SPAM E-mails

[entertaintoday]

Hi everyone,

I just wondered whether anyone is experiencing problems with spammers? I've had my site running since January 07 and I seem to get more and more spam each week. Approx 25 messages a day at the minute, offering all sorts of fraud/porn/pills etc.

I don't physically publish the e-mail address but sales@ is easily guessable I suppose.

[andy@speeds]

Have started getting a few for Rolex and other junk. Not sure what there is in the way of spam filtering via Bluepark.

I do like the new web mail client and have started using it in place of outlook express.

[Rich]

Agreed. Personally, I have every incentive to find a solution for this problem, as I'm using exactly the same email system. The real question is whether to tackle this at server level or simply leave it to client-side solutions. There are some fantastic plugins for Outlook and Outlook Express which can really take the load off your Inbox. I realise this doesn't help with Webmail, however. I actually use a BlackBerry as well, but I've been able to set up some basic keyword filters which have improved things dramatically on there (they have their own Instant Email system).

At server level, we tested SpamAssassin on our mailbox last year. The results were really not good at all, most of the spam got through with a few false positives as well. Needless to say, we're still focused on this issue, and will continue to research and test alternative solutions.

I would be interested to hear from anyone using client-side solutions, i.e. spam filtering software for Outlook. It would be nice to hear what's working and what isn't!

[little-linguist]

Approx 25 messages a day at the minute
Blimey! We get several hundred a day. Normally pills and porn as well as "letters" from Nigerian relatives and bank phishing. I don't know what the answer is. If you increase spam protection I guess you run the risk of losing genuine emails in the filtering system.

[petad]

I use the spam filters provided by my ISP (BT Yahoo!) and also have filtering on in MS Mail (I'm on Vista). Personally, it doesn't help all that much, as I still have to trawl through the Spam folders anyway, just to check that genuine stuff hasn't been trapped, which it sometimes is. I think it's just a factor of life we have to live with.

The only innovation that would really help, in my mind, would be if spam mail could be bounced back to its origin with a delivery failure message, which might reduce the flow. I'm sure half of the spam I receive is just testing if mine is a valid email address.

Pete

[TeamTorquesteer]

I use Cloudmark with Outlook and find it excellent.
Create a Spam folder and it dumps it straight in there. I find it does catch 99.9% of all the crap that arrives.

Martin

[Plushpaws]

Plushpaws use Cloudmark with Outlook, and we find it excellent at fighting Spam, Phishing and Viruses. You can download a free trial at http://www.cloudmark.com/desktop/

If you then wish to purchase a copy, please use referral code: jta77

[little-linguist]

Thanks for the Cloudmark suggestions. I've been trialing the demo version for a couple of days now and am very impressed with the results. Obviously it's still early days but it's looking good!

[Ken]

Also getting all that rubbish, almost all of it being sent to sales@... Is it to simplistic to suggest that Bluepark changes this to something like salesteam@...., or does that cause technical problems?

[entertaintoday]

Also getting all that rubbish, almost all of it being sent to sales@... Is it to simplistic to suggest that Bluepark changes this to something like salesteam@...., or does that cause technical problems?

You specify e-mail addresses yourself in the e-amil manager I believe.

[Rich]

You can alter your email addresses under the Site menu via E-Mail Accounts or E-Mail Forwarders.

Personally, I wouldn't bother changing your "name@". Spam search bots tend to find these email addresses anyway. Strangely, I receive spam on email addresses which have never been used or publicised! A client-side filter is probably the best solution, I too will be having a look at the Cloudmark solution based on feedback here.

[Rich]

Just to follow up, I've been using Cloudmark for a short time with Outlook - and I think it's very good. It's saving me quite a bit of time in the morning.

A small trickle of spam gets through, but nothing much to worry about. I've had one false-positive (which is a bit of a mystery, but I have a BlackBerry which prompted me to the lost email).

[andy@speeds]

I access my webmail from various machines. Is there any improvement likely as to Junk Mail removal from the webmail client?