[Merged] NTL spam

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by paulyoung666

yesterday i finally had enough of spam mail , i changed my e-mail address , so far i aint got any spam , i suppose time will tell if it starts happening again

Exactly what I did. I set up up a very complicated name as the main name, which I have no intention of ever using. I then set up a number of subsidiary names, one for close friends and relatives, one for regular email shopping, one for one-off email shopping and a number of junk ones. If any become "contaminated", it will be ruthlessly binned. Even with the subsidiary names, I'd recommend not using the "Fred159" type of name; they obviously start with Fred1 and continue to Fred999999, as I quickly found out. Use something like Fred159xy.

[paulyoung666]

Originally Posted by Theodoric

Exactly what I did. I set up up a very complicated name as the main name, which I have no intention of ever using. I then set up a number of subsidiary names, one for close friends and relatives, one for regular email shopping, one for one-off email shopping and a number of junk ones. If any become "contaminated", it will be ruthlessly binned. Even with the subsidiary names, I'd recommend not using the "Fred159" type of name; they obviously start with Fred1 and continue to Fred 999999, as I quickly found out. Use something like Fred159xy.

well hopefully the addy i have chosen will last for a while

[Shaun]

I must admit my yahoo.co.uk address is excellent, I get about one spam e-mail a week. Not sure if it's their spam filter or my name??

Still as long as it works!

[sherer]

Originally Posted by Theodoric

Exactly what I did. I set up up a very complicated name as the main name, which I have no intention of ever using. I then set up a number of subsidiary names, one for close friends and relatives, one for regular email shopping, one for one-off email shopping and a number of junk ones. If any become "contaminated", it will be ruthlessly binned. Even with the subsidiary names, I'd recommend not using the "Fred159" type of name; they obviously start with Fred1 and continue to Fred999999, as I quickly found out. Use something like Fred159xy.

i'd got an address where I just randomly hit a few letters and numbers and it gets no spam. I've only given the addy out to a few people. they either reply or have it in their address book so the name of it doesn't matter

Originally Posted by cookie_365

Problem is, no computer algorithm can ever be as good at deciding what's spam & whats not. And how many false positives is acceptable? 1%? 5%? 0%? It all depends on the person, the value of the content of the messages, the chances the content is similar to spam messages blah blah blah.

If you think about how long it takes for your own Outlook/Mailwasher/whatever rules to sort out what's (probably) spam & what isn't, then its probably only a few seconds a day for most people. <Snip>

I have used Spampal for several months now, I have about 6 addresses in the whitelist, the rest of the filtering is done on the default rules, blacklists and the regexp filter. In all of that time I have only had one e-mail accidentally classified as spam (an e-mail newletter from Game) so that got whitelisted and only around 5 spam messages that were not recognised as spam. Addresses that I send mail to are automatically added to the whitelist so I don`t have to worry about those.

On the basis of your percentages, my spam has ben classified correctly with as good as 100% accuracy with probably about 10 minutes work on my part at the very beginning.

If Spampal can do it this well then there is no reason (theoretically of course) that NTL couldn`t do it.

[greencreeper]

I thought this was interesting: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3584534.stm

Yeah! wonder how much it's going to cost to buy.

[alanf617]

I'm sick of it. Yesterday, I checked emails after 3 days with the computer off and I had > 130 emails of which 3 were not spam. I use Spampal to filter it into a separate folder but it still takes forever to download the spam.

is it worth reporting spam to anyone? I have tried Spamcop in the dim & distant past, but found that it took even longer to deal with the spam and I was never convinced that I was achieving anything. What do you advise? Ignore it, report it ( it's complicated to understand the headers, my emails are mainly received by a uk2.net domain address that is memorable and fun, then sent to the NTL address so I don't want to get UK2.net labelled as a spammer, and I am never sure which "received from" lines in the headers are genuine and which are not).

spammed of hertfordshire

[Stuart]

You could try using Mozilla Thunderbird as your email client. This enables you to easily mark something as spam (or Junk) mail and delete it. You could also try setting it to just download the headers. This way, the only mail that gets downloading is that which you read.


It takes a while to train it, but Thunderbird is fairly good at recognising spam and marking it appropriately. Note, unless you tell it to, it will not delete the spam.

To download, go to http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

I use mailwasher pro, I found that blacklisting & bouncing were a waste of time & now just use it to preview my mail boxes, before I download them, in order to delete the obvious crap.

I also found that forwarding mail for the account receiving the most spam, to my hotmail address, reduced the amount I get, considerably - talking 90% reduction

[Russ]

Isn't "bouncing" emails back the worse thing you can do?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Russ D

Isn't "bouncing" emails back the worse thing you can do?

Yes, because then spammers then assume it's a valid address..

[TheBlueRaja]

Not when he's bouncing it to his own hotmail account, which will have decent spam filtering before it reaches the inbox.

[Mike]

I use spampal and spams are deleted at the server never get through to my PC.

Just check a log which shows over 3 days 150 spams deleted.

Spampal runs in the back ground and you can just forget about it.

http://www.spampal.org/

Well recommended

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by theblueraja

Not when he's bouncing it to his own hotmail account, which will have decent spam filtering before it reaches the inbox.

Bouncing it to hotmail is fine (hotmail does seem to have good spam blocking now).

I believe Russ was talking about bouncing it back the spammer though (which would only work if the from field wasn't falsified). If it is a false address, bouncing it back would just generate extra traffic, or notify the spammer he has just sent to a valid address.