E-mail problems and SPAM

What you need to do is create an e-mail "White List". I have used spam blackers and most are not 100% effective. Unfortunately when using AOL (i mean AO-Hell) you cannot do this. If your interested in setting it up in Outlook Express, here's a link to all who are interested.

In a nutshell instead of blocking all the bad addresses which is impossible, you can create a list of good address who you want to recieve mail from. If mail recieved is not on your list, the mail will go directly to the delete box. You can always glance into your deleted items box to make sure you didn't forget to include someone to your approved list of mail you do want. It works great for me and I havent received one piece of spam since 2002. Here's the link to explain how it's done. The CAT

For Outlook Express Users:

http://www.felgall.com/brsie11.htm


*This can also be done with Outlook 2000/XP/2003 though some of the steps are furthur involved, search "outlook white list" at yahoo or Google

 

Also just to add whats great about the white list is that it's free!!!! Since it's a function integrated into Outlook, no need to run additional applications to fight spam that generally are a waste of money and slow down your system response time with additional running executables.

In my IT department at work I have implemented it on a number of machines and everyone is pleased with the results, fool-proof spam blocking. You can also have the unapproved mail addresses sent to any folder you choose besides your delete box or just dumped directly from the server as you become sure you have everybody on your approved list. Outlook Express 5 does not have this feature so upgrade to 6 or better.

 

CAT,

You should really looking into Spambayes, completely free and quite honestly haven't seen a slow down on my machine at all. You have to use outlook, but its a great program. You can find it here.

 

Thanks for the tip!!!! I guess I have the IT mentality which is "the less thats running the better". They tried to implement Norton Antispam (not my idea) before my tip and it slowed things down a bit. I guess I can't help the Netscape or AOL users with this fix and I'm unsure if your fix will help those guys. I used this because it's 100% which IT managers don't hear often but love to hear.

I figure your fix must be a Bayesian algorithm filter system being their not charging any money. This method searches for grammer and sentence layout to determine spam and has to be trained which can take time and is not 100% fool proof. My method needs no training so the results are instantaneous and as I said I set it on my system almost 2 years ago and from day 1 not one piece of spam since.

My system is only difficult to implement when your in a situation where you receive mail from new addresses constantly or have hundreds of friends. If you fall into this category, your fix would be the better one. I have about 40 people on my white list so no big administration needed. I will tell more about your system after some research, stay tuned and thanks again mringer!!!!

 

Thanks for the tip!!!! I guess I have the IT mentality which is "the less thats running the better". They tried to implement Norton Antispam (not my idea) before my tip and it slowed things down a bit. I guess I can't help the Netscape or AOL users with this fix and I'm unsure if your fix will help those guys. I used this because it's 100% which IT managers don't hear often but love to hear.

I figure your fix must be a Bayesian algorithm filter system being their not charging any money. This method searches for grammer and sentence layout to determine spam and has to be trained which can take time and is not 100% fool proof. My method needs no training so the results are instantaneous and as I said I set it on my system almost 2 years ago and from day 1 not one piece of spam since.

My system is only difficult to implement when your in a situation where you receive mail from new addresses constantly or have hundreds of friends. If you fall into this category, your fix would be the better one. I have about 40 people on my white list so no big administration needed. I will tell more about your system after some research, stay tuned and thanks again mringer!!!!

 

Hey, just a furthur note SpamBayes is exactly what I thought as described above. It's compatible with Outlook at both the application and server level. Also Unix and Mac people can check it out too!!!!

Unfortunately AOHell users must use their Spam Blocker, which doesn't help much. My bad talk concerning AOL is due to their application. I hate the fact that they push you to run this AOL application in order to log into their network. I have heard you can use Internet Explorer with their service and would suggest everyone on AOL do that as their 9.0 version requires 128 MB RAM to operate smoothly which is ridiculous, not sure if you can implement another Mail program using AOL.

Check out mringers spam solution choice and decide for yourself:

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

 

I feel for the AOL users thats where I started.... though didn't stay there long. I get about 1% false-negatives with the spam-bayes filter. Most of the false negatives are from folks who send me mail in a language other than English.

The only spam that gets all the way through (Spam-Bayes has 2 levels of detection) are the spam that the program hasn't been trained to look for. This happens, once a week, for one e-mail. It didn't take long to teach my spam-bayes very long to learn, though i already had a huge pile of spam built up.

The first level of detection is known spam, it goes directly to the spam folder, the 2nd level of spam is a spampossible.... e-mail that might be spam goes into the spampossible folder. If it turns out to be spam you can either click the delete as spam button or the recover from spam depending upon what it is. Very easy to use, and as I said earlier almost full proof.

Cat's idea is nice, but if you get alot of random e-mail like I do a whitelist is not the way to go. But, it works for the CAT.

As a side note,

I started Spam-Bayes about 2 or three months ago. So far I have trapped 1882 pieces of spam.

 

I also had AOL as well back in the 1.0 days after I gave up Prodigy. My mother is still using Compuserve. That AOL Application is just such a processor and memory hog which is why I hate it. It also messes around with alot of your Windows settings making it difficult to fully uninstall.

They don't have to be the most expensive dial-up internet service. If they used IE and Outlook, they could compete with Netzero and all of the other ISP's who are cheaper. Also you AOL users would find your computer running quicker when multitasking on the internet. (running 2 or more applications simultaneously), especially those who don't have the newest Pentium 4 machines or limited RAM.