Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance

Subject: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 01 Jan 05 - 02:12 PM

My preferred email is webmail - why provide a local client for the hackers to use? - and all my services automaticaly filter and delete Spam.

In the last six months I have seen only half a dozen spam emails. So I'd say the spammers are wasting their time these days!

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Sooz
Date: 01 Jan 05 - 02:17 PM

I use Yahoo and get about 400 spam a week. What am I doing wrong!?

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: annamill
Date: 01 Jan 05 - 02:58 PM

I'm using verizonmail.com for my email and I get maybe a couple of those silly lottery scams a week. I also get very few popups. I have XP, have my firewall set to on. I was using explorer, but now I use Netscape. I love it.

I use outlook for my site and that gets load and loads of spam. All kinds. I hardly go in there any more except to clean it up and see if I have any emails from customers.

I guess the answer is don't use Outlook. Try using your providers email instead and see if they have setups for spam. I don't seem to need to set anything up. I just don't get junk.

Annamill

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 01 Jan 05 - 03:00 PM

I use Fastmail and that is almost spam free.

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: mack/misophist
Date: 01 Jan 05 - 08:17 PM

Note to sorefingers:

A recently convicted spammer was sending about 10 million e-mails a day. Out of that, perhaps one in 30 thousand responded. With a low rate like that, he was making around USD$400,000 per month. That's why they do it. People like yourself aren't too common. Note that no spam filter is perfect. You may be losing some mail.

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 12:55 AM

Nope I don't lose any mail because 100% of my contacts began outside of the net, and some I first met on the internet. We dont share email details on line.

I have no idea how filters work, but they do work! Mine simply asks 'Do you want to automaticaly delete Spam?'. Sure!

If your contact is important I am certain you'd be swapping telephone numbers AS WELL as email, so what is casual isnt missed. Thats my point, and I think most netizens are willing to live with that knowing the spammers are out of a job...

BTW you can elect to delete all spam, or some spam or no spam. You may also help flag spam by alerting the server that a mass email IS spam. When you do that then everybody benefits.

What makes spam work also makes it fail, ie vast numbers of moderators..

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: GUEST,The Burnley Cloggies
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 03:47 AM

Some festivals now e-mail details to to their audience.

Guess these e-mails may end up in the spam box.

Wish we could set our spam filters to delete 'get rich quick', viagra and all the other offers we don't need while still allowing any festival mailings to reach us O.K.

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 06:07 AM

I use Mozilla & it catches most spam & puts them into Trash. Tonight there were 12 new emails to load, 8 went straight to trash, and of the 4 in my intray 1 was spam so I only had 3 to read.

When I was between computers recently I was using the browser at work & reading my email from my ISP's website where I had to manually delete spams before reading the real messages. A real hassle on the Monday when I had 116 messages & only 10 were for me.

sandra

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 06:19 AM

It appears people are giving credit that may be somewhat misplaced. It makes little difference what browser or email program you use (there is a difference between the two). The spam filters are a separate item, and can be used with either.

Quite a few of the email services have significantly improved their spam filtering, at the servers, in recent months; although it's soemwhat variable. We have never received significant spam on our MSN addy, over a period of more than 10 years; but MSN has been moving their service to http servers shared with Hotmail, and the spam has increased a somewhat since they slammed us to a new server.

My "junk" Hotmail account received massive(?) amounts of junk, up to about 400 per week and sometimes double that, until Bill Gates got some spam at his home a few months ago, and it suddenly stopped. (He held a press conference to tell everyone he was pissed.) Unfortunately, the same server consolidation, and push for everyone to use webmail and browser viewing in place of POP3 and email programs has been accompanied by some creep back up in the amount of spam - on both accounts.

Nearly every email service makes constant changes (sometimes euphemistically called improvements) in their spam control. There are a number of new spam filters available and sometimes incorporated into browsers, email programs, and even operating systems as "incremental patches" that you may not realize are being added. Of course, its all "just to help you out."

There have also been a number of convictions of spammers recently. In one case a month or so ago AOL was awarded damages in the amount of $1,000,000,000 (US) [I counted the zeros twice] against a single "spammer." (They'll take ten cents on the dollar if they can find him.) Another was sentenced a couple of months ago to 9 years in prison. Maybe the message is getting through.

Most reputable email services will now block you from sending email if they determine that you're sending spam. Unfortunately, they don't always tell you they've done it, or why; but Hotmail - as an example - will generally terminate your "sendability" immediately if they find you sending any message with more than 50 addresses on it. They may also do the same if they find you sending the same message 50 times in succession to individual addresses. That can be a real problem if you have to send a newsletter. An additional complication, if they block you so that you can't send an email, is that the ONLY WAY you can contact Hotmail about your account is by email. (Brilliant people that they are.)

