email, spam, filters - Virtual Dr Forums-Computer Tech Support

bojovan · #1 January 23rd, 2003, 10:20 AM

I hate all the Spam I get and I have tried everything to get rid of it. Recently I installed McAfee Spam killer but I have concerns that it may be blocking email that I may want.... I noticed lately I get messages that do not display properly. I have received some messages that come with this message (This is a multi-part message in MIME format) and do not display...I have also received messages that should display HTML, but come through garbled? Could it be that there is a flaw with McAfee program... Does anyone have any advise or know of any better programs that work better to filter out SPAM

rwinegar · #2 January 23rd, 2003, 10:27 AM

I'll try to keep this as simple as possible. They don't work. Period.

Spammers are always one step ahead of software developers. Filters will allow spam to get through while at the same time filtering out friendly mail. I've been there - done that. I am back to the old fashioned method of simply deleting spammed messages. It's no fun, but it works.

**Steve R Jones** · #3 January 23rd, 2003, 10:35 AM

www.mailwasher.net

ProfessorU · #4 January 24th, 2003, 04:28 AM

Maximum PC (my fave mag) had a HUGE article on spam this month. Although much of it is common sense, it's probably worth the investment if you're bothered by spam as much as I am.

I found I cut spam almost in half without any lost mail by blocking these three things:

1) email addresses without "@"
2) email addresses without "."
3) subject contains accountname

since spammers think they can call you billybob417 and get you to open their mail.

I also block all email from addresses that aren't top-level domains or .us.

The future of spam prevention is
habeas , where poetry and copyright are used to battle capitalism and commercialism.

**Tuttle** · #5 January 24th, 2003, 05:45 AM

Unfortunately, the best place to block spam is at the mail server, not the end user - that way things like MTA IP address and envelope sender can be taken into consideration, as well as message content. Even more unfortunately, that sort of system either has to be intentionally very weak or requires a lot of monitoring - people hate losing legit mail more than they hate receiving spam.

At the client side, all you can really do is filter based on content, and that's currently fairly poor. SpamAssassin does a good job of it, but it costs money to integrate into a Windows machine.

This shows a lot of promise - it's still content-based, but once the initial learning is complete it's a lot more accurate than other content filters. It's still a little way off being mainstream though.

AttaGirl42 · #6 January 24th, 2003, 08:40 PM

Hi...You might want to give MailWasher a look see. I downloaded it only a few days ago and already I can see a big difference in my spam mail. It bounces spam mail back to the sender and therefore they think they have an invalid address. It has a very easy to use interface and it can be configured to your likes or dislikes. It's free and not a big program.
http://www.mailwasher.net
I hope this will help you!

**Tuttle** · #7 January 24th, 2003, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by AttaGirl42
It bounces spam mail back to the sender and therefore they think they have an invalid address.

Unless the spammer forged the return address, in which case someone innocent gets flooded with bounces from people running MailWasher as well as bounces from the non-existent addresses on the spammer's list...

Although admittedly, the latter would far outnumber the former.

Having watched the flow of spam at work over the last couple of months, and doing a bit of reading through news.admin.net-abuse.email, I can fairly confidently say the following:
- Spammers very rarely use real addresses when sending mail. They try and get people to go to their websites or make phone calls, so their email address is irrelevant. And their lists are generally so dirty that they'd get flooded by bounces.
- Most spammers don't take no for an answer, even when "no" consists of "550 unknown user" from the mail server several times a day, every day, for months or years.

In other words, while fake bouncing might work to get you off a mailing list whose owners are very misguided about their address acquisition but otherwise alright, it won't do a thing against the hardcore spammers.

AttaGirl42 · #8 January 24th, 2003, 11:53 PM

Mailwasher also has a feature on it called Black listed and it has a built in data base that is updatable that has known spammers and you can configure these blacklisted address it recognizes to even be deleted at the server before they even reach your mailbox.

Good Luck!

ProfessorU · #9 January 25th, 2003, 02:54 AM

Quote from http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html

"we now miss less than 5 per 1000 spams"

I thought the plural of spam was still spam! I think we need a standard governing body for techspeak, so we can keep this in check and resolve the mice/mouses debate.

zeszut · #10 January 28th, 2003, 03:44 PM

i use SpamPal available at http://www.spampal.org.uk/

it will not work with net based email systems (hotmail, etc) but works effectively on POP based systems

been using it for many months and am very satisfied

terry

Beggarall · #11 January 29th, 2003, 03:31 PM

zeszut - I also have SpamPal - what filter setting do you use? - on the lowest I am still getting a lot of stuff that tells me how to be a bigger plonker etc - or do you use the blacklist option or do you use the "aggressive" setting, in which case are you missing legit mail? Your opinion/advice valued. Thanks

zeszut · #12 January 29th, 2003, 04:21 PM

i'm using version 1.1.

i also use the "bad words" plug-in.

i tried using the bayesian filter plug-in but it kept crashing so i disabled it.

i don't use the BLACKLIST but do use the WHITELIST (for our vendors' sites) and the following DNSBL LISTS:

inputs.relays.osirusoft.com
SpamSites
Spamhaus SBL
ORDB
SpamCop Blocking List
SpamBag
formmail.relays.monkeys.com
proxies.relays.monkeys.com
Wirehub! Blackholes
ipwhois.rfc-ignorant.org
China
Korea
Hong Kong
Taiwan
... and all the other "countries"

i use it through outlook and, in conjuction with outlook's junk filtering, it works pretty well. i send all spam to a junk box and check it about once a week. i find less than 1% legitimate mail marked as junk. considering i get 100 or more emails daily, that's not too bad since over 75% of them are truly spam.

terry

**Fuelm@n** · #13 January 30th, 2003, 02:32 AM

POPFile is another one....

http://popfile.sourceforge.net/

ProfessorU · #14 January 31st, 2003, 03:36 PM

Whoa, I was just the victim of spam used as a weapon. 24 hours, 115 messages, 1 real message. Normally I get 2 or 3 spam a day.

How do I know this was planned? Most of the messages are coming to the attention of "DICK" in all capital letters or "Dick Trickle". As that is not my name, I think it might have other connotations. Isn't he a racecar driver? Fortunately it was just my yahoo! account.

What a disaster!

It turns out that Yahoo! automatically deletes messages from the junk mail folder when the total exceeds 100. So I probably had more.

cwg01 · #15 February 1st, 2003, 07:45 AM

http://spamcop.net
Regular use cut me down from 25 a day to 25 a week.
And the only means to truely whack spam is at the mail server using blacklists which reject messages from certain IP's.
True, the method WILL reject valid and legit emails because the legit is being served from the same ISP that a spammer uses, kinda like the post office refusing to pickup mail from a certain city because of junk mail, but a blacklist will work constantly and consistantly.