get spam, so I use them as spam traps and report them right away to the Razor servers. Unfortunately, I'm apparently at the top of some of the mailing lists and am the first person to receive some spam -- it ends up in my Inbox. If I don't report it right away, I find that someone has already done so.

I tried the Mailblock service (http://www.mailblocks.com), but found that:

1. It held messages I sent to the address for confirmation, but never sent the query message to the originating address. After a couple of weeks, it declared them as spam and deleted them.
2. The $10 fee (for 3 years, I think) was never posted to my credit card.
3. Repeated queries to tech support got no response.

I concluded that Mailblocks is not a viable service. Your mileage may vary. I've used SpamCop (http://www.spamcop.net/) in the past as a user, but now I simply check the sending mail server against SpamCop's DNS blacklist, and terminate the connection if it's a known spam sender. It means that some of my spamtraps are rendered useless, but it has really cut down on the missed spam.

[Cicero]

Yes, I'm using SpamPal. It's not perfect, but it's very good, and the longer you use it and build up your white list, the better it works. Besides which, it's free except for the request for a small donation to support development.

[LibKill]

Go here: Mailwasher. (Will open in new window.)

It's free.

You will need to know your SMTP Server Address BEFORE you attempt install. If you don't know what that means get a techie friend to help you or call your Internet Service Provider. There is a cure for spam. It's fun to sling spam back at the spammer.

[snooker]

All I can say is it works for me. I know all the spoofing tricks, but eventually what happens is you get removed from the lists. This is what you want, your address in the delete column.

Besides the bounce, the spam filters can be set up to 'auto work', that is use a filter on the message subject, and just delete or bounce it or both.

Since you don't know what the message is, you click on it, then all it takes with kmail is a mouse click on bounce and back she goes. I set up to automatically eneter the subject and address in the bounce filter for next time. Usually you will get repeat trys to send you the same crapolla.

There is also a program for Linux called spamassassin http://spamassassin.org/, which can be more aggressive. But I find kmail http://kmail.kde.org/ sufficient. It keeps my mailbox spam free.

BTW, mozilla 1.4a for windows has similar spam/filter features. Plus built in popup blocking. http://www.mozilla.org/releases/. I use mozilla when I have to work in windows.

Another important thing to do is use mozillas filters is to put all the stuff you want to receive, like from friends and family, in a sub folder. That way the important emails get dropped in a proper place regardless where the other emails end up. Do this with all important contacts.

One other trick is to use Yahoo for your public face. That way you just pop over to yahoo and delete all once a week.

A surfers got to do what a surfers got to do, to be able to find the emails you want.

snooker

[k2blader]

Thanks for the feedback. It's good to know other FReepers use SpamPal too, as I've always been a little paranoid about using freeware.

I've been using SpamPal for a couple weeks now after noticing a mysterious increase in spam to my email account (not sure what caused the increase). So far I'm pretty pleased. It catches most of the spam--only a handful slip past into my inbox every week. Perhaps it would work even better if I reinstall and set the filtering to the "most agressive" option.

[WIladyconservative]

Mozilla's last two builds both have a junk filter - but so far no help text on said junk filter. I'm sure it'll be coming soon . . . .

[sharktrager]

I like Mailwasher. The single account version is free, and it sends bounce messages to the addresses you blcklist.

[Jhoffa_]

I just block entire domains with Outlook Express.

I have so damn many in there now I, I am honestly amazed anyone can email me anything at this point.

[supercat]

Spammers are relentless in their efforts to beat filtering.

There is something I don't understand.

Most spammers are engage in their vile tactics for the purpose of making money. They may figure that their spams are worthwhile if they generate a 0.01% positive response rate.

It seems to me that spamming people who have made an effort not to be spammed not only takes more work than spamming those who haven't, but more significantly the positive response rate among those people is apt to be less than 0.00001%.

Why do the spammers bother?

My theory: there are companies that sell "advertising services"; they upsell the service they provide, and thus land contracts to "promote" some foolish but otherwise legitimate business. The spammers don't care about positive responses, since they've tricked their clients into paying for "exposures". A similar phenomenon is at work, btw, with many of the really annoying multi-pop-up porno ads that appear when a domain name is misspelled.

If this is what's really going on, then this means the key may be not just to try to protect people from spam, but also to try to protect businesses from phony "promotional services" companies. If spamsters can no longer use spam to defraud legitimate businesses of advertising revenues, spam will in many cases largely dry up.

[supercat]

Back in the days when I used Pegasus, I set it to color-highlight all messages with my email address in the To: header. Although there were some legitimate non-spam messages which did not list me as recipient [e.g. messages to mailing lists to which I was legitimately subscribed] it was pretty easy to add rules for those too.

About 95% of the non-colored stuff was spam, as compared with about 10% of the colored stuff.

[Revolting cat!]

A year and a half ago I received no spam. Today: a dozen messages a day at work and another dozen at one of my Yahoo addresses which I've been using for several years to order goods from online stores (And Yahoo's filters have not been able to, uhm, filter out half of them.) The other Yahoo addresses receive no spam. For a while, after a visit to Europe last year, I was getting spam in German at my work address. I still haven't figured out where they got the address- did I put it down at a hotel I was staying, or was it my friend's friend who got my business card and who was a starving minor enterpreneur?

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to let you know that most recently I received at work a couple of spams offering, well, spam services. I saved them and will post these tomorrow morning for your viewing pleasure (and whatever else you can cook up!) Imagine the nerve!

[Revolting cat!]

Oh, yes, my company recently told us that about 50% of incoming e-mail is spam. They've hired a guy to deal with it, so we'll see...

[steve-b]

"Why the hell not? (shoot spammers)"
Because drawing and quartering is so much more satisfying???

I didn't say you had to shoot them in a vital area. Taking out a leg to slow them down so they can't get away from the rest of the evening's entertainment will do for openers.