Re: [CH] RE Mailwasher
Scott Peterson (scottp4@mindspring.com)
Sat, 18 Sep 2004 12:44:46 -0700
At 06:24 AM 9/18/2004, Joy wrote:
>>Reporting to spam cop or spamhaus amounts to a waste of $$,
>>Reporting the UCE@FTC.GOV is almost as useless.
>
>
> >Unfortunately the amount of spam you are getting is rising almost
> expnoentially.
>
>Like Byron, I've never seen any good from this. They don't get back to
>YOU, so how would you know? And unfortunately it is rising
>exponentially. What I will do if it's really bad is report the email addy
>to my ISP.
There have been a number of news reports and announcements from the FTC
about prosecutions based on material sent to that address. They also use
the information for statistical purposes.
>I have that filter. It puts it into "junk mail" so I still get
>it. That's hardly filtering it out, I just don't see it in my inbox. It
>also doesn't work worth a squid. Yes it segregates SOME of the email, but
>you still get it in your box, so you are still getting it on your
>computer. I don't even want that.
Then you're out of luck unless you find an ISP with an extremely aggressive
anti-spam policy. Generally with those there's a very high incidence of
false positives.
Since, as an end-user, I do not have the luxury I have at work of bouncing
spam before it's received, I'm quite happy to have access to filtering that
lets me ignore junk mail. On a DSL connection the extra time to download it
is pretty much not noticeable.
>I just looked at my Eudora options. I'm not sure what you're talking
>about here. Eudora doesn't give you an option to delete the email on your
>server before you download it to your computer. Mailwasher does.
It works differently in Eudora. Tools, Options, Incoming Mail, skip
messages over xxx in size.
You simply get a message asking if you want to delete or download.
>So does earthlink's spaminator. Eudora gives you an option to filter it
>into "junk". I have that folder in my Eudora directory, and yes, there's
>junk in it, after I've manually tagged it. It says in options... "delete
>junk from server" but I don't usually leave my email on the server. I
>could, and actually am going to try that, but in general I find that
>rather rude.
Spaminator is an implementation of Brightmail's filtering technology. I
find it catches about 2/3 of the spam I receive with effectively zero false
positives.
If you're using the paid version of Eudora, it will filter automatically if
you let it. If this is not happening, something is wrong. I do notice that
you're using an early version of Eudora 6, 6.0.3. The filter is improved in
the 6.1.2 version as well as a number of other fixes. Marking mail as junk
or not junk is a means to training the Baysean filter about what is and is
not spam on your system. It should not be needed very much if the filters
are working properly.
Why would it be rude to delete the junk from the server? You lost me on that.
> >Personally I don't have the time to look at my mail twice and that's a
> major flaw in the Mailwasher approach. But that's my opinion, for you,
> if it works and you're happy with it, enjoy it.
>
>the only reason for that is that computer programs are not "intuitive" or
>"smart" Both of these have a means to permanently blacklist these
>addresses so you never have to tag them. You get the address once, and
>then can put it on a permanent bounce/blacklist. Have you ever tried
>mailwasher?
Since addresses are generally random, the lists quickly get huge and not
very effective.
I do want to repeat that while I don't like the mailwasher's approach to
filtering spam, I understand that other people are happy with it. I'm not
trying to force you to abandon it or user another product. My only reason
for even getting involved in this discussion was to correct the impression
that the bounce feature (which is a major selling point) will work. It
won't, it can't and, in fact, is often actually abusive to others. If you
want to use it fine, just don't bounce mail.
Yes, I evaluated it for clients and, as I said, found better solutions that
did not involve having to make (or validate) the decisions of the filtering
program.
>>If you don't like Neil Boltons methods, then maybe you can pay Billy
>>Gate$ the 1/2 billion $ to block open relays in his server programs.
>>Thats where 99% of this crap is coming from.
>
> >Bolton/Mailwasher is not doing anything to reduce the spam problem. He
> simply provides a filter so you don't see it. The only time spam is
> reduced is when it's blocked before you receive it.
>
>Right. And Eudora does it even less efficiently.
Define efficiency. I find it's much more wasteful of my time to have to
keep firing up mailwasher to go out to the server and validate mailwasher's
actions before I download the mail. Maybe the email is downloaded with
Eudora, but on any decent connection, the differential is a matter of seconds.
> I'm not sure about Mailwasher, but Spaminator gives you three options of
> "from" addresses to delete, including the domain address.
I don't delete based on addresses. I use a combination of SpamPal which
filters based on documented Internet blacklists and the Baysean filters in
Eudora. This combination has proved very effective with little or no
manual intervention.
>What is it with this list, anyway? I inevitably have to type in the to:
>address after hitting reply. I don't participate on a list to only reply
>to the sender, I participate to post to the list. If I want to reply
>privately, I'll type in the individual email address, at least with most
>lists.
This is an option controlled by the list owner. Try using reply to all and
then delete the personal address.
Scott Peterson
--
If at first you don't succeed,
try management.
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