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Spam is killing me

My personal e-mail account has just gotten hammered with spam. Not sure what to do anymore. I get about 30 messages a day that don't get filtered away, and I simply can't be bothered to figure out what is going on. I've been toying with the idea of using mailblocks or just switching to using hotmail for all my non-work e-mail.

Challenge/Response seems pretty compelling at this point since I'd rather shift the burden to people trying to send me mail. I get like 5 messages a week sent to my personal e-mail account, so there isn't much value add for me to deal with the spam.

Published Friday, March 19, 2004 6:42 PM by omars
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Comments

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:00 AM by Rob Chartier


Consider spambayes

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

it is THE solution for spam. ;)

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:01 AM by Omar Shahine
Is that client side? You see I would rather have something do the filtering on the server.

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:08 AM by Ken Robertson
I don't know if it is possible for you, but I use my own domain name, and didn't want client-side filtering since I use Outlook and OWA when I'm not home. So for $5/mo, I get spam and virus filtering through a service a friend of mine runs at www.pbp.net.

He uses SpamAssassin to tag spam emails by putting "*SPAM*" in the subject, then I set my mail server to move all messages with that in the subject to the Deleted Items folder. Works like a charm.

Pretty good for $5/mo! My server usage report for 3/1-3/15 showed I received 3,000 emails... probably 90-95% spam that I never saw.

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:10 AM by Omar Shahine
Problem is, my current mail provider uses SpamAssasin, however, messages in the 1.0-3.0 account for most of the messages that are destroying my inbox.

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:14 AM by Jeff
I know not everyone has their own box, but I use iMail from IPSwitch as my server and it works like a champ. You have to experiment with which black lists work best, and update their word lists from time to time, but for the most part I rarely have false positives and it catches 99.5% of the naughty stuff for me.

# RE: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:17 AM by Scott_NO_@_SPAM_Tripleasp.net (Scott Watermasysk)
I second http://spambayes.sourceforge.net. It acutally gets smarter the more you use it..but yes, it is client side.

-Scott

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:21 AM by Michael Creasy [MSFT]
Step 1: get all mail routed through an account at Spamcop.net
Step 2: Never report any spam that gets through.

I've gone from 50 spam messages a day in my inbox to one or two a week and maybe 1 mail getting held at spamcop a month that shouldn't have been.

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 11:48 AM by Omar Shahine
Wow, thanks for the info about spamcop. Just signed up for the service.

# re: Spam is killing me

Friday, March 19, 2004 7:53 PM by Jonathan Hardwick [MSFT]
I've had a .edu account and a hotmail account forever - both were getting 30-50 spams a day, and were pretty much unusable as a result. Then a few months ago hotmail seemed to implement a much better spam solution, to the point where I've actually forwarded my .edu account to hotmail to take advantage of the filtering. I'm currently seeing one spam in my hotmail inbox every 1-2 days.
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