Key Post: Dealing with Spam

My rather late new year's resolution has been to try to deal with spam. I couldn't find any independent trustworthy comparisons of the various anti-spam products available, so here are my comments so far:

Mailwasher
As this was the only product mentioned on the Spam thread on Askaboutmoney, I tried it first. If it's good enough for Marion, it's good enough for me.

It looked clever, but was no real help. It just lists out all your emails and marks some as probable spam and possible spam and friends. You still have to inspect each one and delete them individually.

There is a bounce feature. It sends back a message to the sender telling them that this email address is no longer valid. Great in theory, but my 40 bounced emails came back to me as 40 mailer daemons. The reply to address was not valid.

After checking mail on mailwasher, it checks about 3 emails and gives me an error message I don't understand. I emailed support and got no answer.

This product was doing nothing for me, so I disabled it.

Download.com
I used this as a source for identifying spam software. There are user reviews, but it seems that they are written by the software providers posing as customers. They are not reliable.

Spam Butcher
Early days so far, I downloaded a trial version on my office pc yesterday. It seems to be better than Mailwasher in that it lets all mail marked as "friendly" straight through to my inbox and quarantines suspected spam in Spam Butcher. I can read my genuine email and deal with it. At my leisure, I can check the quarantined mail and restore the good ones and zap the rest.

Early days, but it seems a lot better than Mailwasher.

Spam Bully
I downloaded SpamBully on my home pc - the other two were in the office. I am using this on Outlook - I use Outlook Express in the office.

SpamBully at this early stage seems better again. It incorporates itself in Outlook, so I don't have to run a separate program. I press send and receive as normal and it sends good mails to the inbox and puts spam into a separate spam folder. So far, out of 14 emails, it was 100% correct - the four good mails went to the inbox and the 10 spam went to the spam folder.

I am worried that it has incorporated itself in my Outlook. If I don't like it will I be able to uninstall it? Will it cause Outlook to be unreliable?

Mail sweeper Mime Sweeper
Zag suggested I consider this for the office. It would sit on the server and deal with spam at that level. It would also give me options for stopping certain types of emails e.g. exes.

Priority Data who supplies anti-virus software to the office quoted me €1500 to buy this and €400 per annum for support. This product might be too complex for us. And if it doesn't work, it would be a waste of money.

I am trying the pc based products first at €30 each to see if they will do the job.

Brendan

Re: Dealing with Spam

Brenda, actually, I abandoned mailwasher after a short while when I read an article by Karlin Lillington extolling the virtues of one called www.cloudmark.com.

Marion :hat

Re: Dealing with Spam

I have 'public' and 'private' email address. I closely guard my private one, and don't publish it anywhere on the internet. The public one is a yahoo one, and gets constant spam.

Some people suggest that if you're putting your email address on a web page, display it as a graphic. This helps stop spammers getting hold of it. Never put a private email address on a newgroup posting.

Since your looking at various anti-spam measures, give spamcop a blast.

Re: Dealing with Spam

I use Spamcop and am pretty satisfied with it. Until recently, it filtered about 80-90% of spam. Last week they added the "Spam Assasin" product, and after a little tweaking, I now get zero spam !

Advantages :

(1) Filters Spam BEFORE you get it. It never reaches your PC, but is sidetracked on their server. Saves downloading rubbish.

(2) Flexible options (including whitelist/blacklist)

(3) Allows you to report spam with a few clicks (either the ones which got through, or the ones held on their server).

(4) Can consoloidate email from all your addresses into one place (I use it for 3 addresses).

Disadvantages :

(1) Setting it up is a little tricky - although mainly a once-off task.

(2) Sometimes the object of "denial of service" attacks, presumably from spammers. You don't lose emails, but it can be hard to connect (happened about twice in the last year).

(3) Annual Charge to be paid

Re: Dealing with Spam

I now get zero spam !

Bear in mind that with any of these utilities/services you generally still have to check periodically for false positives - i.e. legitimate emails that are incorrectly adjudged to be spam and sidelined/quarantined/junked as a result.

Re: Dealing with Spam

In hotmail, I was getting loads of spam, so I went in and changed my profile for my age to be 8 years old. This got rid of 50% of the spam. Then I started replying to any spam I was getting pretending to be the father of an 8 year old giving out about them sending spam to an 8 year old. You should see the apologies I got from companies sending X rated spam to the "8 year old"!!!

Re: Dealing with Spam

Replying to any spam is not a good strategy. While you might get apologies from some senders chances are these or others will now simply know that your address is real and will pass or sell your details onto other (X rated or other) spammers. Best never to open (including preview panes in email applications) or reply to suspected spam at all.

Re: Dealing with Spam

I now get zero spam !


Clubman - of course you are right, false positives or negatives will still occur (got one today)

To expand on my original email, I check the "spam" folder of rejected emails (held on the spamcop site) occasionally. A quick scan is usually sufficient to see if any were incorrectly rejected. Usually these are suitable for adding to my whitelist, so I now get very few incorrect rejections.

More generally, I think that it is currently impossible to have a 100% successful tool. Even if you have an email address known by very few people there are (at least) three ways it can still be 'spammed'

(1) Random address generators
(2) Interception in transit (rare, but theoretically possible)
(3) Hacking of the provider where you have registered your address

Re: Dealing with Spam

He euroDilbert

That's a very useful review of SpamCop. The website says that it is €29.95 to buy. You mention an annual charge. What is that?

Brendan

Re: Dealing with Spam

Hi Brendan,

just did a quick internet search, and it appears that there may be more than one Spamcop on the beat.

The one I was referring to is :

www.spamcop.net/

and the charge is $30 pa. It operates as a filtering service and email host - there is no product to download to your PC.

