[Hidden-tech] Anti-spam help SUMMARY of suggestions and preliminary results

[Jan Werner]

I have this kind of problem because I have had my own domain for over a 
decade and my email address has long been publicly available.

At the same time, I need to be careful with automatic spam rejection 
because I get queries about my software, user requests for assistance, 
or even legitimate offers from vendors or professional groups I am 
associated with that sometimes get flagged as spam.

The spam filtering capabilities in email clients are simply not up to 
handling this situation to my satisfaction but I do not want my email 
system cluttered up with junk mail that I need to sort through.

What I have implemented to deal with this is a multi-step strategy that 
filters out most of the obvious spam and allows me to quickly parse the 
rest for possible false positives and then delete what I don't want on 
the server before it reaches my system.

My hosting service uses spam assassin (SA) and it helps some as a first 
barrier. You should start by listing the valid names at your domain and 
set your hosting service's email system to reject all mail addressed to 
any name not on that list. This will get rid of "brute force" attacks 
that guess user names at a domain. The next thing to do is to implement 
both a whitelist and blacklist in SA. I whitelist mailing lists I belong 
to, as well as anything from an .edu domain and most regular clients and 
friends. When I notice that I seem to be getting a lot of spam from some 
domain, I'll add it to the blacklist. I don't like relying on external 
blacklists because they frequently trap what I consider valid sources 
that somebody else might have objected to for some reason or another.

On my local computer, I use MailWasher Pro (http://www.mailwasher.net/). 
They have  a free version that does nearly everything the pro version 
does but is limited to a single email address, so you can try it out 
without commitment. MailWasher can be set to read only the headers and 
the first few lines of content from the server and analyze them using 
both custom and Bayesian (learned) rules. The results are color coded 
and sorted, making them easy to scan for false positives or likely spam. 
  You can then delete anything you don't want on the server and retrieve 
the remainder using your email program. This takes only a seconds of my 
time, as opposed to minutes checking an inbox or junk mail folder.

MailWasher allows an extraordinary level of customization, so if you 
don't like the way it does anything, you can usually change it. You can 
even use it to fine-tune Spam Assassin by setting SA to flag perceived 
spam without deletion, then letting MW check SA's results.

This approach may not work for you, but it has for me.

Jan Werner
__________

andrew bellak wrote:
>    ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee.
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> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions.  Let me summarize the 
> feedback I received below.
> 
>  
> 
> Switch to Mac, it may get less spam
> 
>  
> 
> Switch e-mail client interface to Mozilla mail (Thunderbird), it 
> probably will reduce spam.  I’ve considered this in the past but thought 
> the hassle of importing Outlook into Thunderbird was greater than what I 
> chose to try first.
> 
>  
> 
> Switch domain hosts or urge current host to really use the mail server 
> tools like Spam Assassin, etc better.
> 
>  
> 
> Switch e-mail addresses, that is, ditch the current and get new; or 
> similarly, use ‘throw away’ addresses AND be very careful with where one 
> uses addresses. i.e. – use personal/business addresses for friends & 
> colleagues, and use web mail addresses for listservs/web sites, etc.
> 
>  
> 
> Use anti-spam software – 2 people liked Cloudmark and 1 liked open 
> source Spam Bayes
> 
>  
> 
> And the one I decided to try first is ‘scrub’ mail through a web mail 
> account like Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail.  I have a Yahoo account but it’s 
> not premium and so doesn’t allow forwarding.
> 
>  
> 
> Therefore, I opened a gmail account and now forward mail to gmail and 
> then get this mail via Outlook.  In essence, I send directly from my 
> addresses but I receive mail through the gmail scrubber.  Preliminary 
> results are that I received 6 spam this morning versus 150-200 yesterday.
> 
>  
> 
> This has not been totally seamless as I am still prompted by Outlook for 
> a password for 1 account which I’m still wrestling with.
> 
>  
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Andrew
> 
>  
> 
> Andrew Bellak
> 
> Andrew at stakeholdersinc.com <mailto:Andrew at stakeholdersinc.com>
> 
> 413-549-4589 home / office
> 
> 646-552-5783 mobile
> 
> -
> 
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