Any browser, and any email program, can be equipped to filter incoming spam. Any service can filter at the server, and many do; although the performance is "variable." With most services, you can change settings to tell them what amount of filtering you want them to do, and of course you can change settings on any filter you have on your own machine. No filter is perfect; but they have improved a lot in the last few months; and they are being used much more often.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 06:27 AM

Sorefingers,
Some catters may wish to consider a shareware application like Mailwasher, which allows you to preview and reject messages before downloading them from the server. You set the default level of rejection to your own preference, but can check down the list is incoming items and over-ride the system where appropriate.

There is the added benefit that such applications can "bounce" spam back to originators as though your email address is defunct. Some originators will then eventually remove you from their lists to reduce the the number of bounced returns they get. (It goes without saying that no-one should ever respond to spam, however annoying it might be, as this merely confirms that it reached an active account.)

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: freda underhill
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 06:30 AM

I use Yahoo and get 3 or 4 spam a week. They filter out all the viagra and mortgage ones, and have been pretty good. Maybe its because its Yahoo australia, i dont know why its better than yours, sooz.

freda

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 06:36 AM

Get yourself a Mac. Spammers can't be bothered with minorities. I see maybe a couple of dozen crap emails in the course of a year. But if you insist on hangingon to Bill Gates's sticky hand...

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: pavane
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 09:56 AM

Most of the spam I am still getting on Hotmail comes from other Hotmail accounts - often with unreadable charater sets. So their send blocking doesn't seem to be a complete cure.

Ps how does a spammer know from your email address that you have a Mac? I don't think so!

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 02:08 PM

I can't tell you how it works or why it works, pavane. I can only report that it works! Maybe the fact that my email address ends with mac.com has something to do with it, but I doubt it. The last spam I saw was early in December. One item, instantly erased.

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 02:17 PM

Lots of quibbles and maybe they will make a difference, but I don't think that will last long and here is the reason.

First off any email addy thats got privilidges in my accounts does not get any check at all, ie I always get emails from people I have added.
Secondly any other casual email is usualy off of a site where I have privilidges and will be so labeled. No sweat, the rest is unsolicited and therefore unwelcome, anything else if that important would be followed up if not already preceeded by a phone call.

Third and most important of all, - John in Kansas almost lets one imagine that it does not matter ..but it does! - today most smart netizens are using webmail precisely because it is so well financed and kept uptodate with virus/hazard filters, and todays servers are sharing across boundaries profiles for such data as seems appropriate according to user and/or their own moderation arrangements... ahem..

In addition, some of the bigger players are now sharing data and guess what? most spam most of the time never gets into users email boxes.
In effect when so many users flag a package as spam that the server responds, the item ceases to exist.. squish splat gone.

Email lists continue to work just fine if you go to the trouble of setting it up properly. In fact, Yahoo, for example, provides you the netizen with a free service.

If you want to encourage these spammers scumbags by returning their rubbish or by localy deleting - BTW which LEGALLY alerts them that you have recieved their crap - then go ahead. But please be aware that 50% of the bandwidth we are paying for is spam.

Simply chosing a webmail solution /ignore and trash spam/ is closing it down faster than the individual actions which have been tried and failed for the last 10 years.

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: mack/misophist
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 02:47 PM

There is one erroneous idea in sorefinger's post. That is that"most smart netizens" can take the profit incentive out of spam. Too many netizens aren't that smart.

    !. Teens and pre-teens who, although they
       may know better, seem to feel exempt.
    2. Otherwise intelligent people who don't
       think they need to know how to cover
       their asses.
    3. People who don't have a clue and aren't
       going to get one.
    4. People who think spam is the equivalent
       of third class mail and, so, see
       nothing wrong with it.

It only takes a response rate of 1 in 30,000 for a spammer to
get rich. I think we need better tools.

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 03:14 PM

Ok ... do you own little webside dance; still only a matter of time till the spammers are finished off entirely not only because users are fed up with the hassle and ignore them, but more to the point, technology is overtaking lame scumbag behaviour and deleting it.

Have a nice spam free 2005!

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 03:22 PM

One of the problems now is that email services are filtering at the point of entry to their system. Doesn't matter if you have opted in to a newsletter, if they don't like something about it then it gets zapped.

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 04:25 PM

The only way Spam will ever be totally eradicated is if the Internet were destroyed.

Think Bill Gates would stand for that?

LTS

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: NH Dave
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 04:59 PM

While external filtering programs can be used by anyone with the knowledge and patience to set them up so that they work well, the later versions of Mozilla and Netscape, which used the same guts as Mozilla, include mail filtering tools which reject mail from senders not in your address book, as well as mail that you note as junk - they learn as you both go along. These are probably easier for the newer or less sophisticated user to set up and use than external filters. With Netscape now owned by AOL, I would expect much less growth in neat features, as compared to Mozilla which is independently owned.

Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 06:48 AM

I use Mozilla on a Mac but am still using the address I had before I got the Mac - so I get spam, but don't see much of it cos of Mozilla's good spam filtering. I thought about getting a new address, but ...

sandra

Subject: RE: Tech: End if Spam .... RIP and good riddance
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 09:49 AM

Sandra, a mac.com address is one to consider.