Kerry,
Are you using TrashFinders EXCEPTIONS function ? I have found that
although potentially dangerous, it has saved me hundreds of hours in sifting
through known good mail, as all previosly designated addresses are passed,
which usually means that only spam (and just new addressee's of valid email,
are sitting in the trash filter).
I tell my users to establish contact with a source, if you absolutely
want
to guarantee prompt delivery of all of their messages, prior to a critical
communication being lost. They can either send me an email message with the
anticipated information, site, etc., or have the user enclose a word like
[NEW] (in brackets), as I use AVP to scan our trash bin, and I have found
that if I first sort by Subject, then by User, as I can better catch good
mail on a user-by-user basis. I also retain all trashed mail, by moving it
to a HOLDING folder on my desktop, as opposed to killing it, which a) allows
me to retrieve and forward a lost critical communication should I
accidentally trash it as suspected spam, and b) I am now submitting all spam
to the police as harassment, which they can go after these spammers without
invoking new laws (a subject that I would be happy to discuss off-list).
The only downside to whitelisting addresses with exceptions, is that a
spammer could use the sending-address of a valid user, as the sender of
their spam, and could potentially relay mail through your server. I am
hoping that Randy is building an authentication scheme into the next version
of Trashfinder to help curb this issue. Right now I am also using Plugin9
which stops anything sent TO=FROM the same user, which catches 99% of the
current situations where I have seen messages passed.
I use to be an avid address range blocker, but I was spending entirely
too
much time looking up ranges of addresses, and maintaining a blacklist, and
it was starting to become a major problem, as many valid sites have been
attacked and were being blocked. So I turned off all address blocking
completely, and rely completely on keyword blocking to catch the spam. It
has become extremely effective, as one or two messages a week would squeak
through, I would refine the filters, search out the mailboxes and clean
before users picked up the mail, and everyone is happy.
I am always anxious to see how others use these highly customizable
programs to get things done.
John Martoccio
Intelligent Solutions (a computer VAR)
Fox Lake, IL, USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Kerry Barlow
> Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 9:58 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Spa m and tra sh query
>
>
> HI all: I have another question. Using TF. I have found
> numerous emails for
> clients trashed because inter est rate or some other spam
> statment was
> found. This is fine, however in certain cases for certain
> clients they do
> indeed need those strings in their letter, because it is a
> valid email from
> a bank or insurance company. I can remove the string filter
> from TF, but the
> inter est rate string had 578 hits in the past few days. So I
> have to allow
> 577 spam to go thru my system just so that one person can
> receive one single
> valid email?
> And I cannot tell TF to have an excpetion file for that
> customer because it
> is unknown from whom he may need to receive such an email.
> That is to say,
> one week it may be quotes from one bank, another week from a
> differant bank.
> A 3rd option is to tell TF to allow all mail to go to him. In
> that case, he
> then receives every bit of spam and junk on the internet, and
> once again he
> is upset with me because now he gets to much spam.
> How do the rest of you handle situations like this? I spend
> 99% of my time
> fiddling with email for these customers and in the end, I
> still have wierd
> problems.
> I honestly feel that we as administrators are going to have to start
> charging extra money for mail services. The mail/spam problem
> uses more
> personal time, and CPU resources on our system then serving WWW pages.
> Sighhh....
> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
> Very respectfully, your obedient servant.
> Brig. Gen. Johnston Pettigrew
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> WWW server hosting Http://mntnweb.com
> Kerry Barlow
> p.o. box 21
> kirkwood ny
> 13795
> 607-775-1575
>
>
>
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