Free Spam Filter

[John R]

For XP Home Edition is there a good free spam filter that is easy to install
and use ? Any experience with SpamBayes?

[Bruce Chambers]

John R wrote:
> For XP Home Edition is there a good free spam filter that is easy to install
> and use ? Any experience with SpamBayes?
>
>


While it's not possible to completely eliminate spam (unsolicited
commercial email), there are some precautions and steps you can take to
minimize it's impact:

1) Never, ever post your real email address to publicly accessible
forums or newsgroups, such as this one. For years now, spammers have
been using software utilities to scan such places to harvest email
addresses. It's a simple matter to disguise your posted email address
so that these software "bots" can't obtain anything useful. For
example, insert some obviously bogus characters or words into your reply
address, for example: ."

2) Never, ever reply to any spam you receive, even to "unsubscribe" or
"remove" yourself from the spammers' address lists; you'll only compound
the problem. If spammers had any intention of honoring the your desire
not to receive spam, they wouldn't have become spammers in the first
place. When you reply to a spammer, all you're doing is confirming that
he/she has a valid, marketable email address.

3) Be especially leery of any offers from websites for free software,
services, information, etc, that require your email address, or that
require your email address so you can "login" to access the offered
service and/or information. Many such sites are supplementing their
income by collecting addresses to sell to the spammers. For instance,
subscribing to CNN.COM's Breaking News Service will garner you a lot of
additional spam. (Of course, not all such sites have under-handed
motives; it's a judgment call. If the offer seems "too good to be
true," it's most likely a scam.)

4) DO forward any and all spam, with complete headers, to the
originating ISP with a complaint. Not all ISPs will make an effort to
shut down the spammers, but many will. One tool that makes forwarding
such complaints fairly simple is SpamCop (http://spamcop.net).

5) Another useful tool is MailWasher (http://www.mailwasher.net). This
utility allows you to preview your email before downloading it from the
server. Spammers can even be blacklisted, so that any future emails
from them will be automatically deleted from the server.

6) Within Outlook Express, add any spammers to your Blocked Senders
list, so the their messages are automatically deleted from the server
without being downloaded to your PC.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

[Sam Hobbs]

"Bruce Chambers" > wrote in message
...
>
> 4) DO forward any and all spam, with complete headers, to the originating
> ISP with a complaint. Not all ISPs will make an effort to shut down the
> spammers, but many will. One tool that makes forwarding such complaints
> fairly simple is SpamCop (http://spamcop.net).

I used spamcop years ago until I realized that they include our email
address in their complaints. I am not totally sure that is happening but I
did read somewhere that they do. Perhaps they do not now even if they did in
the past, but if they do include our email address in their complaints then
it does not help us to report spam. I recommend getting an assurance that
they don't include our email address; if they don't make that assurance then
assume they do report our email address to spammers.

[Sam Hobbs]

I think the best solution is to use an email provider or host that does the
filtering.

My ISP is Road Runner and they have recently done something that filters
nearly all spam. I am now getting only a couple peices of spam a week from
the RR accounts. Amazing.

I also have a few domains hosted by a hosting company. I won't disclose the
hosting company because I definitely don't recommend them but they offer
SpamAssasin. It also elimantes most spam, or it will (depending on options)
put "*** Spam ***" in the subject of spam messages.

Another tip is to set Outlook Express to read all messages as plain text.
That might seem an inconvenience but you can also switch individual messages
to HTML format. I do this so I know it can work. The reason for using plain
text is that then images in email are not viewed and that is one way that
spammers use to determine if an address is active. OE 7 now has the option
to not show images unless we explicitly request it so that makes plain text
less useful. Plain text however makes it virtually impossible for malicious
software to be effective. Plain text also makes it easy to see phishing
attempts or makes phishing ineffective.

Another thing you can do is to use more than one email address. Use one
email address for uses such as subscriptions that are likely to get
harvested by spammers. Use a different email address for situations you can
trust, such as financial uses. You can't trust all email sent to the limited
use (more trusted) address but if you receive financial type email sent to
the address you use for more public uses, then you know it is bad stuff. I
am amazed by the messages I have received to my public account (Samuel) that
I might be fooled into thinking it is valid but since I get the junk in my
Samuel account I know automatically that it is no good. I have one email
address dedicated to use for PayPal and that makes it very easy for me to
know when I get phishing attempts.


