Recommendations Please on How to Control Spam

[golfnut]

Can anyone please recommend progragm, software, etc. for controling spam. I have ad aware and spybot installed but still get way too much spam. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Treebeard]

adaware & spybot are for getting rid of spyware, adware, not spam. I assume you mean spam as in the email form? I think norton has some spam software but have never used it. There are a few anti spam softwares but I would try to find a reviews on the software by searching google before purchasing one.

[DVD_Ripper]

Our corporate mail servers are scanned with MailFrontier, possibly they may have a 'home version'. Also, check with your ISP, they may have something you can just enable or download free of charge.

[Faustus]

I got my own domain name, then a 16/year host for it. They serve my email, almost no one has my email address, only friends. Because of this I've gotten 2 pieces of spam on that account ever.

[thecoalman]

I get hammered by the Spam, one of my addresses is on the internet just as it is here in my profile. The best defense is not to give it out (except to people you know) or post it anywhere. The spammers send out bots to collect email addresses from webpages such as this. Don't reply to the unsubscribe link at the bottom unless it's a reputable company. This will only confirm your address to them. Use a address that is not obvious.

Since your email address is already in their database your only alternative is to filter the e-mail or get a new address. Check your account on your ISP for Spam filtering which will remove the most obvious spam to hardcore removal. Most filters can even be set up to recieve only e-mail from the senders you specify. Your email program will have a filter on it too. If your using Outlook Express goto tools>message rules>mail and create rules. You can create rules to delete mail that meets a certain criteria such as it contains Viagara in the subject line. Adding just a few words will e,liminate about 50% that makes it to your inbox. Make sure to add the variants as they appear. Vi@gara, Vlagara so on and so forth.

Don't bother adding anything to the body rules, spammers use bogus html tags to split the words. Looks normal on the e-mail but appears as via gara to the filter. At least if your using Outlook Express this is true. Same thing with the senders list, they just constantly change the senders name.

There's also Outlook Express add-ons that will add tougher filters and other e-mail programs that have tougher filters. The problem with a lot of the hardcore filters is that they sometimes might delete legitimate e-mail.

[rkr1958]

If you're using Microsoft Outlook (not express) you might want to check out SpamBayes. I've found that this freeware program works great for me.

[d_unbeliever]

don't place ur personal email in any website...don't open any unknown e mail. if you open spam email, they will know that ur email address is active and will send more spam....

create another email account from those sites offering free email maybe yahoo(they got spamguard)...use this email account if any sites you visit that require your email address.

[redwudz]

All of the above.
My ISP lets me have 5 email addresses. I guard my default address and when I have to use a email address, I use one of my secondary addresses.

I put a 's' in front of it for spam so if I get mail there, I can kind of track it. If it gets inundated, I trash it and go to a new address. My ISP filters, and I filter with my email client, but trashing the address has been the only sure way to get free of the crap.

I reached the breaking point when I found 'my' address was sending porno spam to private corporations. I figured my ISP would think it was me, so I dropped that address.

Maybe using a 'Hotmail' address or similar is the best. Use your real address only with trusted friends.

[rallynavvie]

I've been toying around with the spam filter in Netscape 7.1 and after training it (the spam filters "learns") it works pretty damn well. However that is end-user so you'll still have to download the spam in the first place. Another thing to look out for is invisible or tagged images. Sometimes there are images in emails that can tell the owner if they were viewed or not just because your IP accessed and loaded them. Turn off images in email or just don't even open ones you suspect are garbage.