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On Tue, 12 Dec 2000 19:48:31 +1100, John Phillips wrote these
words of wisdom:
[...]
JP> Any generic type of filter that will pick up spam? These days I get
JP> so much rubbish - be a millionaire in 30 days, send me money & make
JP> yourself rich, etc., Viagra without a prescription (I sure could do
JP> with some in any case <g>), etc. etc.
JP> Any one had any success in getting rid of these pests?
It looks like the FAQ pages need a word on spam filtering. I'll have to
look into that. I'll give a summary of what I'd write here:
Maintaining spam filters to delete spam from your inbox is difficult
since spam artists change their addresses frequently and their
techniques of spamming vary. This will take too much out of you and the
spammers will win I guess. Furthermore you've done nothing to help
actually fight spam. Deleting spam at the server level seems nice
because the spam actually doesn't reach your inbox. Again, this has two
problems. Firstly, the headers of each message has to be checked which
takes time, so the concern of saving bandwidth isn't really achieved. You
also have the same problems maintaining the spam filters and you can
only filter based on characteristics of the headers and not the message
bodies. Be that as it may, there are many anti-spam shareware
applications available and these are updated frequently by the
developers. See <http://winfiles.cnet.com/apps/nt/mail-antispam.html>
for some.
The method Marck and I (among others) have been using is very effective
in two ways. The first is that the method requires minimal maintenance.
The second is that you can examine the spam, if you like, and report
them so that the spammers can have a little misery as well. We filter
spam by exclusion, the principle here being that if we can actually
filter all messages that we know are legitimate, then the rest of
messages must be spam. This simple principle is amazingly accurate.
Spammers tend to send BCC's of their spams to their victims. So we know
now that there's an overwhelming characteristic about spam in that it's
almost never addressed directly to you. I do receive the occasional spam
message addressed directly to me but they're few and far between and
tolerable. :=) So:
a) Create filters for all your family members, friends and associates
who send e-mail to you. You may have already done so.
b) Create filters for all your discussion list messages and newsletter
type messages. These you may have largely been created already. This
part takes some time to refine since a lot of these messages are not
addressed directly to you. If you don't create filters for them, they'll
end up in your spam folder.
c) The penultimate filter in your filter list should be one that
filters, to the inbox, all messages that are addressed directly to you.
This basically will catch the occasional legitimate message that you
haven't created a filter for.
Filter string: 'your email address'
Location: 'recipient'
Presence: 'yes'
d) The last filter should be one that moves all messages not yet
filtered by the previous filter rules to a special folder ... I call it
my spam folder. This folder will contain only BCC'd messages or messages
not addressed directly to you.
filter string: 'e'
Location: 'anywhere'
Presence: 'yes'
If you wish to actively fight spam and wish not to actually learn how to
trace these pests you definitely should take a look at
<http://spamcops.net>. It does all the tracing for you in a flash.
If you wish to learn how to trace them yourself there's a lot of info on
the internet in that regard, but I personally suggest looking at the
freeware application 'Sam Spade' <http://www.samspade.org/ssw/>. It
provides the tools you need to trace these pesty characters and the
documentation is great. Their homepage contains all the application
documentation which gives some tutorials on how to examine spam message
headers.
PS// I'll need to keep this one for personal transmission to anyone who
may ask the question again.
- --
@~@========================================================@~@
| A. Curtis Martin [List Moderator TBUDL/TBBETA] |
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@_@ (Opinions given are mine and not those of RITLABS) @_@
'Funny, only sensible people agree with me.'
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