Looking for strategies on lowering spam received

S

snooper

Perch
Hi Folks.

I have almost had it :(
I get tons of spam, its just unbelievable. I have 8-9 emails that i check regularly thru Outlook, and i get probably a good hundred spam emails per day - if not double that.

I have become EXTREMELY disappointed with Spam Assasin, maybe i just dont know how to use it - but it just seems to be useless - no matter what settings its on.

I am LESS interested in installing anti-spam software on my desktop - because that still means i have to download it all. I am also no interested in MailWasherPro style apps, where you land up checking mail on 2 programs before being able to read it.

I would love to hear suggestions on what can be done to decrease the amounts of spam. I would really love to see something done server side (how does Gmail do it?? and Yahoo?), but would appreciate other ideas too. Just dont tell me not to publish my emails on the net...

Also - i do understand that i will have to get SOME amount of spam, but the quantities i am getting are ridiculous. My clients have also been complaining that there has been a change in the last few weeks in what they see.

anyways, all tips appreciated.

Cheers
 
I have been getting 15-20 a day THROUGH gmail spam filters in the last 2 weeks, in addition we have postini on the jodohost.com addresses, and I am getting 5-10 a day there, I don't know what has happened but spammers have learned some new trick.
 
I've noticed too lately that more and more spam is getting through... Spam Assassin is cranked up and when looking at the info in the headers everything seems to be functioning properly.

I gues it is true, SPAMMERS are evolving (we all developed from scum so I guess maybe SPAMMERS are finally crawling out of the ooze too)

Hopefully Darwin's survival of the fittest will come into effect and they will go extinct. (ok, wishful thinking - cockroaches are still around even if they are distasteful.)
 
snooper said:
I would love to hear suggestions on what can be done to decrease the amounts of spam. I would really love to see something done server side (how does Gmail do it?? and Yahoo?), but would appreciate other ideas too. Just dont tell me not to publish my emails on the net...
Click to expand...


I agree, I just moved over from another hosting solution and man my Spam has spiked. I set mine to Very aggresive but I am still not very happy with the results.

Is there any chance of some server side autoresponse system that asks for verification if they are not in the whitelist. I had this in Cpanel and I think it was called Spam box trapper. Something like this for h-sphere would be great!

Thanks
 
I have to agree that spam assasin is worse than useless. I set it to the most agressive settings on a couple of accounts to test it out and all it managed to do was mark 30% of legitimate emails as spam while letting about 50% of the real spam through.

The junk mail filter is Outlook used to catch about 99% of this crap, but the spammers have found a way around it. I think the only way to deal with it is to be very fast with the "delete" key.
 
hafa said:
I have to agree that spam assasin is worse than useless. I set it to the most agressive settings on a couple of accounts to test it out and all it managed to do was mark 30% of legitimate emails as spam while letting about 50% of the real spam through.

The junk mail filter is Outlook used to catch about 99% of this crap, but the spammers have found a way around it. I think the only way to deal with it is to be very fast with the "delete" key.
Click to expand...
i disagree - how do other providers manage to filter the spam so well?
 
snooper said:
i disagree - how do other providers manage to filter the spam so well?
Click to expand...

In the case of companies such as Google and Yahoo, they throw Billions of dollars at it. How's your local ISP with SPAM? Ours makes JH look like Bill Gates.
 
There are various POP mailbox cleaner programs you could try. They log into your inbox and delete the messages determined to be spam. Some are more effective than others.

Personally, I'd rather use the delete key. I already have enough problems with clients claiming they've sent me emails that I never got. I don't want to lose more to an over-zealous spam filter.

As for my ISP vs. Jodo, my ISP is definitely worse. I easily get twice as much via my ISP.

Tim
 
Just as an FYI - there is an issue (on my accounts anyway) with very aggressive spam filtering not working quite right (values are mucked --- waiting for 5.0 score instead of 2.0 to delete). Tanmaya is working with PSoft on this to try and get it resolved.

