[merged] NTL Spam Filtering

[Matth]

Seen the same thing on my old freeserve account - their targeting is RUBBISH - they seem to be going soley on spam-like content (ad/mail lists that ARE legit also get tagged), rather than on the usually unsound source address of most real spam.

Bouncing? DON'T DO IT - the email address is 99% forged, faked, and often the address of some poor sod who then gets a mailbox full of bounces - DON'T DO IT.

At best, bouncing email has little or no effect, and at worst, it causes a problem for somebody else who has nothing to do with it.



To avoid spam:
1. Never let your email address be visible in machine-readable form
http://www.clariondeveloper.com/webcloak/index.htm - see this for one way of doing it - though I'm not sure if character encoding is good enough, fragmenting the address in javascript certainly is.
2. Do not use an easily dictionary attackable address - anything 6 characters or less at a popular host is probably already covered.

Use disposable addresses such as spamgourmet if you have to give an address to someone/something you don't trust to respect it.

www.spampal.org
- A fine filter- with basic DNSBL capability, and plugins for regex rule filtering, bayesian and other tactics - you can also use a really harsh DNSBL if you hate spam more than the risk of tagging "innocent" mail.

[threadbare]

The rule is greater than 50 individual messages in an hour period. the abuse dept will put a block on any user who exceeds this limit 3 times. These users will then be contacted.

Providing all is legit and ppl genuinely need to send that volume of mail, they can add the IP address to the White list which will have no restrictions.

These users can then send their mails without being flagged up and blocked

[gazbiggs]

Hi all,

Theres one easy way to start cutting the amount of spam down and thats stopping using MS Outlook or MS Outlook Express.

Use something like Mozilla Thunderbird instead!

The problem with Outlook is that you cannot stop viewing mail as html whereas you can set thunderbird to view mail as Pain Text only.

Viewing mail as html can cause all sorts of problems, such as running scripts etc but the main problem, I discovered the other day.

Say, I guess at an email address: someone@adomain.com and send an html email containing, say:

<img src="http://mywebserver/images/piccy.gif?name=someone@adomain.com>

Now if this email address is vaild and that person reads the email as html then a request will come into my server: mywebserver

If my Web server is configured that .gif.s are in in fact as php scripts (that is, they are NOT images) then the parameter name=someone@adomain.com will be passed.

I can process the name parameter and stick it in a database of valid email addresses since the only way the Web server will have got the request in the first place is if someone@adomain.com was reading the email.

So, since you cannot get rid of html in Outlook, I would suggest getting rid!!!


gazbiggs

[Matth]

I have my firewall set to block http access for Outlook Express - so that web-bug trackers in my email are neutered.

It's a bit messy for mail that does have external images, but I could let through the sites that are useful.

I really ought to switch to something else though, Thunderbird, Pegasus, old CoverCD Eudora ... I will not PAY for an email program, and I sure as hell won't put that Incredimail garbage on my machine (adware and unreliable - I'd sooner run a completely unprotected Outlook Express!).

Thought this was quite good fron AOL.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3581435.stm

Originally Posted by gazbiggs

Hi all,

Theres one easy way to start cutting the amount of spam down and thats stopping using MS Outlook or MS Outlook Express.

Use something like Mozilla Thunderbird instead!

The problem with Outlook is that you cannot stop viewing mail as html whereas you can set thunderbird to view mail as Pain Text only...

Dont know about Outlook, but Outlook Express has an option to read as plain text.

[gazbiggs]

Originally Posted by XFS03

Dont know about Outlook, but Outlook Express has an option to read as plain text.

If it does then I would recommend turning html off

I know I spent ages trying to find out how to turn html off in Outlook so it may be worthwhile telling others how to do it in Express

gazbiggs

Originally Posted by gazbiggs

If it does then I would recommend turning html off

I know I spent ages trying to find out how to turn html off in Outlook so it may be worthwhile telling others how to do it in Express

gazbiggs

Under 'Tools' -> 'options' -> 'read', there is a box you can tick labled 'Read all messages in plain text'.

[winterbrew]

Under XP SP2, there is an option in Outlook Express ;

'block images and other external content in HTML e-mail'

Seems to work OK

Jon

[glyn]

I'm a bit worried because i'm getting up to 2000 junk emails a week now - it would be difficult for me to change my emails addresses because i need them for my job - i use an incredibly good anti-spam filtering system called spambayes which is free - it gets rid of roughly 95/97 percent of them but they still have to come to my inbox - if the amount of spam continues to go up in the same way as it has over the last two years, my cable connection will be fully utilised just receiving junk! how much junk will ntl tolerate? at what point will they cut off my email account because i'm receiving too much email?

[winterbrew]

I recently went away for a weeks holiday and had 800 spams when I got back.

I use SpamPal which sorts most of it out nicely. Would be nice to have some NTL filtering in addition.

Jon

[beastman]

I read some time ago NTL are outsourcing their email to another company and this will have an inbuilt spam filter. I am getting about 100 spams a day and its getting ridic.
Anyone know anymore about this and when it might happen?

[threadbare]

ntl are moving their mail platform to a more advanced platform called openwave. the migration should take place in june. it is not being outsourced as such just different technology which includes both spam and virus filtering (@ winterbrew which they do now). the new technology should improve ntl's handling of spam and virii which will also reduce the load on the mail servers.

[beastman]

thanks threadbare for the reply on that - will there be a further annoucement

that the transition has been completed?

[Toreador]

Have NTL really been filtering emails since Christmas? Because that's just about the time that I'd date a huge increase in the number of spam/virus emails I get. I use mailwasher so it's not a massive problem - however, whenever I'm away for more than a few days, I receive so much junk mail that I can guarantee my account will be blocked before I return as I've gone over my allowable mailbox size.

The main culprit is the 'MS Security' virus, don't know its proper name but each one has a 100K+ attachment. I can't understand why NTL won't do anything to block these, the technology is there (even Hotmail manages it) and it must cost NTL a lot of money to store these even temporarily, plus bandwidth to download them, etc.

If NTL are moving to a new platform next month then I'll maybe give them another few weeks on top of that before I've had enough and ditch them for a company that cares.