Awash in the most awful trash mail...

[Dreambird]

I have no idea where I picked all this up but I'm getting over 50+ of the most "vile" emails every day... you know the kind yes? I don't want to repeat them here but they are driving me wild!

Any suggestions other than getting maybe another email and not using it for just everything, or whatever. I haven't been to the type of sites you'd thing of as picking up this crap but non-the-less here it is!  

[kimmer]

You don't have to visit any particular "type" of site for this to happen; you simply have to use only one email for everything. One of those so-called reliable sites then sells all their customers/users emails and BINGO, your email is out there for all to harvest and spam.

The only absolute answer that I know of is to get a couple of email addresses (and maybe make one of them a gmail addy), and use one for personal stuff and the gmail address for any/every thing. Love Google or hate them, they do a great job of filtering spam mail.

[Xairbusdriver]

The only way to have an email address that never gets SPAM is to never use it. Obviously, you can set up your own rules in <ail and most other email apps. But this is exactly what computers can do a better job at.

First, never even open a message you suspect of being SPAM! Simply doing that can automatically send info back to their servers so they will know your addy is real and active. That will increase the value of your addy to other SPAMmers. Never allow 'remote images' to automatically display. That simply sends info just like opening a message except not only the SPAMmer gets it but whoever owns the image server does also!

The solution is to use an ISP that has their own SPAM traps, like Gmail. I'd rather just dump them myself as I don't use Google for anything much. So I use SpamSieve. It's only been around for about 20 years. It already has lots of SPAM filters built-in but it mainly 'learns' when you tell it that a message is SPAM. The more you tell it, the faster it 'learns'. And it even dumps the caught messages for you, you never have to look at them, although you should double-check that it isn't catching false positives.

I'm quite astounded if you aren't using it already!

[Dreambird]

Thanks guys, I will look into the SpamSieve... I've always had a bit of a problem with this as anyone does, but it's just gotten crazy lately! Shaw is really good about getting a "Suspected Junk Mail" tag in suspected emails so they've always been right there but for now I've set the rule to send them to the Junk Folder because in the Inbox they'll drive one bananas!

I guess I've just been really lucky until now as most of the stuff marked as "Junk" has been from things where I've been and can unsubscribe... these are NOT like that!  

Oh... I can choose to just have Shaw dump them but would'ya know it... now and then there is something you wanted or even is important in there, since I've had it under control I've chosen not to do that until now but.... there comes the time.

[Xairbusdriver]

Apple's Mail is fairly good at finding and moving good stuff, especially if it comes from trusted addresses. And you also tell SpamSieve to mark some things as "Good", that's just another part of its 'learning' process.

[Dreambird]

OK... so I'm going to have a look at SpamSieve tonight... just wondering... I have about 18 rules in the preferences of OS X's mail app that shuffle stuff around... what do I do with those? Best to keep them or not to keep them and let SS handle it all?


Actually, after looking through my Rules better I'm reminded they are mainly just to get certain things to go to certain folders instead of all in my Inbox... There's really only one for "Trash"... as I said, up til now I've been able to keep things reasonable just by "unsubscribing" from all the places one goes and does something... you NEVER check the "yes, send me all your junk from now on" but they do anyway... those one can unsubscribe and that's that.

[Xairbusdriver]

No need to change any of your Rules. SpamSieve runs its checks before those rules are applied.

You will be adding a Rule after you install SpamSieve. At least I did years ago, it may not need that now. Download and install and read the site FAQ and all instructions.

Then, religiously train it properly. Your brain OS still better than the one in your Mac.