Community Newsletter: Q&A: What can I do to stop spam?
- 10/11/07 12:57 PM
Next weeks question re: 350 pieces of email --
by x36b4u - 9/28/07 7:16 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
NO!!!! Do not open unless you know who sent it or have requested to have it sent to you. Just delete it and forget it.
Reducing spam
by babbage31 - 9/28/07 7:32 PM In reply to: Next weeks question re: 350 pieces of email -- by x36b4uSpamBully from axaware is by far the best! The people are great! I wouldn't use anything else!
Getting Rid of those Common Spam Types
by purposed - 9/28/07 7:36 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Jo, you actually asked several questions. The first is how to select and get rid of a "whole list" of them. If by that you mean can you somehow select them all and delete them in one simple operation, the answer is "probably not". However, you can probably get rid of many of them in a relatively small number of steps. Unfortunately, without knowing which email reader you use, specific advice is of uncertain operability. Nevertheless, I am sure other members can offer some good solutions; I am posting to offer a potential solution to your other question - "what can I do to stop it".
This also depends on your email reader application, but assuming you are running an email application on your local machine (as opposed to web mail) there is something you can do. It is challenging to set up, but thereafter rather easy to use. And, there is quite a bit of setup help on the web.
Before I describe it, I will just say that if you use webmail, then these days most webmail applications are becoming sophisticated enough that they should be doing a lot of it for you. If you are running webmail, you hopefully have a "spam" button or folder. Just keep moving this junk into spam for a while, and eventually the webmail application will begin to get smart enough to do it for you. You will thereafter need to check the most recent "spam" mails each time you check your email, because these filters do make occasional mistakes, but it is much easier to do that than weed out all the spam every day.
What I am primarily addressing, and what I use, is an application for people whose mail application is resident on their PC. It is a free application you can download called Popfile. It works if your mail server uses the "Pop" protocol. I think it may also work if you mail server uses the alternative called "IMAP" but am not sure.
What you can do with Popfile is configure it to put your emails into one of many buckets (as many as you want). Then you set up your email handler with a corresponding set of folders. Each time an email comes in, Popfile tries to guess from the content which bucket it goes into, and if you have both Popfile and your email handler set up correctly, that email will go into the corresponding folder in your inbox.
In the beginning Popfile makes a lot of mistakes, but it learns VERY rapidly. Each time it errs, you open the Popfile application and correct the error. Within 10 days it will get almost every one correctly.
In my case, one of my nine folders is called Spam (and I have a corresponding Popfile bucket also called Spam). Every day I glance through the 10 or 12 subject/sender headers in my Spam folder and if they look like spam, I mark my Spam folder as "read".
On rare occasions I find a real email there and on rare occasions I get a spam email into another folder. I correct popfile, move the offender, and go on.
In my case I have my spam folder discard any email therein that's over 15 days old, so they just sit there a while and go away, so I don't ever have a lot to look through. Further, all the unread ones are in bold type, so they are easy to pick out.
I have no relationship whatsoever with Popfile except as a grateful user. You imply you are a somewhat-new user. If so, you can hopefully find a nerd friend who will help you set up Popfile, otherwise you can probably configure it yourself. After that, I predict that in time you too will become a grateful user.
In closing, I will say there are quite possibly other "Popfile" type applications available. I have been sufficiently pleased with Popfile to have not looked for any alternative.
Decreasing e-mal spam
by Ngallendou - 9/28/07 7:41 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Unwanted and offensive e-mail messages, called "spam" in the US, wastes national energy resources, offends millions of e-mail users, and often carries destructive viri and worse.
Spam senders often get your e-mail address from a blog or website where you or someone else posted it. There are unscrupulous companies that scour the Internet looking for e-mail addresses which they sell to spammers.
Chances are that your e-mail client has a built-in spam filter. Check out its on-line help message for how to activate it. Unfortunately, many of those have to be "trained" by your clicking on appropriate buttons for it to recognize each spam sender's address of which thousands are created every day.
A frequently used, free, nearly-automatic spam filtering service is offered by Google in the form of its Gmail service. Briefly, one can do the following to allow Gmail to filter your e-mail for spam:
1. Open a free Gmail.com e-mail account and get a Gmail address such as YourName@gmail.com.
2. Contact your e-mail service provider and have all of your e-mail forwarded to your Gmail account.
3. Set up your Gmail account as a "pop server".
4. Fetch your e-mail from Gmail instead of from your regular e-mail service provider. Outlook (Express) and other e-mail clients can be set up to do so.
This allows others to keep using your regular e-mail address. Gmail does a super filtering job and Google seems to constantly train it. Gmail provide many other free features and will store gigabytes of messages for you free.
email via gmail is almost spam free
by timtak - 10/6/07 1:10 AM In reply to: Decreasing e-mal spam by NgallendouNgallendou
That is a brilliant idea. I have notice that my gmail account is doing a great job of filtering spam, and I already forward all my email there as a backup but I did not know that I could set up gmail as a pop server.
