Mailwasher

[Force Flow]

I've been using mailwasher for a while now, but it hasn't really been catching too much spam. I have 2,309 email address blacklisted at the time of this post, and I still get 10 or so a day. Is there anything else besides blacklisting that can filter out spam?

[reboot]

Of all the spam blockers around, some are spam themselves, some are based on listings at spamcop et al, and some are just crap that doesn't work.
Of all, Mailwasher does the best job, IMHO.
I have over 4000 and still get 50 to 100 per day.
As long as the spammers keep using different email addy's, there's no guaranteed way to stop them, unless someone gets serious about prosecuting.

[Force Flow]

Originally posted by reboot As long as the spammers keep using different email addy's, there's no guaranteed way to stop them, unless someone gets serious about prosecuting.

...Which won't happen anytime soon.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Exactly.

Besides, those messages *are not* spam since they include a link to remove your addy from their list.

[Force Flow]

Err... actually, with the ones I get, most of them do not have the "remove from list" link.

Btw, do those actually work? I've heard they sometimes bring in more spam.

[Xayd]

You would only be confirming that your email address exists.

[Iman74]

I was thinking, (amazing, I know) and I can't see them ever prosecuting spammers. Besides it be very difficult and time consuming I see this no different than the typical mail I get everyday; most of them being for credit cards, or offering me 120,000 but I have to pay it back with a 19.99% apr, etc... I don't see anyone complaining about that. In fact, I see that being worse than email. Why? Well because they use paper to send all this stuff. Think about what it takes to make all that paper and what most of it becomes, garbgage for someone else to deal with.

That's just my 2cents.

[reboot]

Email spam is as bad as paper spam.
Email spam takes up huge amounts of bandwidth, which is why many email services will suspend your account if suspected of spamming. Someone is paying for that bandwidth, usually you and I, through the ISP.
Paper spam has it's advantages. Any time I get a SASE, I send it back, with it's contents being some other piece of paper spam.
Usually I send pizza flyers to the credit card places
Other uses: Put a blank label over the SASE addressee, and use THEIR postage to pay for your outgoing mail. I love "postage paid" envelopes
In Canada, any mail adressed to a Member of Parliament is postage free, just get a big brown envelope, put ALL your spam mail in it, and send it to the Postmaster General, Ottawa, Ontario. No stamp needed.
Any time I get a "FREE" offer, that's truly free, I give the coupon to the food bank.

Mailwasher has it's advantages too. If everyone using it copied the contents of the blacklist and sent it to everyone else using mailwasher, and merge it with your current blacklist, we'd all be wading through a lot less spam. Until there's a reliable public blacklist, this is the most effective way of blocking spam email.

[Force Flow]

Originally posted by Xayd You would only be confirming that your email address exists.

Hmm... That's what I kind of thought. I guess I won't try it, then.

[Dangermouse1]

Wow thats a lot of spam i am in the UK and have been on line for years and hardly ever get spam and have never found the need for any antispam progs.

[Force Flow]

Originally posted by reboot Mailwasher has it's advantages too. If everyone using it copied the contents of the blacklist and sent it to everyone else using mailwasher, and merge it with your current blacklist, we'd all be wading through a lot less spam. Until there's a reliable public blacklist, this is the most effective way of blocking spam email.

Want to start posting lists here?

[reboot]

No. That's opening the way for lawsuits, amongst other things.
If you wish to share your blacklist, that's fine, but keep the communication to email please.
Imagine 5 or 6 people posting their blacklists, all containing 3 or 4 thousand entries?

[Force Flow]

Lawsuits?!? How?

[reboot]

Some of the spam one gets is "legitimate", that is, it's been subscribed to, then later forgotten, or it's past it's usefulness.
The "click here to unsubscribe" links rarely work, or simply confirm that your email is still valid and thus more spam.
Legitimate subscribed email, although YOU consider it spam, may not be, and the advertiser in question may get rather upset.
I also think that it's simply not polite to post long lists like that in public, but would be acceptable if you put it all on your own website (take your own risks )
PCMech is not the place for the actual list, however discussion of what to DO with one's list is acceptable.
In this case, www.forumclick.com is IDEAL

[Force Flow]

Gotcha. Thanks, Reboot.

[HAL9000]

Setup wildcarded filters in your blacklist. I rarely actually see the spam anymore. Be careful though, I had set one to *@*mail.com. Didn't realize for a while that I nuked everyone with a hotmail account.

[Force Flow]

That's the sor tof thing I'm afraid of. I don't know which @ accounts may be legitimate.

[HAL9000]

Take a look at some you get, they will be rather obvious. You may get something to the effect of name@mail401.host.com and they keep changing the number 401, so make it *@mail*.host.com, that way if they change the value of "name" you got it covered, if they change the value of "401" you got it covered. Often the "host" will be something like "greatoffers.com", in that case, wildcard the whole damn thing with *offers.* as what legit e-mail are you gonna get with "offers" as the domain name.

[Force Flow]

Ah. Thanks for the tips, Hal

[Dangermouse1]

If people start e-mailing lots of large blacklists to each other isnt that just making things worse or swapping one problem spam for another problem of getting lots of blacklists e-mailed to you?

[reboot]

Initially, the multiple trading of blacklists will use a little more bandwidth. Nowhere near the bandwidth needed just for me to get my mail every morning. I just checked it, with over 4000 entries in Mailwasher, including some wildcards, I got 267 new spams between 4pm yesterday, and 7am today.
Once the blacklist has been merged with every other known blacklist (should only take 5 or 6) then it's just a matter of adding the odd bit of spam that may still get through. The bandwidth drops to almost nothing. Spam mail will still be chewing up HUGE amounts of it, but we won't be seeing any of it, nor using much of it, because the spam will be deleted from the mail server at the ISP level, and NOT downloaded to our computers.
Remember, this all works well ONLY if you don't defeat the whole process by "bouncing" anything. Don't add to the problem by bouncing every spam you get, it's a waste of time anyhow, and another serious waste of bandwidth.

[Dangermouse1]

I cant believe how much spam some people get, is it worse in the States and Canada or am I just lucky here in the UK?