ScoobyDan

Hi All,

What sort of anti-spam software/filters do you all use? I am running Outlook XP, and I get about 5-10 spam/**** e-mails per day . I have found a bit of software called 'MailWasher', which deletes spam and suchlike before it reaches your inbox.

So, what does everyone else use? (if at all)

Daniel

BuRR

I use Mailwasher

and also Spamnet (by Cloudmark), which integrates into Outlook itself.

MartinM

What about web-based email systems (like Hotmail)?

I get about 50 per day and its a real PITA[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

what would scooby do

hotmail has anti-spam facilities - not sure if it is 100% perfect.

I use myrealbox.com and don't get any spam whatsoeevr..

MartinM

Yeh, I use the anti-spam on hotmail
- my inbox is 'exclusive' i.e only mails from named senders go straight into it, the rest go straight into the junk folder
- so the junk mail folder fills at the rate of about 50/day with the spam

...but I still have to look through it to make sure there's no emails I want from peeps that aren't (yet) on my named senders list

So it doesn't really help..if only Hotmail had a facility to completely junk emails depending on the words in the title e.g "Save $$$", "Britney", "Add extra inches", "Wanna see" etc etc

Miles

Just binned Cloudmark's Spamnet as it kept crashing Outlook. Use Mailwasher when I remember as it seems to work - bloke at work claims that MW made his ISP mail account usable after it getting totally spammed.

MarkO

First, have a look at this thread from a few weeks ago. It gives my opinions of SpamNet and Mailwasher.

Having had my email address bandied around on websites for 4-5 years (because I distribute software over the web) I now receive something like 40-50 pieces of spam every day to my domain at otway.com.

I run with just the Outlook rules, and manage to filter 99% of cr*p without any difficulty. My rules are set up as follows:

1. Anything with foreign characters (umlauts, etc) in the message headers gets filtered immediately. This gets rid of messages in Japanese (kanja) characters which I can't read (even if they're not spam ).

2. A set of sender/account specific filters pick up mail from email discussion lists, etc., and filters them into folders. I also filter mails from (for example) my family, my accountant, and so on.

3. Of those mails that remain, any which are from correspondents already in my address book are left in my inbox.

4. All other mails (i.e., from people I've not received mails from before) goes into an 'Unsolicited mail' folder. This can then be quickly scanned to see if it's from anyone I know, or if not just deleted as spam.

5. Any 'unaddressed' mail going to a non-existant account (e.g., xyz123@otway.com) gets filtered into a junk folder for deletion.

6. Any mail with words such as '*****', 'XXX', 'viagra' etc gets filtered into the junk folder.

7. All other mail which hasn't been caught so far goes into the 'unsolicited' folder.

So far, not a single mail has gone into the 'junk' folder which hasn't been spam - and that's in 8 months. It leaves me with 5 or so unsolicited mails per day to check (out of a total of approximately 300 mails/day), most of which get deleted.

If you want any more advice, give me a shout.

MarkO

Oh, and regarding hotmail, steer well clear. It's been proven that you will get spammed, no matter how much you attempt to avoid it. Some friends on another BBS ran a test - they set up a fresh hotmail account, with the directory listing turned off and all the other security measures enabled. They didn't use the account, or give out the address, and after a week they'd received 4 pieces of spam mail.

The problem, of course, is that spammers know that if they send a random collection of alphanumeric characters to an address ending with "@hotmail.com" that they're almost guaranteed to get a 'hit'.... [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

MartinM

<shout mode on>
Oi, MarkO!
<shout mode off>

YWHMS

Ta, Martin
PS You Will Have Mail Soon

MarkO

<looks>

Nothing yet....

MarkO

Still nothing. Perhaps it got binned by my spam filters.

MartinM

YHM - sorry it took so long. Got interrupted by work

stevencotton

I use procmail and SpamAssassin, but that's no use to you on Windows. Have a look at Paul Grahams article on http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html "A Plan for Spam", quite interesting, I'll be implementing that shortly. The code is in Lisp but shouldn't be difficult to port.

Steve.


[Edited by stevencotton - 9/9/2002 11:23:49 AM]

cryptwalk

Is there anything out for AOhell yet? All my AOL acounts just get batterd with spam crap. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

I looked at mail washer but it doesnt work with AOHELL yet.

MarkO

As it happens, yes. There's a very simple way of stopping most of the spam problems in AOL mail (along with a whole host of other problems)

Start Menu->Settings->Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs->Uninstall AOL.

Get that piece of sh*te off your machine, and you'll find everything works a whole load better.

cryptwalk

Aye, great idea.... 1 problem though.

How the hell do I get on the internet??

MarkO

Easy. Get yourself a decent ISP.