It is done. That spells the end of spam for me. Thank you!
I am not sure how Spambully is going to stay in business now that gmail offers its excellent spam filtering services for free.
Tim
Spam is a Nusiance - Change your attitude-don't get upset
by rohoryder - 10/6/07 5:38 AM In reply to: email via gmail is almost spam free by timtakSpam is inevitable - why get upset. I have multiple commercial email accounts and several of them have been used for years. Many of them are with my own domain. I set spam filtering to minimum on my domain's email service. I don't set Outlooks junk filter to heavy
I get 11-50 spam emails per day (combined total for all accounts. I used to get upset, now I just delete them as I check my mail. I'm almost wide open to receiving spam but the volume is low. Why the number is low, I don't know.
If you really want to stop spam...sign up with one of the third party intercept companies that require a sender to respond to an email with a link to pass the email through to the receipient. This intercept only occurs one time and them the sender is recognized. Spammers never respond to the verification email and are stopped cold.
I also use eBay to make sales. I comply fully with the Can-Spam act by using a double opt in email system even when a person signs up to receive email from me by registering on one of my websites. I never send unsolicted emails.
its true - it works like a charm
by mpryor12 - 10/6/07 6:54 AM In reply to: Decreasing e-mal spam by NgallendouNgallendou - i just did this a few weeks ago and it works like a charm. gmail is the ultimate best in filtering spam... about 1-3 get through a day, out of over 100... hats off to your suggestion and to google/gmail. it has saved me much time and alot of grief
Google Apps
by Grumnut - 10/7/07 4:27 PM In reply to: Decreasing e-mal spam by NgallendouThe Gmail approach is a clever one, as it's spam filtering is amazing. If you have your own domain based email (email@mydomain.com) you can use Google Apps. The free version allows for 200 addresses with 2 gig for each address. I've used this for myself and others. I have one address that attracts extraordinary amounts of spam (about 500 a day). Just to ramp it up I set it with a catch all. It didn't take too long before it was collecting up to 5 spam a second. In a few days I had 38000 spam in the spam folder. Amazingly I had only 6 get through, before I turned off the catchall.
SPAM and e-mail
by HuachucaThunder - 9/28/07 7:48 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use 3 different e-mail accounts, one for work, one for school, and one for personal use. They are all different services, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo(AT&T) and COMCAST. ANyways, I find that clicking on the options button or tab that you can filter what comes into your inbox and even your "junk" box. The filter is very easy to use on each seeing that you can either type in the sender's name or e-mail or just a certain keyword, such as lottery, mortgage, *****, etc. This will stop MOST of the spam that hits your e-mail account. Now, mind you, that if the sending person uses an ecryption script, then the words may be purposely misspelled and they will get through into your e-mail. But to put it simply, using the filter is the best way to stop the spam.
Also, do not unsubscribe to any spam mail. This may work or it may not. But but unsubscribing, you may risk your e-mail being forwarded to another "organization" to start filling your e-mail with even more worthless junk.
Mark
G-Mail will end your spam problem
by MiamiTechnoLawyer - 9/28/07 7:53 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I was receiving 10 spam a day when using A.O.L. for my personal e-mail. Later the spammers found my work E-mail, which is POP3/Outlook based. I opened an account with G-mail the free E-mail from Google. Now I see one or two spam E-mails per MONTH instead of at least ten a DAY. G-mail works so well as a spam catcher, I configured my POP3 work E-mail to forward to a G-mail account. Now I read all of my work E-mail in G-mail instead of Outlook and its virtually spam free. There are spam cather programs available for purchase or free but using Gmail is easy, elegant, and free. You can access your E-mail on G-mail from anywhere and use Google to search your mail. What Google is search G-mail is to mail. Yes its that good.
You got Spamed
by Alain Martel1 - 9/28/07 7:54 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Welcome to the world of SPAM!
Your parctice of just deleting those messages is the ONLY REASONABLE thing to do. If you reply to any "please unsuscribe me" link, you only validate your address and tel THEM that you actualy take the time to read those messages. Result: your address just gained in resale value.
You may change your e-mail address, but it will only be effective for a short while.
Using the control key, select all spam and hit the delete key. this will delete all selected messages.Empty your reader's trash.
You want to know how "they" got your address? Very simple: somebody's computer who have it legitimaly have been infected by a virus or spyware, that maleware in turn scoured his contanct list and sent it "home".
Another possibility: one of your contact forwarded one of your messages to one or many recipients, and one of them was infected by some maleware. It can also be YOUR computer that is infected.
Maybe it got stolen from a site, or a site sold it after a merger or some change in it's privacy policy.
If you, or anybody in your housold, participate in any news group or web forum? You must ALWAYS use a fake address or an obfuscated one like: name AT domain DOT com, or add some throwaway characters in your address. An extra DOT thrown in is enough.
