Spam Blocker

[Seekermeister]

This is a subject that I never paid much attention to, because I prided myself on being discreet about giving my email address out. But, I've recently been flooded with spams of various sorts, probably because I foolishly gave my email address to a game site.

I have filters on my email account, but they only work with IMAP, and for some reason, that account keeps freezing in my email client. I know that there are some programs available for this problem, but I've never paid any attention to them in the past.

I do have Mailwasher Free downloading now, but I'm hoping that someone will advise me on what the most effetive program is? I vaguely remember something about a program that would return spam to the sender, so that it would appear that the account doesn't exist. Suggestions?

 

[corkyg]

I have Spam defense in layers. #1 is at the ISP server - they use Canit by Roaring Penguin. That gets over 94% of the stuff so it never reaches my computer.

#2 layer is Mailwasher Pro. It lets me again look at stuff on the server before downloading, and it will bounce stuff back to sender on my command.

#3 Layer are the filters in my email program, Eudora Pro 7.X.

Anyway - If I didn't have those layers of defense, I would get 25 to 35 Spams a day. As it is now - nada! 🙂

 

[Seekermeister]

I just got an email from my ISP saying that they are preparing a new email system that deals with spam better than now, but knowing this company, that may take forever. I don't know how much difference there is between Mailwasher Pro and Free, because I haven't had time to get familiar with it yet. I use The Bat! for my client, and I don't remember any spam filters in it, but I may well have missed them. Whatever it takes, I'm going to clean my mailbox.

 

[Spacehead]

My ISP started again to filter spam a couple of weeks ago, but then they stopped again 🙁
I'll get ahold of them & see what's up with that.

I've been very happy with K9. Been using it for a few years now. Free too 🙂


My mail has been getting slower & slower lately too, so i just started forwarding it to my Gmail account & setup OE to get it from there. That seems to be filtering out alot of spam, but i'm going to setup K9 to work with that now too.

 

[Seekermeister]

I don't understand. I thought that Gmail would only be able to filter email based on the email address that an item was sent from. If that is so, wouldn't it be looking at the address that you are forwarding from, and not the original address?

 

[Seekermeister]

I installed K9, and it looks ideal, but it only works with Outlook and Outlook Express. Were the program perfect, that wouldn't be enough to make me want to use it. Too bad that it can't be configured with The Bat.

 

[Schadenfroh]

See the freeware thread in my sig.

 

[Seekermeister]

Of the 4 options in your list, only Mailwasher appears to be usable with The Bat and I already have that...I just have to figure it out. I did find the Sorting Office/Filters in The Bat, which can be setup to deal with spam, but it requires alot of specific rules to be created. I suppose that I will set them up, but I was hoping for something more automated, like K9. The problem with rules, is that spam constantly changes, and it wouldn't be easy to keep up with it.

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
I don't understand. I thought that Gmail would only be able to filter email based on the email address that an item was sent from. If that is so, wouldn't it be looking at the address that you are forwarding from, and not the original address?

I just logged into my Gmail account. All the email in the spam folder(& inbox) shows the original senders name, not my name. I have it automaticly forwarded... i bet if i manually Forwarded email it would show as being from me. Might be worth a try to see if it works for you.


Another option, SpamBayes. No idea if it'll work with The Bat.


edit- just as an FYI, so far everything Google marked as spam was spam. I've had to mark a few emails as spam that it missed, but i've only had this setup for 2-3 days now.

 

[Seekermeister]

SpamBayes is one of those on Schradenfroh's list that I looked at yesterday. At first glance, the installation procedure looked long and complex, so I kept looking. However, when you mentioned it again, it sparked a memory of something like that in The Bat directory. Looking, I found something called the Bayesit plugin. The similarity in names made me think that it might work in connection with Spambayes. Going to the last resort, I looked in The Bat's help topics. It directed me to a section of preferences that I had overlooked before, for setting the path to the plugin. Doing that, it popped a window congratulating me on a successful installation. I have no idea of whether this requires an external program installed, or if the plugin is standalone. The help file was very brief and only covered the installation of the plugin, and nothing about using it. For some reason, the link to SpamBayes isn't working today, I'll try it later.

In regards to forwarding to my Gmail account, it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but I kind of like keeping the two separate. I got another email today, where my ISP said that they were estimating that they would have the spam filters in their servers in two weeks. I'll wait that long to see what happens.