"John R" > wrote in message
...
> For XP Home Edition is there a good free spam filter that is easy to
> install and use ? Any experience with SpamBayes?

[Bruce Chambers]

Sam Hobbs wrote:
>
>
> I used spamcop years ago until I realized that they include our email
> address in their complaints. I am not totally sure that is happening but I
> did read somewhere that they do.



Well, yes, email address that received is an integral part of the
header information that must be submitted when reporting spam. That's
inevitable and unavoidable.


> Perhaps they do not now even if they did in
> the past, but if they do include our email address in their complaints then
> it does not help us to report spam. I recommend getting an assurance that
> they don't include our email address; if they don't make that assurance then
> assume they do report our email address to spammers.
>
>
>


You want assurances that SpamCop can do the impossible? Whatever for?
It's not as if the reports are sent to the spammers; they're sent to
the spammers' ISP's administrators.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

[Sam Hobbs]

"Bruce Chambers" > wrote in message
...
>
> You want assurances that SpamCop can do the impossible? Whatever for?
> It's not as if the reports are sent to the spammers; they're sent to the
> spammers' ISP's administrators.

I don't expect them to do anything. You are twisting my words. I suggested
not using SpamCop. I said don't use it unless they assure us they don't
include our email addresses in their reports. So instead wording your reply
as a criticism, you could word it as a helpful reply saying (if it is true)
that it is impossible for them to exclude our email addresses in their
reports. You can help without being negative.

It is, however, totally possible to send email without an ISP, or to put it
another way, an ISP can send email. Also, spam is often sent using hijacked
systems. If outgoing email can be sent by a hijacked system then the
hijacker would get a gold mine by also hijacking incoming email for
complaints.

[Poprivet`]

Sam Hobbs wrote:
> "Bruce Chambers" > wrote in
> message
> ...
>>
>> You want assurances that SpamCop can do the
>> impossible? Whatever for? It's not as if the reports
>> are sent to the
>> spammers; they're sent to the spammers' ISP's
>> administrators.
>
> I don't expect them to do anything. You are twisting
> my
> words. I suggested not using SpamCop. I said don't
> use it
> unless they assure us they don't include our email
> addresses in their reports. So instead wording your
> reply
> as a criticism, you could word it as a helpful reply
> saying (if it is true) that it is impossible for them
> to
> exclude our email addresses in their reports. You can
> help without being negative.
> It is, however, totally possible to send email
> without an
> ISP, or to put it another way, an ISP can send email.
> Also, spam is often sent using hijacked systems. If
> outgoing email can be sent by a hijacked system then
> the
> hijacker would get a gold mine by also hijacking
> incoming
> email for complaints.

If you mean spamcop.net, they do munge your address
where it's in the clear. But what they don't/can't do
is look in base64, etc. types of code to see if it's
been hidden somewhere. If you read the FAQs you'll
find it well spelled out.
If it botheres you, don't use Spamcop. Do it
manually. And hope.

[Sam Hobbs]

"Poprivet`" > wrote in message
...
> Sam Hobbs wrote:
>> "Bruce Chambers" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>>
>>> You want assurances that SpamCop can do the impossible? Whatever for?
>>> It's not as if the reports are sent to the
>>> spammers; they're sent to the spammers' ISP's
>>> administrators.
>>
>> I don't expect them to do anything. You are twisting my
>> words. I suggested not using SpamCop. I said don't use it
>> unless they assure us they don't include our email
>> addresses in their reports. So instead wording your reply
>> as a criticism, you could word it as a helpful reply
>> saying (if it is true) that it is impossible for them to
>> exclude our email addresses in their reports. You can
>> help without being negative.
>> It is, however, totally possible to send email without an
>> ISP, or to put it another way, an ISP can send email.
>> Also, spam is often sent using hijacked systems. If
>> outgoing email can be sent by a hijacked system then the
>> hijacker would get a gold mine by also hijacking incoming
>> email for complaints.
>
> If you mean spamcop.net, they do munge your address where it's in the
> clear. But what they don't/can't do is look in base64, etc. types of code
> to see if it's been hidden somewhere. If you read the FAQs you'll find it
> well spelled out.
> If it botheres you, don't use Spamcop. Do it manually. And hope.


So let's get back to what I said. I said that using Spamcop could easily
make things worse for the person reporting spam.