[X4U] Re: Stopping Spam - Does Anything Work?

[lists3-200402]

Jerry Krinock <jerry at ieee.org> wrote:

>on 05/01/16 11:03, Craig A. Finseth at wrote:
>
>>  ...
>>     I highly recommend a challenge/response email service.
>>     BePrivate.com and Mailpass.com are two that I've used and they
>>     work. Of the two I like BePrivate is better: it has more message
>>     handling options.
>>  ...
>>
>>  These are ideal for cutting down on email: they pretty much prevent it all.
>
>Unless you want to restrict your world to those you already know, whitelist
>systems are too restrictive also; I do not use either.
>
>The person who had my email address "jerry at ieee.org" before me abandoned it
>because he was getting so much spam, so he told me after I replied to his
>relatives sending me party invitations and Christmas letters.  But I saw
>that he signed himself up for a lot of junk (and always used the same
>password for all of his "accounts" :)).
>
>However, as I stated in my previous post, with my IEEE, Earthlink and
>Entourage email filters, I am down to one or two spams a day, mostly those
>silly "you [someone spoofing me] have sent a virus" or "your [spam from your
>spoofed address] could not be sent".  And I never have messages falsely
>filtered.
>
>I use this one email address for everything, for 13 months now, and give it
>out freely.
>
>So, yes, these things DO work.

challenge/response systems are a pain in the butt for 
friends/family/businesses and ESPECIALLY mailing lists...in most 
cases i immediately delete any annoying challenge/response email i 
get. whoever uses such a system deserves the isolation.

why would you want someone else to do the work for you?

filters have grown smarter and as jerry pointed out, if you keep your 
filter trained (mark spam as spam and not-spam as not-spam), it keeps 
getting better. i get close to 300 emails a day and maybe one or two 
slip by a day. i'm using eudora 6.2 (which comes with an awesome 
spamwatch filter) but mail does an excellent job as well.

...as long as you take the time to train you filters and manage your 
spam. it's well worth the effort and doesn't leave a sour taste in 
your clinets'/friends'/collegues'/listmoms' mouthes.

don

don montalvo, nyc