Email programmes & junk mail?

[awa355]

I use Hotmail as my main E mail service. Every week, I open the junk mail folder, click on 'All', click on 'Block' and wipe all those e mail addresses. Next week the same crap is back. I dont know if the same junk is coming from different addresses or the block adress function is not working.

Is there an E mail provider that has a function which allows me to block certain words? Blocking 'Canadian Phamacy, enlargement etc, may shut the gate to all such senders, rather than having to block the same message from a million individual addresses.

I use Telstra Clear as my provider. Just had a thought, My Gmail acc doesn't seem to get all the junk mail as Hotmail. Maybe worth setting that as my main inbox.

Would paying ( God forbid ), for Email be any guarantee against recieving junk mail?

[unstuck]

Keep away from them porn site, they is not good for your inbox.:msn-wink:

[Gremlin]

Don't bother blocking the email addresses. Even I could write the relevant code for sending emails from a@a.com, then b@b.com etc. Email addresses can be very easily faked.

Knowing the difference between spam and legit emails is not easy, as legit people do not try to be legit, and spammers try very hard to be. Be aware that the more you try to block spam, the more legit emails you could block. That said, yes, the Gmail system is good, but it also has milllions of users, so picking trends in emails etc, is very easy.

[iYRe]

hotmail is useless, gmail (or google apps if you have a domain name) is great.

Paying for email is a waste of time. Spammers find ways around teh spam filters, spam filter manager adds new rules, spammer finds ways around the rules, spam filter manager finds ways around the rules.. on and on.

I was one of the people responsible for the mail servers at a few ISP's, and the quality of the SPAM filtering at an ISP depends on how much money they are prepared to invest in blocking it. Telecom, TCL, and so forth use managed software and hardware things like Brightmail to filter email, which are ok. Slingshot (callplus) and a few other places use IRONPORT, which are awesome (I helped set up the ones at slingshot). Smaller ISP's use open source stuff like spamassassin and DSPAM, along with greylisting, which are ok, but they require day to day management, which they mostly dont have the time to do.

I built my own mailserver using POSTFIX, DSPAM, and greylisting awhile back and got about 5 spam in 6 months... but its alot of work. Now I just use google apps (gmail) and let them worry about it. I rarely get spam in my inbox despite having several domain catchalls going there.

In saying that.. they give you a junk mail folder so in case something accidentally gets blocked as spam, you can retrieve it (it happens alot more than you think). You are not actually "getting spam" - they are keeping it out of your inbox and saving it so you dont yell at them if something gets blocked. It doesnt matter where you go, you will still have a spam folder. My suggestion, just dont look in it.

[awa355]

iYRe, Thanks for the background. I appreciate your time to reply. Guess I'll just hit the 'delete' and save two clicks each time I empty the junk box.

[iYRe]

no worries.. pays to check every now and again incase there are false positives in there... a few yahoo groups I am on end up in there..

[sil3nt]

Gmail must automatically clear my spam folder. I only ever check it when I am missing an email. 20 emails since April 15 isn't too bad. Never delete emails either. I currently have 8,965 unread emails in my inbox :laugh:

[Gremlin]

Gmail must automatically clear my spam folder. I only ever check it when I am missing an email. 20 emails since April 15 isn't too bad. Never delete emails either. I currently have 8,965 unread emails in my inbox :laugh:
They do. 30 days I think? If you login, and go to the spam folder, it will state how long the emails stay there at the top.

[pzkpfw]

Just ignore the hotmail junk folder.

It's doing its job.

If you have a look at your settings ("Options" drop down near top right of window, then "more options..."):

"Delete junk email

Junk email is automatically moved into the junk email folder, where it is deleted after ten days."

So if it is junk mail, and it is in the junk mail folder, what are you worried about?

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There's no point blocking addresses, as the spam bots are harvesting new addresses all the time.

If you get junk mail in your regular inbox, make sure you mark it as junk, so the hotmail junk filters get updated.
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