MarkO

After the other thread, I thought I'd outline how I tackle the problem, so that others might be able to alleviate the symptoms of spam too.

It's pretty easy to filter out stuff depending on your mail client. I don't use any 3rd-party spam filters, or other such apps. I use Outlook XP as my client.

I have rules set up so that anything with foreign characters get chucked into a 'possible spam' folder. That strips out all the Japanese character spam mails, which seem to be prevelant these days.

The same thing happens for any mail which is addressed to my domain, but not to a specific email account I've set up (obviously, this won't apply to people without their own domains). And lastly, any mail I get which doesn't have a From: address from somebody in my address book (i.e., somebody I know) gets chucked into that folder too.

Every couple of days I scan the 'unsolicited mails' folder for anything which I might have missed (e.g., friends who've changed their email addresses, or unsolicited mail which isn't spam). The rest of it I can delete at the rate of about 30 mails every 5 seconds, as it's totally obvious from the subject and/or originating address that it's spam.

So mails like the one Clare received wouldn't get more than a passing glance, and would never actually be rendered in my preview pane before they went into the bin.

This method has allowed fewer than 1 spam mail a week into my normal inbox, so is basically flawless (I receive around 300 spam mails a week).

Any other tips?

PS: I've put this in the non-scooby thread specifically so that people who don't read the 'Computer-related' forum might get some tips.

[Edited by MarkO - 8/5/2002 6:36:41 PM]

Little Miss WRX

Cheers for the info Mark

Clarebabes

Thanks for the info too.

The reason I read that mail was because I don't really get that much spam.

Also, when the email address was a Hotmail one, how easy is that going to police?

BuRR

What about SPAMNET. This embeds itself into Outlook to combat SPAM... checking email sources against online SPAM databases.

MarkO

Looks good! I'll give it a go and report back. If it can cope with the volume of spam I get, it should cope with anything.

The joys of publishing software (and therefore your email address) via the web....

David Lock

Very helpful thread. In fact I posted this question on Computer Related some weeks back and didn't get a single reply. I started to use a simple block words in Outlook - I don't have XP version - which took out 70/80% of spam. Teens, $, mortgage, enlarge etc - you get the idea. BuRR - I thought Spamnet might be the answer but they don't take Windows 95! Thanks for info. DL

MarkO

The problem with filtering on keywords is that it's very erratic, if your mates send you a message about their teenage cousin (e.g.) it'll get deleted.

I find the rule which makes the biggest difference is the filter on names that are in my address book.

gregh

I have huge problems with hotmail, and they amount of filtering you can do is limited. Carefull use of the words to filter on has helped. One I just sussed is the first part of your email address ie in my case gregh34 alot of spam has this in the subject.

greg

MarkO

Hotmail is a heap of spam-sellout sh*te - unsurprising, given that it's free. The biggest problem is that it's easy to mass-mail using <random characters>@hotmail.com, and you're bound to hit on some real addresses. If you use a slightly intelligent generator which picks and mixes words/names from a dictionary with a few random numbers/letters, you'll get a 95% hit rate.

On a development BBS I frequent a guy did a test of hotmail last week - he set up a brand new account with an obscure name, but didn't use the account to send mail, or give the address to anyone. He marked the account not to be publicly listed in the Hotmail directory.

When he came back into work on the Monday (after the account had been live for 3 days) there were four spam messages waiting in his inbox.

TBH, if you want to cut down on spam, get a proper email account (i.e., your own domain, and a pop account). Only then do you have control over where it gets propagated to.

gregh

yeh I've got a POP email account, just waiting a bit to see what happens/how it is afore I turn my hotmail account off.

greg

MarkO

Edited to remove comments about SpamNet crashing, 'cos they've fixed those issues and it works really well now.

[Edited by MarkO - 5/26/2003 11:27:54 AM]

MarkO

By the way, as an addendum, this site has some very useful tips for setting up anti-spam rules, and also has links to loads of useful Outlook-related stuff.

druddle

I use Mailwasher. It sits in front of Outlook (XP in my case) and all mail is downloaded to it before Outlook.

You can then either accept, delete, bounce and add addresses to the blacklist before they get to Outlook. So if you dont know what the mail is or who its from you just bounce it and it gives an account error to the sender.

Dave

MarkO

Sounds like a lot of work to me. Do you have to check/bounce each individual mail, or can you set up rules so the majority of 'normal' mailes get through?

For me to check each and every one of the 600 or so mails per day I receive before I even read them would be too time-consuming.

MarkO

Okay, I've just had a look at the Mailwasherwebsite. Seems like a nice idea, except that you have to look at each mail once before you down load it, and then again when you actually read it.

Plus, because of the way it works, you can't sit there all day with your email client open, checking for new mails as they come in. If you do, they won't go via MailWasher.

It's probably a good system for somebody with low-volume (< 50/day) mail, who checks their mail once or twice a day. But it'd be no good for me.

Bagpuss

I recently changed my ISP after being inundated with spam. As I've been using the address for approx. the last ten years, this wasn't really a surprise.

Now that I've made the change, I decided to use my increased knowledge of how this works to make sure that I don't get spammed ever again (well, hopefully).

Prevention is always better than cure.

From what I can tell, spammers get your address via two main routes:

1) Using javascript to extract your e-mail address from your browser/internet configuration when you access a website. This commonly happens on warez and/or **** sites.

2) You post to forums (like Scoobynet) or the Usenet newsgroups and leave your e-mail address in the clear.

Since I got my original e-mail address, software products have appeared to combat these problems.

To address issue 1, you need to get something to like Norton Internet Security 2002. This application not only prevents your e-mail address from being extracted, but also stops the referrer field (this prevents people from tracking where you've surfed), and cookies.

