Spam Filter

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Hi Everybody,

For the last month or so I’ve been “spammed” at the rate of 6 to 8 messages a day. Just read the post “Hacked” and saw Viking’s suggestion to “get a good spam filter. . . .” What would be a “good spam filter”?

Although I’m on Earthlink, I don’t use their “TotalAccess” software so their spam filter is not on. I’m using IE and Outlook Express. I’ve got Norton AV 2006, and I update and run Ad-Aware, SpyBot, and SpywareBlaster once a week. Free ZA is updated and running, TeaTimer and StartupMonitor are running.

When a spam message comes in, I don’t open it. I view it in the pane, then hit Message/Block Sender. After blocking, I open Tools/Message Rules and modify each blocked sender to block their entire domain. But new domains and junk addresses keep coming in.

What would you suggest I get hold of and load to stop this from happening?
Thanks for any help,

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“When a spam message comes in, I don’t open it. I view it in the pane”If you mean that you are viewing the message in the Preview Pane then that might be the cause of your problems. While you are not physically opening the messages, viewing them this way is the same thing.

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Have a look at “outlook express” spam filter – Google Search for many, many options. A favorite of mine is the POPFile: POPFileDocumentationProject.

Joe

--Joe

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I’ve never tried it, but this board has seen a number of fans of MailWasher (the free version works for most people). This program is somewhat unique in that it does not insert itself as a proxy between Outlook Express and your mail server. Instead, it provides a sneak preview of what’s on your server to spare you the full download. On the other hand, if your mail program retrieves mail automatically, then MailWasher might not help.

Your antivirus software/suite might have a spam filter, too. If not, there are plenty of other proxy-style filters out there.

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Kris,

Check out this: MOUSETRAP

to try, $19.95 US to buy.

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Kris,
I use Mailwasher and it can prevent spam from being downloaded to your computer. Spam still arrives at the server and you have to click on ‘delete’ but the trash does not get downloaded.
Slim

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I’ve been testing out Spambayes for the last week or so and I am becoming very impressed with it. It takes a while to ‘train’ after installation, teaching it what is spam and what isn’t and helping it learn from its’ mistakes. Certain spam goes to a ‘Junk E-mail’ folder, suspected goes to ‘Junk Suspects’, everything else to your Inbox. After downloading email, check the Junk E-mail folder for any false positives; click a ‘Recover from spam’ button and it will move the message back to your Inbox plus it will learn to identify the message as legitimate. The toolbar for the ‘Junk Suspects’ folder has two buttons available, ‘Recover from spam’ and ‘Delete as spam’. As the program continues to learn its’ identification becomes better and better.

I only had two problems with the installation. When it created the ‘Junk’ folders the preview pane was still enabled for both, so make sure you turn them off before accidentally viewing rendered html spam. The second problem was I didn’t have enough saved spam for it to build an initial database, so the training period would take longer than it otherwise might have taken.

I used Mailwasher before and found it worked rather well, but it was an old version that didn’t have any ability to learn (something I believe the newer paid version is capable of).

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Thanks to everyone for your help and suggestions. I’ve followed up on all of them, just Spambayes yet to research. I downloaded Mailwasher, but after reading their FAQ page it doesn’t seem that it will work for me. Using “Block Sender”, more of these incoming baddies are disappearing into the Deleted folder than I thought. Even so, the same messages are coming in over and over again, they just keep changing the domain and using garbage letters for the sender address. For that reason, I wonder if a spam filter would help. I could train it to an incoming address, but they keep adding new addresses. I got about 8 of them a couple days ago and another half dozen this morning.

I know I’ve probably signed up for a sweepstakes or newsletter on some site and they got me, but I’m really sick of them. The same thing happened exactly a year ago when I sold property in Florida, but those messages were all mortgage and loan related. Some of these are, but most are cheap Rolex watches, brown-paper-bag type suggestive gibberish badly wanting me to “click here”, medications, stocks. Identical messages come from different addresses, but at the bottom of each are several different lines of gibberish typing as though they are practicing touch-typing but don’t speak English.

Well, thanks again. I’ll have a look at Spambayes and meanwhile keep blocking those senders.

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A couple other things you might want to try are Mesage Rules in Outlook Express. There is more information about this here and here.

You could also try checking your mail online at your ISP’s site and then using the tools there to block spam before it is downloaded from the server to your computer. Eventually this will effectively block most of the SPAM from ever getting to your email servers. HTH

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OMG, why didn’t I think of that! I used to manage my home email from work all the time. I guess retirement freezes your brain. I’ll see what Earthlink offers and try to check my messages there first before opening Outlook Express. Whoo-hoooooo.

I’d had a look at Message Rules, but couldn’t quite think of how to set up a rule when they keep changing the darn addresses. But I’ll look at it again, closer.

Thanks! I’m encouraged!

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To set up a rule for most of the SPAM without blocking out your other mail from legitimate contacts, use the * key. Since much of this junk comes from obscure domain names make up a rule line that reads something like “Where the from line contains *@msn.ca Delete it from the server.”. HTH

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I went straight to earthlink webmail this morning and found 4 spammies waiting for me. I reported them to earthlink as spam. I’ll keep doing that for awhile and see if they begin to slack off. If I study the deleted box for which domains are repeating, I can use your block sender rule instructions on them. Some of them will still get through. Outlook Express is set to check for messages every so many minutes and I don’t exactly want to turn that off, yet.

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I have OE set to check for messages every 10 minutes and it works just fine. Once you get your rules set correctly, you should be just fine. I still get the odd piece of SPAM here and there, and most seem to be from one of those persistent who keeps changing the domain and sender names to get through. I get about one every day or two when they make their change, until I can catch one in my online mailbox and block and report it. Basically it’s just a manual way to do what Mailwasher does. Different strokes for different folks.

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No one believes me!

post 560,242 100% Spam & Junk blocking. No learning curve. No ISP deciding what’s good for you.
Oh well, can’t say I didn’t tell you!

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I believe you Bob !!! It’s just that I tried Mousetrap a couple years ago and it wouldn’t work with my ISP at that time (MSN). Seems the developers couldn’t crack MSN’s POP3 protocol or something. I know it’s a good product. I was simply offering an alternative.

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