[Merged] Spam/Viruses on ntl.

I use Cloudmarks Spamnet.It's really good as it learns as you go what is spam and as you block more and more spam and upload your spam to Spamnet ,it gets more and more efficient at detecting the spam.I note it is now available for Outlook Express as well as for Outlook and it really isn't that expensive.It's very easy to use(easier than Mailwasher in my opinion)and I do recommend it.

Incog.

[Simcut]

hey guys,

I too have had a massive problem with spam, but I have found a way around it that works perfectly for me!

In outlook express I set up a message rule called "Spam Filter" and put in a hell of a lot of variations of the viruses/spam I am getting, all you need to do is put the subject, since I have done this only once every 4/5 days do I get a spam message, if I do I just add it to the list and voila.

You must set the message rule so it deletes the mail from the mail server as apposed to downloading it, works much better...

1. Open Outlook Express
2. Go to Tools Menu > Message Rules > Mail
3. Click on the "new" button and under "1. Select the Conditions for your rule:" go down the list till you find "Where the subject line contains specific words" and tick the white box to the left of that text.
4. under the "2. Select the Actions for your rule:" list, scroll down until you find "Delete it from server" (at the very bottom of the list) and tick the white box before that text
5. in the "3. Rule Description" box click on the underlined blue text and it will pop up a box entitled "Type Specific Words", in that window type in all of the following list, making sure you do one at a time and pressing add every time, you cannot type all of them at once and then click add, it will not work that way!

***MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT USE THE "s when typing out these subject lines***

"Re: Approved"
"Re: Your text"
"Re: Here"
"Re: Your picture"
"is that your finger?"
"Re: Your music"
"Re: Your software"
"Re: Thanks!"
"Re: Your details"
"Re: Details"
"Re: Your website"
"Re: Excel file"
"Re: My details"
"Re: Your archive"
"Re: Re: Message"
"Re: Your document"

you must make sure you get the spacing right between Re: and the key words!

once all these are done and are all listed in the Words box then click ok then go to the "4. Name of the rule" box and type in Virus Blocker and click ok.

Next time you check your email the green bar will go up and then says "receiving email" the green bar prior to that checks the messages on the server and deletes any that have the above subjects or any additional that you want to block.

Hope this helps, if you have any questions or any problems setting it up let me know

Kind Regards,

Simon

[threadbare]

ntl do in fact filter for spam, and have done since christmas. i used to get about 20 - 30 a day now i get a few a week. the most i had was 2 yesterday. and they have in the past filtered for some viruses. for instance i believe they filtered for some variants of the beagle virus

[shin0r]

Hi all

I agree that spam *is* extremely annoying - some of my accounts attract dozens a day, others only a few a month. Perhaps we'll never totally defeat the spammers, but a few interesting points have thus far been raised in this discussion.

1: NTL's mta's have one overriding function, and that is to deliver mail. Would customers be happy if an important email was dumped by NTL as spam, when it wasn't? probably not. Are they happy with being spammed? No. The provider is between a rock and a hard place

2: NTL *do* employ both spam and virus filters. The virus filters currently block in the region of 400,000 netsky and bagle mutants every day. These viruses mutate quickly - it's a difficult job to catch them. NTL could block *.exe and *.zip in addition to the commonly blocked extensions - this would cut down virus activity considerably, but with in excess of 25 million messages being sent and received on the platform each day, a number of customers would end up with a degraded service.

Additionally, spamhaus RBL lists are updated on a daily basis - but open relays crop up faster than they can be blocked, not to mention indian, brazilian and chinese "pay per spam" services that have become so popular with our common enemy.

3: As much as I empathise with people over the horrendous amounts of spam that can be targetted at their inboxes, it's not a one-way thing. People should run their own virus and spam filters *in addition* to the ones the ISP has in place - is it fair to blame the manufacturer if your car breaks down, but you forgot to top up the oil? The amount of viruses propagated by unprotected NTL customers is phenomenal.

4: There is light at the end of the tunnel. The new mail platform is being built, and should take over within the next few months - with far more draconian spam and virus filters in place. I know you've probably heard this before, but let's wait and see.

[abailey152]

Originally Posted by shin0r

1: NTL's mta's have one overriding function, and that is to deliver mail. Would customers be happy if an important email was dumped by NTL as spam, when it wasn't? probably not. Are they happy with being spammed? No. The provider is between a rock and a hard place

Why would spam filters block important mail? I use MailWasher, which marks a lot of spam as "Blacklisted" from it's own database. I have NEVER had to keep anything that is blacklisted. NTL, perhaps wouldn't even need to be as strict as this list, and they still could be a lot better than they are now.

2: NTL *do* employ both spam and virus filters. The virus filters currently block in the region of 400,000 netsky and bagle mutants every day. These viruses mutate quickly - it's a difficult job to catch them. NTL could block *.exe and *.zip in addition to the commonly blocked extensions - this would cut down virus activity considerably, but with in excess of 25 million messages being sent and received on the platform each day, a number of customers would end up with a degraded service.

They may block some stuff, but not nearly enough. I'm sure NTL could do better without blocking legitimate emails.

