Post by: krissel on October 14, 2006, 11:22:23 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6038236.stm
Post by: pendragon on October 15, 2006, 08:40:48 AM
I get almost no spam, but still,, 'tis good info worth knowing.
Post by: danf63 on October 15, 2006, 09:50:02 AM
Dan
Post by: LR827 on October 15, 2006, 12:28:02 PM
But this caught my eye, because my Yahoo e-mail acct. has recently been swarming with spam. The Yahoo filter may have caught 2/3 of them, but that is in the 20+ range now, and there are another 10+ in my mail that did not get filtered.
I just don't know why this is happening over the last couple of weeks.
Post by: kimmer on October 15, 2006, 12:58:59 PM
Interesting that we now think of email as a "chore". It used to be fun, exciting, interesting and filled with possibilities. Now it is a reminder of chores from mom and stars on a job chart.
Since I don't open stuff like this, I've not really viewed a spam mail in ages. I can testify with LR827 - my mailboxes are all swimming in spam suddenly. I don't know why and I sure wish my spam filters would catch them. Even the amount of spam hitting my junk box is triple the norm.
It's truly annoying.
Post by: pendragon on October 15, 2006, 01:44:59 PM
It’s not that I have done anything per-se, e.g., I do not use SpamSieve or the like. It’s that my ISP (AOL) is fairly heavy-handed/draconian re tolerating other ISPs which allow themselves to be a conduit for SPAMers. Accordingly, 1-2 SPAMs a day is the norm.
Post by: Gregg on October 15, 2006, 03:42:53 PM
QUOTE(danf63 @ Oct 15 2006, 09:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
How do you manage not to get spam? I get about 5/day
Dan
Dan
One way is to have net savvy friends and family - all of them. Alas, no one does. Just one "forward" with your address exposed to the world will get you spammed eventually.
Post by: Xairbusdriver on October 15, 2006, 03:51:13 PM
QUOTE
Just one "forward" with your address exposed to the world will get you spammed eventually.
Yeah, I gave up 'educating' people on that several years ago. 
My newest plan is to not have any friends. It seems to be working, at least on the SPAM side...My theory is that 'surges' in SPAM is related to the success of SPAMmers finding ways around the current batch of filters. Then, the filter makers figure out how to make them better and the SPAM decreases, for a while. It's like a pendulum ( remember those? ).
Post by: LR827 on October 18, 2006, 02:01:14 PM
Post by: Xairbusdriver on October 20, 2006, 05:50:33 PM
Post by: jcarter on October 20, 2006, 07:20:28 PM
But I have missed some good mail, and to get it, I have to go to my ISP WebMail site, and catch it.
Only 2, one is the Pandora music messages and the other is GoLive forum messages.
So its easy to do that, and I have found nothing else.
But the TIME that it takes to delete the few I get, and go back and see what is missing, and to change filtering is all a real pain in the butt.
I just wish there was a way to get rid of spam, as we have managed to do with unwanted phone calls. We get almost no telemarketing on our various phones nowadays. Its really nice.
Hey, Tacit, you are the expert on this. Can you give us another tutorial on how to thwart spam?
Anyway, MacMail is pretty easy to set up to deal, and the deleting process is not too painful, it just takes a bit o time.
I miss very little, and get less spam than last year, so something must be working.
And I get zero porn-spam thank goodness. Nothing at all.
Jane
Post by: kimmer on October 20, 2006, 08:24:38 PM
"Insert adjective of choice here Letter. You need to read."
Yeah, like I want to read a grand letter, or a weighty letter, or a simple letter, or a momentous letter, etc.
I've been downloading these by the dozens. I'm annoyed, upset and tired of it all.
Post by: D76 on October 20, 2006, 09:04:14 PM
Post by: kimmer on October 20, 2006, 09:34:35 PM
Post by: sandbox on October 21, 2006, 06:45:10 AM
Their purpose so far has been to let folks know who the spammers are, even if they're U.S. companies or U.S. based Spammers.
All my public email addresses get spam, my private addresses do not. The trick is to create an address that is not typical, like one2me@yourIPS.com and guard it.
Your other addresses can be used publicly and can be filtered heavily.
My personal address will only allow the email in that is in my address book and any domains that I allow. For example I'll let anyone through my filters that has my City's email Domain ci.mycity.fl.us because I get a lot of mail from different departments, some of which I don't know the exact address so I leave it open to anyone, knowing that they have secure severs.
