[kidavi]

i wasn't positive which topic to put this under, so i apologize if it's in the wrong place.

i've been getting a variety of different types of e-mail spam, and most recently it's been pharmaceutical advertising for the usual nonsense (viagra, cialis, levitra, etc). of course, the spam comes from a different reply-to address every time and is oriented so that it's unfilterable.

ie, it looks like this when it's unformatted:

P
L
U
X
V
C
A
V
C
Mr
e
l

does anyone know a good method for getting rid of this garbage? i've gone through my websites and done my best to change all my e-mail addresses to be unreferrable, but this either got in before that, or i missed one (or it came from elsewhere).

should i purchase a program that will filter this out or block it...?

[Advertisements]

What do you use to check your email? Outlook, Outlook Express, website of the email provider (aka mail.yahoo.com or hotmail) or what?

[Fenor]

What do you use to check your email? Outlook, Outlook Express, website of the email provider (aka mail.yahoo.com or hotmail) or what?

[kidavi]

i use Eudora 6.1 and the provider is my university (mail.msu.edu)

[Fenor]

Eudora has SpamWatch built into it. Check out this link about SpamWatch. Also check out Effective Spam Filtering with Eudora

[kidavi]

no matter how many filters i make with Eudora, the spam manages seem to find a way around them (evolving spam, or something). if i set the filter to defend against subjects that start with "Ph" (for "Pharmaceutical"), they start sending ones that begin with "Pg" (purposeful misspellings). block that one, and they send other combinations. the body of the emails has been changing too... if i block against one format, they start sending one that is formatted differently.

Tony: i started downloading Incredimail, but it tried to install adware from Cool Web Search, so i aborted the installation.

i really can't just set up my email to block everything except select addresses because i get a lot of notices from various hosts, services, professors, and university research/fair opportunities, as well as from people who want artwork or webdesign commissions... -_-

Edited by kidavi, 22 September 2005 - 11:16 AM.

[Johanna]

My ISP offers "Postini", a free email filtering program. You don't have to pay for it, but you have to sign up- I guess to authorize it to screen your email. It does a pretty good job, and saves my delete key finger some wear and tear. It also catches infected email so they never get downloaded by you. You can override the settings and allow your known good addresses, too. My ISP doesn't advertise this service at all, and I stumbled on it inadvertently. You might call your ISP and inquire if they carry a similar service. If not, you can buy programs like Mailwasher inexpensively enough to justify (convenience and saving your time!)

AFAIK, there is no good way to deter spam. Even keeping a junk address didn't help me because none of my friends know how to delete headers in email. My address is also prominent on 5 sites. However, I'm so pleased with Postini that I could post my email addy here, and not sweat it. (Mods: leave it up, and we'll see what it does!)

Johanna
[email protected]

[gerryf]

http://popfile.sourc...cgi-bin/wiki.pl

Popfile is an automatic email classifier that uses naïve Bayes algorithms to filter email and learn what you consider it to be. It is, bar none, the most incredible spam filter I have ever used.

I get 150 emails a day and 130 of them are spam (hey, I've been on the Internet for a loooooong time) and I never, ever see them. After training, it is 99 percent accurate (for me).

It's now pretty effortless to set up.

All you need to do is set it up, train it for what you consider to be spam, and then it inserts SPAM into the header of emails you don't want. You then use your native filtering to trash any emails with SPAM in the header.

I would not install it and then never look at the trash before emptying, but after a couple of weeks of training, you will be surprised how accurate it is...after a couple of months, you probably won't even look and just empty the trash without concern.

[kidavi]

And I do beleave you but how do you know that was installing cool web search?

my adware/antivirus software gave me an alert with the name and description of the .exe that was trying to install itself (Loader.exe from Cool Websearch). terminating it terminated the Incredimail install. i was downloading it from the website... incredimail.com or whathaveyou.

thanks gerryf, i'll try the wiki .pl file when i have some time to play around with things after midterms are over. the name actually rings a bell, i may have read something about it a long time ago. i'll give it a shot.

[gerryf]

popfile--the link is to he wiki on the program (with download link)

Personally, incredimail scares me,,,,

[kidavi]

Personally, incredimail scares me,,,,

...and with good reason. i've discovered that now that i started to install it and terminated the installation, every time i start up the computer, it gives me a popup notice telling me to continue installation. i cleaned out my temp files, but it still happens, so i think the next step is running CCleaner. ugh... what an obnoxious program.