spam...how to avoid ????

[adsr]

Hi,

Getting more and more spam(using eudora)...
Even whith filters,spam comes back using  new headers etc..
Is there a way to get rid of that?

Thanks very much

GR

[Highmac]

BBC TV had a programme last night about the problems companies are having with spam. One company said it relied on email for a lot of its business and spam is threatening the firm's future. Programme also said amount of spam had doubled in last few months, and told us spam capital of the world is one city in Florida (can't remember name - I'd never heard of it) and named one man as being responsible for something like 90 per cent of it. Reporter said it was up to governments to stop it, but it needed EVERY government in the world to act in unison. Fat chance of that!

[Gary S]

I'm so fed up with spam i'm bouncing them back to the senders with OSX.2's Mail program. I've been keeping track and i get about 60% mailed back as undeliverable-no such address. I don't mind getting them back. It's my little way, in the large cosmos that i can fight spam.

I thought of moving to another planet but i heard we're the only one with e-mail service at this time.

[Xairbusdriver]

Lots of people will warn you about where you leave your address. Many will tell you to get some 'throw-away' ones. But those techniques won't help with your old addresses that all your friends have or that are used by some national organization that only updates info once a year! And it soon becomes as much work getting new addresses as monitoring others.

Others will ask you to forward SPAM to several sites/agencies that track/monitor this activity. Probably won't do any harm, but don't expect fast action.

Of course, you probably know that you should never use the "Unsubscribe" link in any SPAM. But you should also never use any link in one, either - you will probably simply send a message to the server confirming your existance.

My routine is essetially to carefully set up filters in Eudora to look for 'image' tags in the body of a message. This will alert me to anything that will send a message to the authors server when I open that message. The image may not even show up in the message; it could be a 1 by 1, transparent GIF, but it will send a request for that image none the less. When that message is sent, it will be logged on that server and your address will be confirmed as a valid, 'live' one.

Secondly, I don't use Eudora to automatically download any mail - it only downloads when I tell it to - manually. Instead, I use POPMonitor, running all the time to check my accounts every 30 minutes. POPMonitor does not allow any HTML actions; it simply shows the text of a message. It cannot be used to send anything. But it does have much better filtering capabilities, IMHO, than Eudora.

I still have to add adresses to its 'Blocked' list. But I can do that several different ways and with only one click. It is also great for creating a 'Trusted' list - those messages are marked and I usually don't bother ever reading them in POPMonitor, at all - I just open Eudora and download them when I'm ready.

It also has a 'Bounce' action, but I doubt that the real senders address is in the message that you get. It may help if what you are getting is actually being generated by a virus on someones machine, but even that address is not guaranteed accrurate. I did, recently, get about a dozen messages from the same "sender." I assumed they were being generated by a virus using someones address book. But respnding to anything you think might be SPAM is risky. I always assume that I will eventually be confirming to the author that my address is available and valid.

All the above is doen in 9.1, but I've read that there are many UNIX programs, with OS X GUI's that are very powerful in deleting/marking/handling SPAM. POPMonitor also has an OS X version (only a maintainance version in 9 now).

Jim C.

[cdub1988]

Might check out Spam Assassin.

Heard some really great stuff on it on the LUG I subscribe to in KC.

Also, here's docs on a Mac OS X install of SpamAssassin.

Hope that helps.

Take care.

Chris

[cdub1988]

Scratch my previous post.

I should have read that second link a little more closely.

Since the person who wrote that FAQ was setting up Mail.app to read from a localized mailbox, you couldn't use it if you're on X.2.  

Sorry.

Bummer.

Take care.

Chris

[Mayo]

I haven't received any spam for over a month after changing two addresses I had used to register domain names and which were apparently harvested from the WhoIs database.  I now use a service that prevents my personal information from showing up on WhoIs.

My wife, on the other hand, has received occasional spam that isn't even addressed to her e-mail address.  A Charter Pipeline rep told me that spammers are starting to use the Bcc: field to send spam in an attempt to get around laws that focus on misuse of the To: field.  So my wife's address is part of the bcc field and the To: field contains another address.

Has anyone else seen this and is the info correct?

I also use Eudora and my spam filters are 99.9% effective in sending spam to a special mailbox where I can easily scan them for misdirected messages, something that happens once in a blue moon.

If you do a search at TS using the keyword spam you will find numerous previous topics that outline how to set up effective spam filters.  I am also a big fan of e-mail forwarding services such as   Pobox.com and information about how to use such a service is included in earlier posts I have made regarding spam.

[taliesin]

On the Eudora front, a small miracle :

the latest beta, with a built-in junk mail filter, is so far nothing short of fantastic.
I'd about given up on other anti-spam methods.
I've not tried Jim's PopMonitor, so can't comment.
I've been impressed to see SpamSieve in action, and it also has mainly favourable reviews at VT, but I wanted to hang on to my 20 bucks for something else.

The Eudora version I'm praising to the high heavens is 6.0b18.
With all the bugs that preceded the final release of Eudora 5.2.1, I was wary of heading into a beta for an application so essential to me, but this one -- we are talking an OS X only version, I'm afraid -- has kept me very happy for about a month.

Out of a score of spam mails a day, I've only needed so far to inform the programme that three in all were not junk.

[Gregg]

Although I haven't been receiving much spam lately, Spamfire was working just fine for me. Maybe those spammers gave up?  

[Highmac]

Mosty of the spam I get is addressed to other people with the same first name as me at the same ISP. I use Popthing, similar to Popmonitor, by the sound of it. It lets me check emails while they are still on the ISP server and delete them withoutdownloading. Still a chore though.

[RHPConsult]

adsr

You'll get a variety of opinions on this topic, but probably unanimity on the assertion that no one has yet figured out how to avoid spam, as you asked.

The best I believe that can be done is to avoid having to process it yourself, as some application does it for you.

My recommendation is the little engine that could inside of Mozilla.

It's done the best job for me of anything I've ever tried . . . around 75 per day, found, IDed, and g-o-n-e. I only wish it could bundle 'em all up a send them to the personal mailbox(es) of the clown(s) that decided that spamming me (and you, and everyone else) was a really good way to do business. I trust there's a very special Internet Cafe, right there in the center of Hades for such scum . . . not to put too fine a point on it! :

Mozilla's "device" learns well, seems to forget very little, and recovers quite nicely from mistakes that I subsequently "bring to its attention."

My 2¢