Spam?

[Zak33]

ref the filters that you guys use for your mail servers:

let me ask you all a question. Do you filter the mail ON your server, or do you have a solution online thsat does it for you?

Because if you're filtering them within your infrastructure, ie the mail server or a seperate box, then your bandwidth is being massacred.

[burble]

I run spam filtering on the internet facing mail servers. Bandwidth isn't an issue, we're peaking at about 7Mbit/sec during the day which leaves plenty of breathing space.

[Lucio]

ref the filters that you guys use for your mail servers:

let me ask you all a question. Do you filter the mail ON your server, or do you have a solution online thsat does it for you?

Because if you're filtering them within your infrastructure, ie the mail server or a seperate box, then your bandwidth is being massacred.

We're using ASSP at work as we're a fairly small company and it seems only the boss got any significant spam, at most a hundred or so hit that one.

[htid]

Use hotmail as my main account and get maybe 3 per week. Yahoo on the other hand I get about 20 a day, but I hardly use the account.

[pauldarkside]

My Yahoo account filters out around 50 emails a day, checked regularly for valid mail, so Outlook rarely sees any junk. It's really not bad at all considering I've had this email address since the late 90s and the number of mailing list it has been associated with.

[Funkstar]

I think work have two spam filters now. There is a new firewall box that does content monitoring/filtering as probably does the initial spam filtering. Exchange also does some.

We would probably gain from having it filtered at the ISP as we only have a 2Mbit ADSL. Although (unsurprisingly) this has sped up significantly since the MD sent out an email telling everyone about the content monitor and stating that music programs (such as iTunes), games and other non-work applications (i.e. file sharing) was not allowed on work systems

I noticed my reduction in spam at christmas and new year. Itæs dropped dramatically. Very strange.

[chrestomanci]

I have also seen a drastic drop in spam. I am using . The mail it classifies as high scoring (very likely to be spam, lot of bad words etc), goes straight to the bit bucket, medium scoring goes to a folder that I look at about once a day. I used to get around 50 spams a day to the medium folder, and about 5 or so would make it to my inbox. Now I almost never get anything in my inbox, and only 10 or so to the medium scoring folder. I have no idea how much high scoring stuff got deleted.

My guess is that seeing as almost all the spam in the world comes from about 10 big spam king operators, one or two of them must have got busted and forced to shut down their operations.

Of course, it is possible that spamassassin has suddenly become a lot more efficent at classifying spam, but seeing as everyone is reporting less spam, I think that is unlikely.

[Saracen]

ref the filters that you guys use for your mail servers:

let me ask you all a question. Do you filter the mail ON your server, or do you have a solution online thsat does it for you?

Because if you're filtering them within your infrastructure, ie the mail server or a seperate box, then your bandwidth is being massacred.

I'm using kind-of a hybrid.

I collect all headers and a few lines of preview, from the remote server, and they go through my own local filters. Some stuff gets dumped because it's from addresses or domains on my blacklist, some stuff gets dumped because it uses keywords that trigger it, and some stuff gets highlighted because it's flagged up by remote monitoring. I then review the flagged up stuff, and generally either whitelist it, blacklist it or just accept or reject on a one-off basis, depending on what it is. And the stuff that gets marked for deletion is then deleted off the ISPs mailservers without me ever downloading it in full

So it uses some bandwidth collecting the headers etc, but a lot less than collecting and then filtering entirely locally, while still keeping control over what gets blacklisted in MY hands. It works well for me, but might not suit everybody. What I do NOT trust is to hand over the ability to blacklist mail to a third party, because too often, stuff that I get flagged up as spam by third party filters bleeping well isn't, and just occasionally, it's been critical mail.

[Saracen]

Oh, and I also have several active addresses for different things. Some are either important business or personal addresses and I'm VERY careful about who gets those, and careful about the structure of them too - they aren't easily guessable.

And I have other addresses that are effectively sacrificial goats. As I use them for nothing important, if I start getting too much garbage, I simply dump them and create a new one.

[mycarsavw]

Since I started using GMail I've had none at all - that's 0, zero, nought, zilch - in a year of use.

Hotmail however, 90+ a week all from people with really generic names. Margaret Williams, for example, offers me Leivtra.MakesYouBeleiveInYourUnlimtiedPoewrs‏.

I'm about to offer her Dictionary.MaykesYouSpeelGooderer

[chrestomanci]

Since I started using GMail I've had none at all - that's 0, zero, nought, zilch - in a year of use.

GMail has a rather inovative form of spam filtering. Most mail filtering systems run on each mail as it arrives, and decides if it should be delevered to your inbox, or to a spam folder. With Gmail, the mail is not flagged as spam untill the point you log in. At that point each item of mail is compared with other mails receved by other users, and if they mostly flagged it as spam, then the mail is put into a spam folder. This means that Gmail benifits from realtime filtering by all it's users.

From the ordinary user's point of view, it means that the less frequently you log in, the fewer spams you see. I only log in once a week or so, and I almost never see any spams in my inbox.

[adam_weisshaupt]

It's all about where you leave your email address. I have 3 "real" accounts that I never use when registering with sites&services [those are clean of spam] and 1 "spam" account that I always use when registering with sites&services [that one gets all the good V1a6RA emails].

[Almafi]

It's all about where you leave your email address. I have 3 "real" accounts that I never use when registering with sites&services [those are clean of spam] and 1 "spam" account that I always use when registering with sites&services [that one gets all the good V1a6RA emails].

That is what I do, and would advise; combined with a Gmail account I am now spam free!

[Howard]

My Gmail account I use for signing up for rubbish, but it doesn't get much "spam", my NTL account does because I've had it for so long, but that's filtered at their end and it's got loads of rubbish in there.

At work we use an external mail gateway that helps us filter about 10,000 spam emails per day or something ridiculous!

[finlay666]

3 per day on my 'saucy' gmail (the name seems to attract spam)
1 a week on my proper gmail
a fair few a week on my hotmail and a LOT on my yahoo email

[Whiternoise]

Hotmail = very little spam any more