Not ideas to spam but ideas to fight spam.
The level of spam is getting out of control. More than 90% of my daily email is spam.
Do you have spam problem? What are you doing to block spam?
I am using GMail which by far works the best for me.
Before using GMail, reading daily email is like going through a pile of junk.
ThunderBird has a good spam filter but I still have to download all the junk - a waste of time and bandwidth.
Some ISP provides spam filter like SpamAssassin and there are many other open source as well as commercial solutions.
I had used SpamAssassin with mixed result. The main issue I have is false-positive, that is, marking an email as spam when it is not. If I block it at the server, I lost the mail. If I download it, it is again a waste of time and bandwidth.
Furthermore, not everyone is interest to undersand let alone configure the whole lot of blacklist, whitelist, training, real-time backhole, and other jargon-loaded mambo-jumbo.
Why GMail is perfect for me?
First of all, GMail spam filters works! I used to check the spam folder just to make sure there are no false-positive. Nowaday I hardy check. It is that good.
No configuration. Just mark spam as spam and never see them again.
GMail support sending mail from other email address. So I and able to send email as me@example.com or me@59ideas.com.
What I did was to forward all my mail from my ISP to GMail. Then I respond as the email from within GMail. In the process, GMail takes care of all the spam.
Save disk space. My GMail is now 617Mb. That’s 617Mb freed on my harddisk. There had been horror stories of lost GMail. So I should start considering backing up my GMail.
Finally, Web Clip and targeted advertisement works. Yes it is spooky to see ads that match my email content so closely. But I had indeed found solutions and made contacts from the ads. So if these ads are supporting Google to help me take care of the spam, I say give them to me.
Does anyone still need GMail invite these days? If so I have some.
Gmail is good. I agree. But I would not move to use gmail solely. I have tons of e-mailaddresses, moving them all to point to gmail will not be easy, nor good. It would clutter than single point. Besides, I still want to have the e-mails on my HD because I sometimes go through e-mail while commuting and I don’t have an Internet connection.
I download the mail. Sure, it’s a waste of time, but I usually turn on my e-mail and then first browse a bit and go through my gmail. The problem is that after that, even though thunderbird has a great spam filter, I still have to go through lots of spam for my main address. Switching main address might be a good idea.
The problem is that, as long as people keep buying stuff from spam mails, the mails will keep being sent. A new e-mail system which has been discussed before with better sender-tracking would definitely work. But that won’t be implemented for some time, if only for the legacy that the current mail system leaves.
For now, I’ll still wade through the numerous spam mails that aren’t being caught. I’m afraid that it’s my only solution for now.
Yes, the communing part is my only source of dissatisfaction. But the good thing is GMail support POP3 so you can download the mail.
I also have lots of email addresses. On the contrary, I find that reading them all in Gmail is much simpler than setting up identities in Thunderbird.
I was also getting 300 spam / uce messages daily - I’ve moved to server side solutions to combat the “needle in a haystack” feeling one gets when slogging through the latest 30 messages to find one meaningful one.
Using spamassassin is nice - but tagging isn’t the problem - stopping it is
.
Using RBL’s (realtime blackhole lists) plus throttling agents at ther mailserver level is the latest weapon du jour - and i’m pretty happy with the results. That in combination with clamav dspam meets most of my needs.
People get all concerned over how difficult it is to modify a server / sendmail conf, etc. but if you’re a k2 tinkerer, it should be right up your alley. besides, virtual private servers are so inexpensive now and having complete control over where your commercial mail originates is a good thing anyway..
Nicely said.
Modifying server and sendmail conf is not a technical problem. More a time constrain.
Consider if you have to look up man page, search online manual, read FAQ or browse mailing list to look for some things you want to configure. Time that I want to spend on many things.
As for RBL, I am not a fan. Why? Because one of the things I do in my last job was managing newsletters for a large online entity. RBL simply ban sites when our list are opt-in and the user just forgot and mark the newsletter as spam.