I redirect any email that has the wrong address, like sandbucket@mydomain.com is not sandbox@mydomain.com so it will go to a default mailbox, which I look through once a week on maintenance day. Open email addresses, like on web sites are managed by Spamassasin http://spamassassin.apache.org/ on the server side, using webmail adjustments. Of course these addresses, some have been active for 9 years and get more than a thousand spam’s a day are easily handled with this Apache tool.
A good ISP has web mail filters and can control the flow of spam right down to only letting in the people that are in your address book. Most ISP's let you have more than one email address. So if your having trouble with spam, just create another address using letters and numbers, (one2sandbox@mydomain.com)and guard it. You'll be glad you did!
If the people you email to put you one a list and send the list out publically, it's only a matter of time before your address becomes public. don't give those people your new address and it will be a secure address for years to come!
Post by: Xairbusdriver on October 21, 2006, 09:08:14 AM
QUOTE
If the people you email to put you one a list and send the list out publically, it's only a matter of time before your address becomes public. don't give those people your new address and it will be a secure address for years to come!
While I don't deny that this procedure will work, for a while, anyway, it is just way too inconvenient for many people.First, "those" people are often our close friends and family. It could become quite difficult to avoid giving these people our new addresses.
Second, many who have the old address will be slow to even change/delete/add any new address and may not have been involved in the 'publication' of them in the first place. Forcing them to change is impolite, at least, and inconvenient also. It's not their problem, it's ours.
Third, the solution is not really permanent. It also depends on the security of all the recipients computers and/or their computing habits and skills.
I'm not faulting you. You have the skill and patience to use it and it works well for you and your contacts. But it still requires your time, even if just once a week, to make sure good emails are not being lost. If there is a good one in the trap, it will have lost much of its timeliness by using this technology. If the message concerns a business opportunity, that timeliness may be very important.
In the end, there is simply not a 'perfect' way to stop this stuff and still make use of email.
Most of our SPAM comes from our EarthLink accounts, but my wife doesn't want to bother using their fairly strong trapping methods ( yet ). I can probably count on one hand the SPAM from .Mac and only occasionally on the RoadRunner addresses, so I haven't even bothered checking what they offer in the way of filtering, but I may do that for RR, soon.
I guess my point is:
• Learn about and use the tools that are available to you, when you decide you don't want as much SPAM as you are getting. But remember that no systems will work forever because, somehow, the SPAMmers are making enough money to justify their efforts.
• Never reply, in any way to a SPAM/scam message. Period.
• Turn automatic image display in your email program OFF, at least as much as possible.
• Find a convenient app to scan the contents of a suspect message, before opening it in your email program. And get or use any 'intelligent' filtering software that works with your email program.
• Understand that you will always have to check for 'false positive' messages; good stuff that gets tagged as bad.
• Try to use your oldest, most SPAMmed address for non-critical messages/registrations. Put the tightest controls on that address.
• Try to gently/tactfully enform your family and friends of how they can help themselves ( and you ) to cut down on the abuse of 'our' addresses. But just don't expect 100% understanding or compliance!
Post by: jcarter on October 21, 2006, 09:20:17 AM
They seem to work quite well, takes some time to get them set up correctly, but it seems that they catch most of the spam that used to get thru.
Then for my cable ISP, I can go into its webmail(bypass the .mac), and thus find a few that got 'caught' but are good ones, like the Pandora one I mentioned.
Then you can mess around with those filters too, and thus get it so that most of the spam gets caught there. Earthlink, my jcarter original capecod.net one, is the one that I use for shopping and signing in to most forums and classes, used to give me tons of spam, but then again, Earthlink has a nice filtering system and once you set it up, it works well. I dont get any of the porn-spam that used to come in thru them.
So, inotherwords, by using ALL the filters on all your ISP and email accounts, you can eliminate almost all of it.
I get less than 10 a day now, and they mostly are stock market ones, and once in a while a viagra one.
But our kids are getting bombarded at their university email addresses now, and they used to be almost spam free. Something must have changed with those systems.
Ive been also using G-mail and have had good luck with them too.
But I dont have it coming into Mac mail, its on my other Mac.
So I guess there are many ways to combat spam, and by all of us posting our methods, we sure can cut down on it greatly.
Ive taken lots of advice here and put it to work.
Jane