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SPAM Filters

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RDK

Civil/Environmental
Jul 19, 2001
1,109
There is a real problem out there with spam.

I usually get twice as many spam messages as legitimate emails.

You can try to unsubscribe from these lists but this usually does not work. (Sometimes it flags your address as a live address.)

There are a lot of spam filters around but the algorithms used are not 100%.

I’d like a Outlook add in that allows me to “bounce” a message. This would return the message to the sender as undeliverable. It would also allow you to store that address as one that would automatically bounce in the future. I know that it would not be fully effective but it would help,

Anyone know of such a program?

Any other programs/filters that are effective?

Any other thoughts on getting rid of spam?




Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion
 
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RDK,

Your post reads like a specification for the "MailWasher" program. See
I have used it for a while, and continue to use it. In addition to bouncing e-mails I designate, it allows me to look at messages without downloading them, which can sometimes save me from having to download a large attachment.

However I have stopped using the "bounce" facility. Firstly it didn't seem to do much to shield me from the deluge (yes, it might have been even worse had I not done the bouncing). Secondly I became worried that as MailWasher became more widely used the spammers might get to recognise the specific form of words it uses in bouncing, and take them as a verification of your address being a real one.

Death to Spammers!
 
An alternative is to switch mail clients. I use Mozilla 1.3, which has a Bayesian spam filter. This works by you 'teaching' it which messages are spam, and which are legit. It then files the suspected spam in a Junk folder.

I used a sample of about 100 messages and in the thousands of messages since then it has let maybe 20 spam through, and has not misidentifed a legit message (which is the typical failing of most anti-spam systems).




Cheers

Greg Locock
 
Two free options:

SpamBayes (Outlook plugin) and POPFile (0.20b.0 or newer.) I personally like SpamBayes -

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