Author Topic: i need a good anti spam thingi (Read 913 times)

Flyboy · « **on:** August 18, 2004, 10:48:06 AM »

this spam is driving me crazy i get atleast 20 spam masseges a day.

i am currently using outlook express.
what do you guys use to stop the spam?

Ohio330 · « **Reply #1 on:** August 18, 2004, 11:35:01 AM »

Well, until you get someone to suggest a spam blocker, there
is one easy thing you CAN do. In OE, you can tell it to send
messages from, say, Friend A, to a new folder name you specify.

I.E. : friendA@hotmail.com can be set to go into folder "friends" or whatever you may want to call it.

Once you get all the wanted email addresses into another folder, all the spam will be left alone in the "IN" box.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #2 on:** August 18, 2004, 01:22:02 PM »

MailWasher Pro.

It learns about spam as you go and also has the nice side benefit of dropping email with viruses attached. And it does all this without download the entire email, which makes it fast.
It is very flexible, allowing you to block email based on words in the Subject, To, From, or body of the message. And it has a learning facility that allows it to learn what you need blocked.

It has a trial period and then you have to decide to pay for it or not. I paid.

MOSQ · « **Reply #3 on:** August 18, 2004, 04:01:10 PM »

I signed up for SpamCop.net about two months ago and love it. It's web based email so you can access it anywhere, anytime, anycomputer. You can configure your Outlook Express to POP down the email from SpamCop too.

You can either use xxxxxx@spamcop.net as your email, or continue to use your current xxxxxx@yourisp.com. If you use your current email, you configure SpamCop to pop down your email from your ISP account, then you re-configure Outlook Express to POP down from Spamcop.net, and have it send as normal.

SpamCop also deletes all email with viruses, you never see them, and they never arrive locally on your PC, so there is no chance of infection unless it is a brand new virus that no filters are catching.

The great thing about SpamCop is you can use it to report Spam back to the ISPs. Somehow the spammers must find out you are reporting them, and they drop your email off their lists, because I've gone from 130-150 spam messages a day to less than 10, and 99% of those end up in my Held Mail folder, not my Inbox. You do have to remember to check your Held Mail once a day, because legitimate email will occasionally get in there.

I usually login into SpamCop Web Mail first thing in the morning ( before I start Outlook), delete email I don't want, and report overnight spams. That way my Outlook only POPs down the mail I want to keep anyway. I do the same thing before I go home in the evening, and use the webmail login exclusively from home.

See http://www.spamcop.net/ and click on the filtered email accounts. They have options for both individuals and enterprise wide.

The individual is $30/year, and well worth it.

Flyboy · « **Reply #4 on:** August 30, 2004, 07:14:11 AM »

i started using mail washer pro, but so far i still need to tell him what is junk and what is valid, i can do this myself in the outlook..

is the program "learning" by itself or do i need to teach him?

Skuzzy · « **Reply #5 on:** August 30, 2004, 07:24:00 AM »

In the left column there are two boxes you can check. One is to mark it as a good email, the other tells MailWasher to learn that this is a SPAM message.
Make sure you have 'learning' enabled in the settings. It only took MailWasher about 3 days of use for it to pick up on most all the SPAM I get. I think the default database size is pretty small. I changed mine to 16MB.

You can also put in your own filters. This expedites the learning process.

Flyboy · « **Reply #6 on:** August 30, 2004, 12:39:57 PM »

wow this is great, 2nd day of use and it really pickes out the spam

one more question do you bounce of spam masseges or just delete them?

Skuzzy · « **Reply #7 on:** August 30, 2004, 01:29:57 PM »

I just delete them. Kind of have to watch the SPAM MailWasher learns about. During the learning process it is possible for it to catch legitimate email.

The biggest plus for me, is that it does not download the email, just the headers and some small portion of the body. This makes for fast checks and dumping virus laden emails without them ever landing on your hard drive.

bloom25 · « **Reply #8 on:** August 30, 2004, 10:33:41 PM »

Call your ISP and get them to buy a Barracuda spam firewall.

Flyboy · « **Reply #9 on:** August 31, 2004, 05:16:45 AM »

this mailwasher program is awesome! i will defintly register

one more question, when i recive an attachment outlook express doesnt let me open it, any ideas how to stop that?

Eagler · « **Reply #10 on:** August 31, 2004, 06:05:29 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Flyboy
this mailwasher program is awesome! i will defintly register

one more question, when i recive an attachment outlook express doesnt let me open it, any ideas how to stop that?

Flyboy
Look here for the fix to that

Skuzzy
thanks for the mailwasher tip
what does it do when you select "bounce"?
does it send it back to sender as a dead email or some canned message which would only prove to sender the email account is legit?

thanks again

Skuzzy · « **Reply #11 on:** August 31, 2004, 06:51:39 AM »

Theoritically, it bounces the message back to the sender making it look like your email address is dead.

However, if the email address is forged, as it would be in the case where a virus had infected someone's computer and it was sending out email using the infected system's address book, the email will not bounce back to who actually sent it.

Ghosth · « **Reply #12 on:** August 31, 2004, 08:09:42 AM »

Mozilla's email client "thunderbird" has the equivilent of mailwasher built into it.

2 days and no more crap in my inbox.

What I really like is that I can tell it where to send the junk. (like the trash folder)

So If I think I missed an email I can go back & double check.

I've yet to see it screw up.

Granted I havn't tried the mailwasher pro.
I did used to run mailwasher, and loved it.

As to bouncing, personally I wouldn't.

I tried bouncing for a while. Before I knew what hit me I'd gone from 15 junk mails a day to over 80 on average, with some days hitting 120.

With thunderbird I quit bouncing, and its taken a few months. But I'm back down to 15 junk emails a day.

Eagler · « **Reply #13 on:** August 31, 2004, 12:47:36 PM »

will mailwasher eventually not pull down the mail you mark as spam (delete directly from server) or does it always pull it down and mark it as possible spam like I am seeing it do now?

great program by the way - thanks again Skuzzy

Skuzzy · « **Reply #14 on:** August 31, 2004, 01:01:23 PM »

It always pulls the header down Eagler and marks it. This is done so you have a chance to unmark it, in case of a false trigger.

When you buy/register it, you get another level of protection as they keep a database of known SPAMMERS and then they automatically mark the incoming SPAM to be blacklisted.

I am not crazy about SPAM tools/utilites that make an attempt to hide SPAM from you as there is always a chance it might be legitimate.