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| I Have Finally Tamed SPAM |
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admin writes, " Yes, despite the growing amount of SP'AM I get every day, I have
finally been able to tame the flow.
How did I accomplish this amazing feat?
An alternate email client and a simple SP'AM filter product.
For years I have used Qualcomm's Eudora as my email client of choice. Eudora has
free, ad-sponsored, and paid versions of its software. I have been a paid
customer for about 3 years now. "
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Because of the way Eudora is designed I have never had a email virus get through
an infect my system. I have never had a Trojan horse or other spyware software
automatically installed without my knowledge nor have I had my contact's list
abused by an email worm.
Eudora doesn't allow it. Hasn't for years. While Microsoft Outlook has been
exploited by almost every virus and worm ever designed, to my knowledge Eudora
hasn't fallen to any automatic or surreptitious infections or exploitations.
It can't protect you from opening attached files that may contain viruses or
visiting web sites that try to install spyware or Trojan software. But Eudora,
along with my up-to-date Norton Anti-Virus, has kept my computer virus free for
years. (I also use Ad-Aware to scan for spyware and Trojans that could be
installed when I download and test new software.)
I operate a few web sites and have and have several different email addresses. I
use my email addresses when posting to Usenet groups, purchasing advertising and
sending newsletters. I am sure most of my addresses are on every SP'AM list in
existence.
I get a lot of SP'AM through each of my accounts. If I have ever used the email
address to order a product or service, make a post on a web site, Usenet or
forum or posted that address anywhere on the web it is now on at least one SP'AM
list somewhere.
About a year ago my SP'AM started to become unmanageable. Between my several
accounts I was getting nearly 225 messages a day, of which 200 were SP'AM.
So I started using Eudora's filters to catch obvious SP'AM and objectionable
words or phrases. Eudora allows you to quickly create a filter on a message's
subject or From address with just a few clicks.
After creating my filters I noticed my Junk box start to fill automatically and
I found few false positives (valid messages caught by the filters). But every
day I was adding new filters for subject lines, From addresses and keywords.
Then the SP'AMmers started getting smarter. They would add random characters to
their subject lines or From addresses to fool my filters.
When I got up to around 500 filters my email was taking a noticeably longer time
to be filtered and I was still spending time creating new filters - at least 10
each day.
So I decided to look for another solution. I didn't want to change my email
addresses because I need to allow customers to contact me. And I didn't want to
find and replace all my email addresses all over my web sites. And I would still
have to check my old addresses as well as my new ones until the transition was
complete. And most likely I would just have got a whole new set of email
addresses added to the SP'AMmers' lists within a month or two.
After looking for a while I came across a program called MailWasher. MailWasher
checks your email accounts before you download your email into your email client
software (Eudora in my case). For each email message on your email server,
MailWasher compares the From address to a list of known SP'AMmers. You can also
add addresses to your own "White" and "Black" lists. (A
"White" list contains addresses of people you want to receive email
from, a "Black" list is a list of blocked addresses.)
After processing the email messages, MailWasher presents you with a list of all
your emails (combined from all accounts) and marks each one as
"Friend", "Probably SP'AM", "Blacklisted by…" or
"Blacklisted". Messages marked "Friend" are from those on
your White list; "Blacklisted" are from addresses on your Black list;
"Probably SP'AM" are messages MailWasher determined are probably SP'AM.
And "Blacklisted by…" are from addresses of known SP'AMmers or
addresses that the SP'AMmers have been using.
I sort the messages by their Status ("Friend, etc.) and then scan through
just the unmarked messages. There are three columns that you can use to mark
messages to be deleted, bounced, and blacklisted. I click on the check box in
the Blacklist column and the message is automatically added to my Blacklist,
marked to be bounced and marked for deletion.
Messages that are marked "Probably SP'AM", "Blacklisted
by…" and "Blacklisted" are automatically marked for bouncing
and deletion. (Bouncing means to send a message back to the sending email server
saying that your address is bad. The idea is that the SP'AMmer will take your
name off the list. But I don't think this ever happens since there is no cost to
them to continuously send email to a bad address.)
When I have checked all the unmarked messages (and sometimes I skim through the
"Blacklisted" messages to check for false-positives - I rarely find
any), I click a button on the MailWasher toolbar and all the messages marked for
deletion are deleted. I then do a final check of my accounts to make sure I
haven't got any new messages during the process and then go to my email client.
In my email client, I click on the button to check email and only download the
messages I want to receive. Now I just download the 25 messages I want instead
of all messages along with the 200 SP'AMs.
This process may seem more complicated than just setting up filters, but it
really does save time thanks to MailWasher sorting and marking the messages for
me. I hardly ever check the messages MailWasher has already marked as SP'AM. And
my Blacklist catches a good number also.
MailWasher has even figured out how to keep my Blacklist from getting too large
and slowing down the software. Blacklisted addresses have a
"shelf-life" of 6 months. After 6 months they are deleted. So
SP'AMmers that only use the address once or twice are removed from my Blacklist
and the Blacklist is kept to a manageable level.
One potential problem for me is if a customer is using an address on a mail
server that is marked as a SP'AMming server. But in a year of using MailWasher
that has only happened once (that I know of).
For more information about the products mentioned in this article visit these
links:
http://www.eudora.com/ Eudora Email
Client
http://www.mailwasher.net/ MailWasher
SP'AM Filter
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ SpyWare,
AdWare Remover
http://www.symantec.com/product/
Norton Anti-Virus
MailWasher has also been awarded a Simple Joe Simple Software award for it's
ease of use and simplicity. Visit http://www.simplejoe.com/simple-software.htm
for more SimpleJoe award winners.
You too can tame your Inbox and eliminate SP'AM with products such as these and
others. Microsoft is also rolling out new anti-SP'AM tools for Outlook, but the
ones mentioned here have been available for years.
Take back your Inbox!
***************************************************************
© Simple Joe, Inc.
David Berky is president of Simple Joe, Inc. a marketing
company that sells simple software under the brand name of Simple Joe. One of
Simple Joe's best selling products is Simple
Joe's Money Tools - a collection of 14 personal finance and investment
calculators. This article may be freely distributed so long as the
copyright, author's information and an active link (where possible) are
included.
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Posted on Apr 29, 2004 17:41pm.
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