Re: Dealing with Spam

Brendan - have you tried simply searching using Google? There is oodles of information out there about spam filtering utilities. Or maybe the point is that you don't want to be overwhelmed with such information (i.e. the RTFM principle :lol ) and just want a recommendation? If so then [broken link removed] recommends Mailwasher (for "average" users) and for more experienced users. Based on some of the other utilities listed (e.g. I use other freebie utilties recommended here such as Grisoft's AVG anti-virus, JGSoft's EditPadLite etc.) I would certainly give some credence to this site's recommendations.

This site might be also be of use containing, as it does, links to many resources and related reading.

I'm not sure if you are trying to deal with spam in the context of your own personal internet/email usage or in a wider context such as your organisation etc. However bear in mind that you might want to consider whether you want to deal with spam at your ISP, your mail server or on a per host PC basis etc. as this is a key determinig factor when trying to select a suitable tool.

Hope this helps.

Re: Dealing with Spam

Hi ClubMan

I did do a Google, but I couldn't find a simple and independent review of anti-spam software.

The 16 best ever Freeware recommends Mailwasher which I found attractive, but useless. Marion has stopped using it as well.

My main interest is sorting out the problem at work rather than at home. But I am experimenting with the various products at home as I can do less damage here.

I may install Mimesweeper in the office. It's €1500, but it does look good. I want to find a similar small user to get their experience of it. Mimesweeper has a bigger brother called eSweeper which costs €2500 a year, but it's effectively outsourcing the anti-virus and anti-spam activities. Expensive, but I will look at it.

At €30 per user, SpamBully seems a very effective interim step. So far it's been 100% effective, which I find extraordinary. But I would like to hear other people's experience of it, to see if there are any downsides which I haven't discovered.

Do Microsoft approve products for use with their software? I find SpamBully great but how do I know that I am not downloading millions of viruses just by downloading the software?

Brendan

Re: Dealing with Spam

Hi Marion

Cloudmark looks like a very good collaborative product. Could you share your experience of it with us? Presumably you find it a lot better than Mailwasher?

Brendan

Re: Dealing with Spam

Hi Brendan

At this stage it looks like you have opted for another product, but here’s how it works:

Cloudmark is only compatible with Microsoft Outlook, it doesn’t yet work with Outlook Express, though it is in the pipeline to offer a beta version.

I have Cloudmark 1.0, (beta or trial version) which the company has generously allowed all existing users to continue using without a fee

Once cloudmark is downloaded you are deemed to be a Cloudmark community member. It runs invisibly with Outlook. When you open Outlook any mail which is determined by the Cloudmark community to be span is automatically sent to the spam folder of Outlook. All legitimate mail goes into the inbox.

Sometimes, the odd spam does come through into the inbox, and in this event as a good community member one hits the “block” tab on the toolbar (which like any toolbar you can hide until you need it to save space on your desktop) and this is registered on the Cloudmark database. If a significant number of trusted members deem this to be spam then it will from there on in be sent to the spam folder. Each new member has a trust rating of zero and you build up your rating with Cloudmark by reporting spam. A member with a high trust rating will carry more weight in the determination of an email as spam.

The email is not deleted from Outlook – it either goes to spam folder or into your inbox. You can check your spam folder for any stray emails which were sent there – perhaps a newsletter which may be spam, but which you find useful. You can check the unblock button and it will be sent to your inbox.

I like it as a programme a) because for me it is free and b) it runs in conjunction with outlook.

It is only recently that it became a subscription program. I did mention it earlier this year in another post, which I can’t find. Did anybody download it and use it while it was subscription free?

If, and when, the beta version (free) of Outlook Express is launched I will post the details here.

Marion :hat

Re: Dealing with Spam

I work for a US based antispam company www.brightmail.com as part of the recently established Irish office (but only provide software to Enterprise customers - so not much use for ordinary endusers). If you have been sent unsolicited e-mail never open or preview it as it may contain hidden images called "web bugs" that will verify that your e-mail address is active. If a sneaky subject line fooled you into opening an e-mail never reply to the e-mail or unsubscribe from a mailing (that you never opted into in the first place) or the amount of spam you receive will increase dramatically. For microsoft outlook users I suggest that you create a spam folder and use the "Rules Wizard" to sideline mail with the word 'unsubscribe' anywhere in the body. Legitimate mailing lists may get sidelined but you can always whitelist these as exception cases.

Re: Dealing with Spam

Thanks D

I looked up your site and your product appears to be for very large enterprises only? We use Novell and your product seems limited to Windows Servers?

I have found that the message rules don't really work. The spam software seems to be up to 95% effective and costs are quite low

Brendan

Re: Dealing with Spam

The spam software seems to be up to 95% effective and costs are quite low

(My underlining) Not being smart or anything but this may not be the case if using your preferred spam blocking package necessitates upgrading to MS Outlook as you mention .

Re: Dealing with Spam

Hi Clubman,

Interesting point.

Upgrading 16 clients to Outlook: around €1400 once off.
Annual charge for up to 25 Cloudmarks - €1000.

Compares to MimeSweeper - €1500 once off and €400 per year for updates and maintenance.

Annual charge for eSweeper - around €2500

Annual charge for Brightmail ?

We get extra benefits from upgrading to Outlook vs. some extra content filtering by using MimeSweeper.

My guess is that Outlook is the way to go.

Brendan

Re: Dealing with Spam

Are you absolutely sure that the 'upgrading 16 clients to Outlook: around €1400 once off.' is actually a once off charge?

Re: Dealing with Spam

No I am not absolutely sure. I assumed that was the price for buying the product. But I will certainly check.

Brendan