How to Stop Spam - Comments Page 2

I totally agree with KinKstar, but note that no-one has offered any constructive solution to their problem (since 2006!)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Maybe that's because Bayesian filters and collaborative spam filtering are working for a lot of people. If you don't like the way Hotmail does spam handling, switch to another provider. Gmail funnels tons of stuff to my spam folder and I almost never look at it. It gets auto-deleted after a while...

In answer to "null" above, the "constructive solution" to the spam problem (now that BlueSecurity is gone) is KnujOn. Please go to http://www.knujon.com/ to read about it. KnujOn uses all legal means available to shut down the spammers.

One note on this is managing your spam catching points. Gmail has a decent spam filter and also lets you check it before deletion. The only brain-dead thing its done is mark bounced messages as spam. You can then have it forward to your POP account. But be sure to check the spam box occasionally. Add senders to your gmail address book if they have reliability issues.

Eudora full version is now much cheaper (its left Qualcomm to become part of the Mozilla camp) and it includes a decent spam filter.

The key thing though is managing points of spam filtering. You want it in one place where you can monitor it. My domain provider recently added a spam filter and turned it on by default, contrary to prior settings. It bounces messages it deems spam. (stupid) Theres no address book or rules to adjust. I only discovered this as I was forwarding some gmail there and it bounced back. Obviously this is a poor approach (doubling spam moving around the net and confirming your email address) so its now off. Spam control is back in my control.

It's not free (but not that expensive either). For Mac OS X I've found SpamSieve, http://c-command.com/spamsieve/, works very well. As far as I know there isn't a Windows version but its compatible with most Mac email clients.

Two comments. First, people like me who sometimes forward humorous e-mails or other items need to not only learn to use BCC, they need to learn that after you hit the "Forward" button (and before you click "Send") you should go through the e-mail deleting all the previous headers. They're full of details for spammers, they make the email huge, and they slow down the reading process when the email arrives.

Second, some of us HAVE to put our e-mail addies on our websites. I do genealogy, and I need to hear from strangers who will turn out to have family data. I'm comfortable with my Hotmail and Yahoo accounts. When Nigerians offer me millions or I win a lottery I never entered, I use the buttons to tell my mail accounts those are spam e-mails, but most penile enhancement ads are recognized by Yahoo and Hotmail.

I am not defending all spammers but I will share this. About four years ago I did buy something from a spammer. My junk mail never increased and the product was good. I would buy from this operation again. I suppose I was lucky. I do not allow HTML in my mails which probably helps. I use a web based service operated by my ISP.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You are part of the problem. Don't buy from spammers. If everyone stopped doing that, they would stop spamming.