Spam email - How do you make it stop?

polkatese

Short of changing email addy and catch them in spam/junk folder, how do you deal with constant nagging of Union Bank of Nigeria to unload their millions of dollars/poundsterlings loots to me?

I get about 50 of these a DAY from these spammers, and although most of them goes directly to the spam folders (Verizon and Outlook combo), it is still a pain in the **** to empty them out.

Is there a way to permanently block the senders without causing legit emails from these domain to pass through? (some came from Yahoo, AOL, etc. and I do receive legit emails from friends through these domains).

Thanks.

Refefer

ugh, that's a tough one. Most of the 419ers out there use different domains/email addresses for their emails.

If I were you, I'd download the Mozilla Thunderbird client, and setup your email through there. You can then have thunderbird run a filter on all new messages for the key word "Nigeria" or "Millions", and have them move them to a separate folder or delete them outright. I'd move it to a separate folder personally since you never know what people will email you!

bobman1235

There are things you can do, like report each individual sender to your ISP and the government, and block individual addresses, but for the most part it's not worth your time. The best you can do is have good filters, and have separate email addresses to give out to places you don't trust (to keep your main one from getting uncluttered).

disneyjoe7

Mailwasher I use this and you can read, delete, or bounce like you changed your email address. The program can bounce automatically saving you time, love it. Clearing up all the crap before moving into my outlook.

polkatese

Thanks guys! I am going to check out mailwasher. It appears it has the feature that I am interested the most: to create a rule to bounce the spam email back and it appears as if the email is invalid/closed. So, we'll see.

Deadof_knight

first dont ever use your personel email account for internet signups use a dummy account on like hotmail or something. then and only then give your email out to those whome you want to email ya. Thunderbird is great to

nadams

the best way to make spam STOP, is to close your email program, and never open it again. While you're at it, stop mail delivery, and your phone lines, too. Oh, and build a house with no doors, that'll stop the salesmen and Jehova's Witnessesss from coming 'round.

polkatese

Mailwasher is pretty slick! I am going to check it out for a few days, thinking of upgrading to mailwasher pro since it lets you manage multiple email accounts in one interface.

thanks guys...

cmy330go

I gave up on 3rd party solutions and finally switched to Gmail a few years ago. They seem to have the best filter available. After a little training nothing seems to get through it.

Gmail is still technically in beta testing, so if you would like to try it and need an invite, just say so I'd be happy to send you one.

Early B.

I haven't experienced any problems with Hotmail. IMO, they do a great job filtering junk. I only get one or two per day that sneak through. I'm also cautious about giving out my e-mail address. I use g-mail for the unimportant stuff.

bobman1235

I wouldn't consider one or two per day a success story. With Gmail, I'd say I get one or two a week that make their way through, out of maybe a dozen a day that are filtered.

Systems

I installed GFI mail essentials on my Exchange server at work. We get about 2 million emails a year and 75% of them are spam. This system is practically AI. It will capture 99%+ of spam coming into our system period. On the flip side, it practically NEVER grabs a valid email. probably 99.999% accuracy on valid email.

You will get spam, there’s no way around it and the battle of spammer vs spam system is amazingly hard core. If you do get tagged on spammer lists, it will only get worse over time. Your only option is to change email address's every blue moon (few years).

My system at work is sooo amazing that my users (the not so smart ones) will actually sent me work orders when they get a spam email that broke through. Something like “I got an email from someone and I don’t know who they are”. Of course, after being the butt of some jokes fro an hour we will tell them "its spam". When I check the records over the past 2 years, our system has automatically removed thousands of spam from their email.

Sansui

What I did was make up another directory called "Real Mail" and then made up a filter which will throw all the e-mail from friends into that directory.

All the rest of that crap goes into my original "Inbox". I check that one to see if there's any unfiltered e-mail I want to read (like for Polk Audio/whatever). When it gets to about 50 or so e-mails I delete them.

After down loading all my nightly e-mail I just go to my "Real Mail" directory I only see only the mail I wanted read to begin with.

jmwest1970

Silverti wrote: »

I installed GFI mail essentials on my Exchange server at work. We get about 2 million emails a year and 75% of them are spam. This system is practically AI. It will capture 99%+ of spam coming into our system period. On the flip side, it practically NEVER grabs a valid email. probably 99.999% accuracy on valid email.

GFI is good. I'm surprised that only 75% of your email is spam. We use a Barracuda Spam Firewall at the hospital and it's reliability is the same. However, we're finding that 96% of the email we receive is spam. This thing is stopping 50k emails a day!

michael_w

GFI at work here too but it's not really worth setting up for home use. It gets rid of one to two thousand emails a day and the majority of it is either Nigerian presidents, cialis / viagra or "stock tips".