3: As much as I empathise with people over the horrendous amounts of spam that can be targetted at their inboxes, it's not a one-way thing. People should run their own virus and spam filters *in addition* to the ones the ISP has in place - is it fair to blame the manufacturer if your car breaks down, but you forgot to top up the oil? The amount of viruses propagated by unprotected NTL customers is phenomenal.

I agree about running our own filtering and anti-virus software is an absolute must, but at the end of the day NTL Broadband is no longer the very cheap option it was compared with other packages. If other ISP's can offer better filtering, why can't NTL?

4: There is light at the end of the tunnel. The new mail platform is being built, and should take over within the next few months - with far more draconian spam and virus filters in place. I know you've probably heard this before, but let's wait and see.

If it works well, and is thought out properly, then this new filtering will be very much welcomed.

[shin0r]

Originally Posted by abailey152

Why would spam filters block important mail? I use MailWasher, which marks a lot of spam as "Blacklisted" from it's own database. I have NEVER had to keep anything that is blacklisted. NTL, perhaps wouldn't even need to be as strict as this list, and they still could be a lot better than they are now.

Hi

Even the very best spam filters aren't 100% perfect - even if 1 in 10000 mails (0.01%) were marked incorrectly, that translates to 2500 wrongly-diagnosed emails a day (if blocked at the NTL MTAs, which typically handle ~25 million messages in 24 hours), which is unacceptable from an organisation's point of view.

By contrast, using the above figures, a personal account recieving 50 emails a day would typically drop 2 emails a year.

It boils down to being a numbers game.

cheers

[theman]

can cloudmarks be use without using your e.mail settings the reason i am asking this because i have AVG scanning my e.mail and every antispam program i have tried has change my e.mail settings so when AVG does not work so does this work without chaning the settings for AVG

[MikeyB]

Originally Posted by brianlb

I appreciate the suggestion, and I have looked at the mailwasher website to see what's involved, but it looks to me as if I would still have to look at each incoming message individually<snip>

I don't know about Mailwahser, but I've use SpamPal for ages now, and it's pretty much install & leave to it, like all spam filters, it's not 100% but I would say 95% from install.
It checks each email against spam lists.
You can add you known contacts to a white list if needed (I think it can add your contacts from outlook express to its whitelist on install), and there is also a black list for ones that constatly slip thru.
It changes the subject of spam email to start with **SPAM** and you setup one outlook message rule to move these into a "spam" folder.
http://www.spampal.org

[abailey152]

Originally Posted by shin0r

Hi

Even the very best spam filters aren't 100% perfect - even if 1 in 10000 mails (0.01%) were marked incorrectly, that translates to 2500 wrongly-diagnosed emails a day (if blocked at the NTL MTAs, which typically handle ~25 million messages in 24 hours), which is unacceptable from an organisation's point of view.

By contrast, using the above figures, a personal account recieving 50 emails a day would typically drop 2 emails a year.

It boils down to being a numbers game.

cheers

Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is that NTL's spam filtering need not be nearly as strict as the filtering I use in MailWasher, but it can still be better than it is now. I'm sure there's some middle ground here, whereby a good deal of spam is blocked without blocking normal emails.

[shin0r]

Originally Posted by abailey152

Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is that NTL's spam filtering need not be nearly as strict as the filtering I use in MailWasher, but it can still be better than it is now. I'm sure there's some middle ground here, whereby a good deal of spam is blocked without blocking normal emails.

Good point - perhaps some sort of tiering solution is the way forward. NTL could perhaps use a sweeping brush filter, then customers fine-comb what remains. This would cut down on false-positives for sure.

cheers.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by shin0r

Good point - perhaps some sort of tiering solution is the way forward. NTL could perhaps use a sweeping brush filter, then customers fine-comb what remains. This would cut down on false-positives for sure.

cheers.

The problem for the ISP is that they want 0 false positives.

Demon have put this in place it makes a noticable difference to my in box.

http://www.demon.net/pressreleases/2...3-12-10a.shtml

http://www.demon.net/helpdesk/faq/spamfiltering.shtml

http://www.brightmail.com/enterprise-as-benefits.html

Brightmail claim a 99.9999% false positive rate.

[quadplay]

Originally Posted by ntl customer

Each ntl internet customer has 15 email addresses. Multiply that by 1,000,000 (which is supposedly how many internet customers ntl has) and you will see what a huge task it is!

Sorry to be pedantic, but 1,000,000 is the number of broadband customers - there are also many dial-up customers, and customers who use TV Email through their STB. Plus tesco.net, virgin.net, Which? Online, etc...

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by jimbo

Sorry to be pedantic, but 1,000,000 is the number of broadband customers - there are also many dial-up customers, and customers who use TV Email through their STB. Plus tesco.net, virgin.net, Which? Online, etc...

Also balance that with how many people actually use their 15 addresses ...

[quadplay]

Originally Posted by Nemesis

Also balance that with how many people actually use their 15 addresses ...

Not many, thankfully.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by jimbo

Sorry to be pedantic, but 1,000,000 is the number of broadband customers - there are also many dial-up customers, and customers who use TV Email through their STB. Plus tesco.net, virgin.net, Which? Online, etc...

Actually-to be totally pedantic, ntl have 1 milion internet customers that do not use dial up.

They use their 150k customers to inflate their BB figures, when 150k is nothing like BB IMHO.