Okay, this is getting out of hand! I just had a peek into my junk mail folder and I currently have 11, 415 unread email messages. The email dates from March 1, 2004 - March 21, 2004 (and this is AFTER the mail has been filtered through Spam Assassin!) Aaaaaaaaaaah!!! Any suggestions?

Comments

[Nick C.]

Spam Assasin marks suspected spam based on a point system.

You get to set a 'threshold' beyond which mail can be sent to a junk mail folder. You will have to experiment with the threshold value a bit for the program to work better.

First, let the program 'tag' all spam with the point system. [ My ISP allows the program to put the point value in the beginning of the subject line of each message. ] Once you have a sense of what 'point values' are comming in to your inbox, you can then set the threshold accordingly.

Most people you know do not write you e-mail with the same 'profile' as spam, so it is not too dangerous to set the threshold at least a little bit lower.

[Nick C.]

My ISP uses two basic strategies to block spam:

I)Since they run their own e-mail servers, they subscribe to a 'blacklist' service that prevents incoming spam from blacklisted open proxy servers. Such lists are difficult to maintain due to the dynamic nature of the Internet, but the addition of a blacklist filter to an e-mail server helps to cut down on a large quantity of incoming SPAM.

II)They provide SpamAssasin to their clients.

Being behind these two filtering strategies helps keep my spam problem to a minimum. But then, I don't distribute my e-mail address too freely.

So, depending upon your setup, consider the addition of a blacklisting service to your e-mail servers.

If you intend to be promiscuous with your e-mail address, consider using an address format like turbotara(removenospam)@hotmail.com

This way, if the address is harvested by a bot, it is useless. A person has to remove the extra text in order to send an e-mail, but depending on the spam problem, it may be worth it.

Hope this helps...

[Tara H.]

SpamAssasin has a function built into it that queries a blacklist database, but I think that it would be worth looking into an additional blacklist service of some sort - one that procmail could interface with. Do you know what blacklist service your isp subscribes to?

As for using the quotations in the body of the email address, I can't really do that for work related stuff as it will be confusing to some people. For personal use, it's not a bad idea, though.

The main problem I'm having is with the info@somedomain.com addresses that i put on the bottom of web pages. Also, I'm having problems with departmental "contact us" email addresses - orders@domain.com, for example. I do know that I can use a contact form instead of an email address, though, which is probably what I'm going to have to do.

Thanks for your input.

[rcjohnso]

I've found that besides the advantages of filtering mail at the server level, the police will generally turn a blind eye to casual open container use. So if, for example, you wanted to buy a half bottle of red wine and lie with a friend beneath the budding trees in the gardens by the Louvre, you probably won't get hassled.

Hope this helps

[slim]

I had the same problem and simply changed my email address. From that point on I religiously used a hotmail address when filling out any on-line forms. Since doing this I've only received 4 spams in a year. My hotmail account, on the other hand gets about 30 a week.