How Do You Fight Spam?
from the how-good-are-your-filters? dept
While Congress wrestles with the latest plan for anti-spam legislation, plenty of people are doing their best to get around the spam problem themselves, by using various filtering technologies. Here's an article detailing the methods that many people use - suggesting that spam filtering is pretty effective. I know it's done wonders for me, though, it is still a pain. I use three levels of spam filtering at this point. SpamCop and SpamAssassin on the server side catches the vast majority of spam - so that I don't even need to download it. On the client side, I use PopFile, which does a good job of sorting out the few spam messages that do go through. So, these days, I get about 200 to 250 spam messages a day, with about 10 to 15 getting through the server, and one or two making it into my inbox. On the whole, that's pretty manageable. Of course, the amount of spam has increased tremendously in the past few months (it had held steady at 100 messages/day for a while) - and I do wonder how well the filters will hold up under greater loads. Still, it's interesting to see what other solutions people have put together to push away the spam.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
And how many false positives do you see? I may get one a week, or even one a month. Seems like a system to forward the headers to the user may be better than having the administrator review them...I haven't seen any system that does this (and is open source.) May have to build one...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
Good catch...
I have noticed that SPAM Assassin tends to not like Hotmail and some of the other "Freemail" services. Manditory capital punishment of career SPAMmers should eleviate this problem...if only I could dream for a moment.
Anyone know of an open source SPAM program which sends summaries of SPAM to users instead of the whole email? I am looking for a program like SPAM Assassin which captures SPAM and holds it, sending a summary of the suspected SPAM to the user and asks them to reply if they think it is a real email that should be sent through. Right now, I sort all SPAM into an email account, and then look through the SPAM occasionally to see if it may have been misidentified. If I see any, I forward it on to the intended recipient, but I'd much rather not have to subject myself to violating my user's privacy, and would like to give them the opportunity to review their own SPAM instead. My users would do it, but only if the headers/summaries were sent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Check Them All Anyway
I purchased a domain a couple of years ago to use for personal email but I haven't started using it because I'm afraid my personal address will become known by spammers, and once they have it you're done.
I try to use disposable addresses and keep a good address for personal correspondence, but all it takes is one friend to do the "email to a friend" feature on the wrong web site and you're done.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Check Them All Anyway
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fighting Spam
Any objections? ...Didn't think so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cloudmark is the Undisputed Champion if Spam Fight
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Cloudmark is the Undisputed Champion if Spam F
Also, *bzzt* it's (a) client side and (b) only for Microsoft products. My spam filters should be server side, and I don't use an MS client, so I'm outta luck.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]