To address issue 2, do something the following when posting:

mynameataddressdotcom

or

moctodsserddataemanym <---- use a mirror to get address

Since adopting these techniques, I've not had a problem with spam.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed that the Scoobynet adserver cookies can be referenced by other websites? If you actually look at the cookie being read, it contains your login name and password to Scoobynet in clear text. Surely, this can't be right?

Andy.

south-star

David,i'm trying that too.
I'm opting not to download it fron the server.
"teens" and "incest" were the first on my list..

south-star

Can anyone recommend a good FREE antispam program?

jameswrx

iTrader: (4)

MarkO, just done mine using outlook express's own message tools... seems to be working fine

I've tried various anti spam progs but they are a bit messy and I also found mailwasher annoying in that you have to see the unwanted email contents first.

Can't believe I never looked for this on outlook. It's very easy to do, and also easy (when a new subject you didn't think of comes through) to add new words to the reject list.

I was quite tempted to set it to automatically send all the filtered out emails to one of the addresses that send the most offensive. I suppose they get this all the time though. Good little feature if someone is pi55ing you off though

cheers

Numptie

Good thread Mark (I hope you're enjoying life in God's country )

I got this one today ...

Subject : RE: Ask me if you need it! Special fo...

(my outlook window is never maximised so long subjects are truncated)

To : the 'sales' address on my website

From : Nataly

Looks fine, I think you'll agree (the 'RE' was particularly clever). When opened though ...

(full) Subject : RE: Ask me if you need it! Special for the Sales from 9kFQyoDGC _@hotmail.com

From : Nataly [hicuwe@mail.com]

... and no content apart from an HTML attachment.

I opened the attachment ... and hey presto ! - an advert for ***** enlargement pills ! [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

They're getting smarter ! I use a similar method to Mark's but this was a cracker. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Still, I'll let you know in a couple of weeks if the pills are working

ajm

I use a custom perl script that runs on my mailhost and bins the spam before it even gets to my mailbox on the server. This means I don't have to even download it as all the checking has been done before I retrive my mail.

I have recently encorporated SpamAssassin into my script and now practically no spam gets through!

Here's an example of the log:-

[18/05/2003 18:34] Rejected (Bad To: Address) -> From:"Whiter Smile" <whitersmile1@gillian-chung.com> Subject:Professional Dental Teeth Whitening For 70% Less.....
[18/05/2003 18:34] Rejected (Caught by SpamAssassin) -> From:"Norton Sale" <Jenn-vohiju@xtreme-dealz.com> Subject:70 percent off the combined retail value
[18/05/2003 18:43] Rejected (Bad To: Address) -> From:lzm@ycec.com Subject:=?big5?Q?=D0=FB=81=D1=91=F0=84=D9=B7=C7=B5 =E4=D0=C...
[18/05/2003 18:46] Rejected (Bad To: Address) -> From:"Chi Norwood" <3q4nhtduaf@yahoo.com> Subject:Can you handle a Massive *****? gzgkjvusmxnasf ab...
[18/05/2003 18:52] Rejected (Bad Text) -> From:"Rudy Newman" <9o03jybo5793@hotmail.com> Subject:New Years Resolution! Lose Weight Now!

MarkO

My domain host (Titan) has recently added something similar, which kills the mails before they even reach my inbox. This means that my previous average of 900-1,000 spam mails per week has dropped to about 150-200.

What with that and my rules, I rarely see spam now.

David Lock

Interesting that this thread has resurfaced. I get around 140 junk mails per 24 hours and about 50% of these go straight into delete file via word filter. However Viagra is now V1agra or ***** is pen1s so you are for ever adding to the edit list. What really p-isses me off is that my kids use the computer and see a subject about girls and horses or whatever and I just don't see why their privacy should be invaded like this .... sorry angry mode. I have just found that the server I use PlusNet offer an anti-spam service which I think is £2.50 per month so I might try this and see. All suggestions welcome...... David

MarkO

It's been mentioned before, but a few of us have a great deal of success with SpamNet. It works very well, and catches probably 70-80% of spam straight off.

It's no longer free 'cos the beta period is over, but it's still possible to download the Beta (which is free to use) - go to the FAQ page, find the question about "Unable to connect with Beta 10d" and download the 10e beta from there.

BTW, my original post (re: Spamnet crashing) referred to an earlier Beta which was very flaky. It's much better now.

[Edited by MarkO - 5/26/2003 11:02:16 AM]

MarkO

Oh, and if anyone's interested, I created a page with a summary of how I've set up my Outlook rules to deal with spam - which might be helpful to those who are having trouble themselves. The rules described usually catch about 99% of spam that I receive that isn't caught by SpamNet.

south-star

The second thing i do (as well as configuring outlook to reject certain words) is add every bit that gets through to my block sender list.

How effective is this or do they just generate new email addresses to get round it?

south-star

Marko,why do you have a junk mail folder and not just send it straight to delete?

MarkO

No method of spam detection is 100% perfect, so to avoid false-positives I send all the stuff to the junk folder, marked as read, and once every 2-3 weeks I clear it out.

Very occasionally somebody will send me a legit mail which will get picked up as spam, so rather than miss it I'll briefly scan the junk folder before permanently deleting it all.

Admittedly, 'cos I've had only 2-3 false-positives in the last 12 months (out of some 30,000-40,000 spam mails) I sometimes just bin it anyway without checking, but it's always good to have a backup just in case.

south-star

Okay,i see.

btw....just read this on bbcnewsonline,about spam.
here

carl

Fool!
1) It's far too lardy to act as a simple POP3/SMTP mail client. As an enterprise messaging system, it's just about acceptable, but to send and receive RFC-822 format text?
2) It's written by Microsoft, hence full of security bugs
3) It's written by Microsoft, hence a primary target for crackers.

Personally, I use Pegasus Mail.