Anybody in your home chating?
Did you sign in on any "gues book"? Did you use your real e-mail address? Web crawler scour those to collect any e-mail addresses.
This start a cycle where your address get sold and resold between various spammer groups.
If you use any web-mail system, you look for any anti-spam filter and activate it.
If you use a mail address from your ISP, you can use an e-mail client that include spam filtering, preferably an adaptive one. I use Mozilla Thunderbird, it have an excellent adaptive spam filter, very easy to use: just flag any missed spam as undesirable. Set it to move suspect messages to the quaranteen folder where you can intercept eventual false positives.
Now is a good time to do some scanning: run your favorite antivirus, get Spambot search & destroy as well as AdAware. Install both, let them update and have them perform a full scan. You may need to reboot in safe mode to effectively remove some pests.
Once done, ask everybody on your contact lists to do the same.
If you have childs, ask them to NEVER give your e-mail address to anybody. Give them a personal e-mail address if possible. Instruct them in the safe way to share an address: obfuscation of the real address.
After some time, if you NEVER EVER answer any of those messages, the flood will tend to subside and diminish to just a trickle, but it will NEVER stop completely.
Personal note: When I first discovered news groups in 1997, spam was not a problem and I used my real address. By 2000, I was flooded with spam. Still prety active on news groups, but using fake or abfuscated address. Now, I only receive less than 5 spam a day on average. I never changed my address.
Spam problems Here is what I do:
by Paul Plasters - 9/28/07 7:56 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First thing, do not send a request to all those senders, that lets them know that you are a live address.
Second thing, make sure you have the addresses of all you wish to get e-mail from, in your address box. Delete any that you do not want mail from.
Then set your filter to shuttle off any and everything that is not in your address box, to your trash file.
Every now and then take a look at the trash pile, because now and then one that you want will get filtered off too. But you only need scan the addresses, or the subject line. After you make sure that they are all junk, empty the trash pile, and start over again.
SPAM KILLER
by jon barleycorn - 9/28/07 7:57 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I very rarely get even a single spam message in my inbox. I found when I counted characters and words common to a sample of SPAM messages, that about 7 would almost always identify crap, so I used the junk email filter in MSN to route these to a special folder where it is easy to see which is which.
Example: my first name, the words: get, win, now, ... A colon (:), a dollar sign ($) and so fourth.
I'm not going to publish the entire list because (1) my list is gonna be different from yours and (2) spammers often know how to read. But, if you're interested get in touch with me privately and I will tell you how it's done.
re: Junk E-Mail/Spam/Virus's
by appman67 - 9/28/07 7:59 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If I am reading this correctly - all you need to do is - install a real good security suite - I bought one and it has been great. The spam controls in the "free" security suites are basically crap. If you purchase Norton, PCCILLIN or some other name brand - you'll get alot better coverage and protection. I was reluctant to actually pay money for something I could get for free - but after toasting my mother board and buying a new pc - I finally bought the pccillin version and have been very happy with the performance of the system. You can customize the level of protection you desire. Best of luck...OA
Fixing that spam problem for good!
by alaskamyheart - 9/28/07 8:04 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I used to have this problem so much, it was just ridiculous. Having websites and email and being on the Internet since 1994, I had over 300 of these a day up until a few years ago. I finally found a solution, which might or might not work for you.
I had always had a Yahoo! email address, but I decided to try the paid version which gives me unlimited space and all. Now you don't have to have the paid address to use the spam zapping feature, I don't think. But I love the paid version because...no ads.
Well, my spam problem almost completely disappeared after this. I had had my email addresses for over 6 years, and Yahoo! email hammered the spam for good.
No worries about changing your email address, either.
Why does it work?
(I'm not affiliated with Yahoo! in anyway except that I host my website there and their smart technology keeps spam off my blog, too)
Everytime someone gets spam in their Yahoo! email box, they just click on the spam link without even having to open the email. After this happens by thousands of users all over the Internet using Yahoo! email, these types of spam are zapped into your Spam folder or Bulk email folder before you ever see them.
I'm lucky to get 1 spam a week now, after using a paid Yahoo! email box for about 3 years now. I tried hotmail, but their spam prevention just wasn't nearly as good.
So, what you do is you go into yahoo! and create a pop for your regular email address that goes out and pulls mail off the mail server where you were getting your mail before.
You set this email address as your default to send with and no one else knows the difference.
If you have a website with Yahoo! you can also set all your website email addresses up there.
This is great for me because I never pull any email viruses onto my computer anymore and can check my email anywhere I go. I never have some email on one computer and some on another. Check it on your lunch break at work or whatever.
But it is the spam zapping technology that keeps me using Yahoo! It is absolutely THE BEST I've found.
Lynne from Alaska
alaskainmydreams.com
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