Its easy for me to see when the spam filtering isn't working right - like opening the flood gates!
 
skypanther said:
There are various POP mailbox cleaner programs you could try. They log into your inbox and delete the messages determined to be spam. Some are more effective than others.

Personally, I'd rather use the delete key. I already have enough problems with clients claiming they've sent me emails that I never got. I don't want to lose more to an over-zealous spam filter.

As for my ISP vs. Jodo, my ISP is definitely worse. I easily get twice as much via my ISP.

Tim
Click to expand...

I'm with you on all counts here, Skypanther.

My reference to ISPs was intended to illustrate the various levels of resouces available for anti-spam efforts in respective sectors of the industry, with the local ISP typically having the fewest.
 
WebDesignSlave said:
Yea this sucks. I found this, won't help matters at this point with spam assisian. But if works can hopefully stop spiders getting your E-mail addresses where it's posted looking ahead out of the box. Sure can't hurt if it works.

http://www.jracademy.com/~jtucek/email/index.php

Spammers>>>>>>>>>> :croc:
Click to expand...

While posting an unprotected email address on the internet is a sure-fire way to get spammed, I've several addresses which I've never posted on the web that nevertheless get hit with significant amounts of spam. (Try Googleing your email address...it can be quite revealing...)

My solution to the posting problem is to use forms and keep all addresses server side. Of course, this is fraught with its own suite of perils, but that's another conversation altogether.

And while we're getting creative with smileys:

To spammers: :target: :flame: :boxing: :fish: :caked: :moony: :boom: :brick:
 
my ISP mail is indeed getting worse in terms of spam, but its not even close to all my Jodo-based email addresses
 
my verizon.net mail that I have not given one person, one form or anything, gets a few hundred a day, I just delete them all.
 
Stephen said:
my verizon.net mail that I have not given one person, one form or anything, gets a few hundred a day, I just delete them all.
Click to expand...
understood.

but you shouldnt have to right? i mean, as the guy who started this thread, i am looking for strategies to lower spam [and any input from Jodo admins is always appreciated] - and i while spam IS a fact of life, i dont think that we should just shrug our shoulders, accept it and spend way too much time during the day, each day, deleting junk.

I am looking for ideas, possible solutions, combinations of solutions, and maybe all of us together can come up with some kind of direction to go in.
 
No no, I was not saying that at all, spammers are the scum of the earth, any solution that works they work to take down.

There have been recent episodes of them taking down a large but startup firm, and that firm closing down becasue of the sheer masses of DDoSes and hacking they got. Spammers are more than scum of the earth, they are criminals, and have no problems breaking many laws to bypass anything.

What I am saying with this is, when you find a solution that works, probably don't post it online, as anywhere you got it from might end up going down. Ok maybe not that extreme, but one I have used myself and it helps some, and very unobtrusive:
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/
 
an interesting one, thanks.

i guess i am just surprised at the large communatitive and cooperative online community - who so often gopes to such great lengths to develop open-source, free-ware applications and just any old online help - and there - its as though there is nothing we can do against this mighty monster...
:(
 
I have one computer setup exclusively for email and use Outlook 2003 for 20+ accounts, needless to say I also get a ton of spam. For the last couple of years I have been using a plugin for Outlook from the SpamBayes project for filtering out unwanted email. The software learns what is good and what is bad, with a little training by the user, and it works really well after a very short time of use. It is free writen in Python and works with POP3, IMAP, Windows, Mac, and Unix/Linux. For me, managing junk email is now really easy and takes almost no time at all.

You can check it out here.www.spambayes.org
 
I have a reseller account and one of my users was overwhelmed with spam. Spamassassin on mail3 really does not seem to be very effective. I have a Linux virtual server at another host so I installed Spamassassin there and forwarded the mail through it. That was a vast improvement.

I'm no expert on Spamassassin. I just did the default install. Looking at the headers, it appears that the system at Jodo is not using the external blacklists to check against. This seems to make a huge difference. I didn't bother asking at the time but I assumed the reason for not using them was either licensing issues or just the excessive resources it would consume if this was enabled at Jodo. Or perhaps I've misunderstood the whole thing.

Cheers
Ross
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top