Recommend a Spam Blocker

Anyone know of a real good spam blocker? I get so many junk emails that i started just deleting everything. I also got a virus from one. I get at least 30-40 spam emails a day and I have had it! I tried putting in rules but they still come up when these morons spell things different. Cant take much more of this, and it takes the fun out of emailing altogether. Would appreciate any help from anyone.
thanks

 

Hi Rhody,

I agree with the poster above about Mailwasher. I am getting over 50 Spam email messages a day. Mailwasher allows the user to see their email while it is still on their ISP's email server and then to determine which emails should be downloaded to their computer.

The real problem with having any program decide what is SPAM and what is not is the issue of false positives. If someone changes their email address, then they will not be in your friends list and will be flagged to be bounced & deleted. This is also true for the person that sends you email for the first time. It is because of these and other problems that I have developed the following procedures.

I use Mailwasher Pro (http://www.firetrust.com/ )and I use 2 of the 3 blacklist DB, which Mailwasher provides. I also use another filter, which is if the email is not addressed to me.

Then I look at the headers, sender & To info to determine if email has been flagged as spam, which should not have been. After I have made these corrections, I make sure that no email is incorrectly marked as friend and I make these corrections. Some spammers will use the recipient's email address in the From field. You don't want to blacklist your email address and you don't want to let the spam through.

After I finish with these steps, I click process and then Mailwasher deletes and blacklists all of the requested email and I receive only the email that I wish to receive.

During the recent MyDoom espisode, I received over 30 emails containing this worm. I downloaded the first one because it looked like I had sent an email to the wrong email address. My Panda AV identified it as AV, so I promptly deleted it. Then Mailwasher started identifying most of the worm email messages as a possible virus. As a result of my security software and my business procedures, I have not become infected.

Firetrust has another product, which I would also recommend and that is Benign. Benign neutralizes any suspect code in html, in text or embedded in pictures, so that you don't have to worry about these vulnerabilities.

I also use SpyBot and Ad-Aware and I recommend both of these programs, which are freeware.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Linda

 

The spam blocker stuff can go a bit too far though. I had an email sent thru this forum from a person who wanted more information about a response I'd made to a thread. I clicked the 'reply' button and sent an answer. In return I got the following:

I certainly couldn't be bothered to try and get myself put on someones Earthlink "gosh, I trust you" list so he may still be waiting on an answer.

 

Hi
sorry I didnt get back here sooner but I had surgery on my shoulder and just got back online. Yes I did download Mailwasher and yes it has helped a great deal! I am happy with the results as long as I get to chose what I download. Thank you for all the help, I appreciate it.
Rhody

 

I am sure that Mailwasher or anything else you guys might recommend is a lot more sophisticated than my recommendation. But when I updated my Norton Internet Security Suite recently, it included the Norton Antispam feature. To my surprise, it works great. Right out of the box, it gets no false positives; and very few true positives get by. It installs itself right into Outlook, as a folder like Inbox, Outbox, etc.. It downloads everthing, sorting the spam into the Norton Antispam folder. There are options on the Outlook Toolbar to select "This is not Spam ", for a false positive, and "This is spam ", for a missed positive; and it learns from these mistakes. I do not know about the advanced adjustments. It takes awhile to open the application itself, which would be annoying for someone who uses advanced features frequently. But for a pretty good antispam that runs on automatic pilot, this is great. Just scan the Spam folder for false positives, which hardly ever appear in mine; and then delete the whole mess.

 

Another way .

If you want to try a really good free email client & Spam remover , these are very good .

I can look at my mail on the ISP's server , delete ( spam removal ) , reply , click on links & if I want it on my comp , click on Move to > Archive .
Use right click for some of the functions .

You can still leave any other email client installed . Just a matter of choosing which one you want as default .

http://geminisoft.com/geminisoft.eng/
http://geminisoft.com/geminisoft.eng/homepage.asp
http://geminisoft.com/pimmy.eng/frameset.htm
http://geminisoft.com/pimmy.eng/caratteristiche.htm
Pimmy - Your personal postman.

Geminisoft Pimmy lets you manage your electronic mail easily and everywhere you are. The full
program may be put on a floppy!
What you can do using Pimmy:

* manage an unlimited number of mailboxes;
* read and write messages on newsgroups;
* check for new messages and be warned about them;
* file messages in folders;
* automatically download mail and newsgroup messages from the mailboxes you desire to one or more folders;
* read on-line only the message in which you are interested in, not downloading all and
leaving mail on the server until you decide to delete them;
* read a preview of a message on-line not reading it completely or dowloading it;
* delete a message on-line not reading it completely or dowloading it;
* write your messages off-line and send them when connected to Internet, moving all sent
messages in a special folder;
* Pimmy can automatically download and filter messages and allows you to write messages off-line and send them when connected.
* send messages using different providers easily;
* manage an address book;
* manage different signatures (even with only one mailbox);
* attach files and documents;
* chat with other Pimmy users, even with more than one at the same time.

==============================

Scribe
http://www.memecode.com/scribe.php
Scribe is a small, fast, cross platform, object based email client. Yet it retains a lot of the
features that larger mail clients have. There is a free and commercial version of the software.

 

I would say "the best spam blocker" is POPFile, it's open source
and free - and has an accuracy of up to 99% (after about 1,000
emails). My accuracy was 95% after only a few hundred emails.
It's available at: http://popfile.sourceforge.net/