Im looking for a decent solution to email spam. Something at least thats effective :). What recommendations do you lot have?
Email spam solution
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Email spam solution Do you want to spam someone, or prevent someone from spamming you?
Its to prevent spam from wasting my own time in my own mail box!.
My email account has a built in Spam Assassin, which works very well. You may be able to install it yourself, but if not maybe your service provider has a similar feature. Take a look here: http://spamassassin.apache.org/
SpamBayes, without a doubt!
Windows & Linux versions. http://spambayes.sourceforge.net
Freeware, and extremely good. Under windows it comes in two flavors: an outlook (not outlook express!) plugin, or a version that runs as a proxy-service on your local machine that will work with any email program.
The nice thing is that it performs a Baysian statistical analyses on your email: When you install it, it's a blank slate. You train it by showing it a bunch of 'good' emails and a bunch of 'bad' emails, and any new email will be compared to what your normal mail typically looks like.
It classifies them as 'spam', 'not spam' and 'unsure'. You can then filter on those accordingly in your mail program.
the longer you use it, the better it gets, and the fewer messages are 'unsure'.
I've filtered tens of thousands of messages through it myself, and never seen a false positive. Very few 'unsure' messages either by now.
The nice thing about the baysian analyses is that it learns based on *your* email. for example, If you never talk about viagra, v1agr@, etc. any word containing that message increases the likelyhood that it is spam. If the score of a message exceeds a certain treshold, it get classified as spam. Messages using your real name, nick name, cat's name, city, mom's name, etc. would make it less likely for a message to be spam, and so forth.
Extreme example: If you're a nigerian bank and dealing with money transactions, pretty much any off-the-shelve spam filter would be completely unusable for you since it would block most of your legitimate mail. Spambayes would recognize that this is your 'normal' mail type, and let them through just fine after it learns from you they are OK.
After some initial training, it's a set-it-and-forget-it deal, getting better and better all the time.
Windows & Linux versions. http://spambayes.sourceforge.net
Freeware, and extremely good. Under windows it comes in two flavors: an outlook (not outlook express!) plugin, or a version that runs as a proxy-service on your local machine that will work with any email program.
The nice thing is that it performs a Baysian statistical analyses on your email: When you install it, it's a blank slate. You train it by showing it a bunch of 'good' emails and a bunch of 'bad' emails, and any new email will be compared to what your normal mail typically looks like.
It classifies them as 'spam', 'not spam' and 'unsure'. You can then filter on those accordingly in your mail program.
the longer you use it, the better it gets, and the fewer messages are 'unsure'.
I've filtered tens of thousands of messages through it myself, and never seen a false positive. Very few 'unsure' messages either by now.
The nice thing about the baysian analyses is that it learns based on *your* email. for example, If you never talk about viagra, v1agr@, etc. any word containing that message increases the likelyhood that it is spam. If the score of a message exceeds a certain treshold, it get classified as spam. Messages using your real name, nick name, cat's name, city, mom's name, etc. would make it less likely for a message to be spam, and so forth.
Extreme example: If you're a nigerian bank and dealing with money transactions, pretty much any off-the-shelve spam filter would be completely unusable for you since it would block most of your legitimate mail. Spambayes would recognize that this is your 'normal' mail type, and let them through just fine after it learns from you they are OK.
After some initial training, it's a set-it-and-forget-it deal, getting better and better all the time.
My ISP has a spam thing in it too, that and outlooks actions so anything that is in my inbox with the prefix (Bulk) that my mail server affixes to suspect junk and have it dumped in my deleted folder.
I use Thunderbird. Its heuristic filter is one of the best I've seen.
My ISP has a spam thing in it too, that and outlooks actions so anything that is in my inbox with the prefix (Bulk) that my mail server affixes to suspect junk and have it dumped in my deleted folder.
Interesting. I didn't know you could get Outlook to do that. My ISP prefixes all suspect emails with "SPAM" - makes sense, now.However, for some reason I actually get very little spam - maybe 2 a day, on average - and most of those are from sites I've registered with, etc.
However, for some reason I actually get very little spam - maybe 2 a day, on average - and most of those are from sites I've registered with, etc.
It varies greatly.. I've had mailboxes where I got a couple of hundred of spam messages a day, but my 'real' private mailbox has stayed spam-free for years now.
But all it takes is one aunt following the wrong "mail this to a friend!" or "free greetingcard!" link for the floodgates of spam-hell can open up.
In general though, as long as you are selective who you give your 'good' email address to, and use a free hotmail account or so as a spamtrap for those times that you need to give your address to a company for something specific, but don't want to be bothered again by them later, you can keep your inbox pretty clean.
Also, having a generic first name + domain name also gives you a bunch of extra spam, since many spammers generate justs of common name prefixes in an attempt to reach as many mailboxes as possible.
Thunderbird does the job for me, occasionally they get through, but one click and they're gone.
WWW.LYCOS.COM
I get absolutely no spam at all,no filters needed
I get absolutely no spam at all,no filters needed
Get a GMail account, I've not had one spam e-mail since opening it.
I will say, this is for my own pop3 email addy, i don't wish to be adventuring into the relms of setting up a new one!.
What jono said. but whoops, you dont want that.
Spambayes, then.
Spambayes, then.