Stopping Spam E-mail

[TCH-Dick]

On a slow day I normally get 50-60 spam e-mails a day, mostly because I didnt have my e-mail addy on my website "stealthed" so spiders picked it up. (I've fixed that)

 

Anyway, I've been looking for ways to cut it down and eventually stop it all together, I've started using a combo of two programs and have GREATLY reduced the amount of spam I get.

 

http://www.spampal.org/ and http://www.mailwasher.net/

 

SpamPal is a free program that takes some configuring to get to work, but once its set up it works great, what it does is check e-mail you recieve against spam list like spamcop, if it matches it marks it as spam a lot like spam assasin does. You can also configure you SMTP server to auto whitelist anyone you SEND mail to.

 

Mailwasher isnt free (for the full version) and it lets you check mail while it is still on the server and gives you the option to blacklist, delete and bounce, if you bounce a spam e-mail back to the sender they usually take you off the list.

 

Using both programs together I have cut the spam down to 10-12 a day now, I use mailwasher to check the mail and bounce anything I know is spam, then when I open outlook spampal checks any other messages against several blacklists and catches the rest of it.

[Sully]

Mike -

 

How does one make their email address "stealthy"??? Would love to learn how to do that!

 

Thanks

[TCH-Dick]

Although nothing is 100% (If someone wants your e-mail addy bad enough they will find it) There are some good tips here for hiding your e-mail address from spiders.

 

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~trw/spam/

[TCH-Don]

There are a few solutions recently discussed on

"encode" E-mails On Website To Avoid Spam

[Cheryl]

Since I am in Business and *never* know who is going to want to send me email, I chose earthlink as my ISP and they have *Bright Mail* which I feel is a brilliant solution to spam.

 

Brightmail has a High and Medium Spam filter.

 

The Medium just filters all *known* spammers into a folder and you can scan it every 10 days to see if anything was marked *spam* that is NOT. I haven't seen an error in that filter yet...and it catches at least 700 a week!

 

I'm set for HIGH though, which has another filter called *Suspect* email and that is where anyone who is not in my address book goes. It's as simple as scanning and then adding the non-spam into my inbox. Once someone is in my address book, they never go back to the Suspect Filter. That filter also picks up about 300 a week in spam.

 

I do NOT like the blacklists...as very legitimate businesses have been put on them and that means MY email is being screened. I PAY for my service and so I will take the responsibility for dealing with what I am paying for...FULL SERVICE and DELIVERY!

 

TotalChoice has been on blacklists and we all know they have a strong anti-spam policy! Yet, people complain when they *forget* they opted IN.

 

I believe Bright Mail is the best solution I have seen yet. It honors me and isn't a hassle for the ISP.

[Deverill]

Mozilla Thunderbird has a Bayesian Filter which I think is awesome. It uses complex mathematical processes to identify spam. It also weighs more heavily toward not-spam than spam so you get fewer real mails filtered. It is around 98-99% correct after it has had a chance to learn what is and is not spam.

 

I also found an addon for Outlook called SpamBayes that works the same way and is very easy to use and seems so-far to be equally effective.