It seems my Sympatico account is getting spammed pretty hard. I get about 10-15 a day where before I had a handful each day. Any help out there?

I get more than before too... and only last years' Playmates have my current address.

I use the spam filter in Outlook and it catches the bulk of email and put it in a spam folder so I'm very pleased with it. (oh yeah and stop surfin' porn sites ;))

10-15 is pretty hard? About 1.5 years ago I was getting about 110/day. Now it's down to 30-40. Luckily I use a spam filter (seperate program that runs in the background) that catches most of it.

When spam e-mail becomes annoying, a simple change of e-mail address resolves this. Then become very careful to whom you give your address.

There's also the transmission of virus' and the blocking of unwanted mail. For years now I've been using MailWasher and it is the most used application in my Computer. I just checked their site and it is still freeware. I certainly recommend this to everyone active on the Internet.

http://www.mailwasher.net/

With the above application, you see your mail (you can even read it) while the mail is still at your ISP server. You then decide if you wish to delete mail before it ever gets downloaded to your computer.

hi,

...look here for plenty of very good and free stuff:


http://www.thefreesite.com

For a couple of years now I've been using Popfile (http://popfile.sourceforge.net/) but for Windows I'd recommend K9 (http://www.keir.net/k9.html) because it has a nicer interface.

Both are free and do a fantastic job of automatically detecting SPAM once you have trained them for a short period.

I chose the Bayesian approach after reading this Stopping SPAM article by Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/stopspam.html).

The interesting thing about Bayesian is that it becomes customized to your personal definition of what constitutes SPAM and can also adapt to new SPAM techniques that crop up from time to time. I have set up a dozen people with this and all of them are very satisfied with the results. I strongly recommend it.

p.s. I suggest NOT using the available Black list / White list features, they actually reduce the accuracy of the algorithm over the long run.

When you change your e-mail account, change it to something that is "difficult" to guess. (like password recommendation - capitals, numbers, letters and perhaps a symbol).

I currently receive no spam, haven't for over a year. I was previously getting about 100/day. I'm careful who I give my address to.

I switched to Mozilla Thunderbird a year or so ago, and it's self learning spam filter works remarkably well.

Skippy31

I switched to Mozilla Thunderbird a year or so ago, and it's self learning spam filter works remarkably well.Makes sense... that is another program that uses Bayesian Filtering.

I know that with Cogeco it has nothing to do with your e-mail address.

Apparently all of Cogeco is getting hit hard these days with spam; the same may hold true for Sympatico now.

I second the spam filter in Outlook it catches every piece of spam with a near 0% false positive on my PC.

Crispy

I think Crispy is on to something. I've noticed a marked increase in SPAM sent to my Sympatico account in the last few weeks. I had to call Sympatico (Bell) on an unrelated issue last week and they have an initial message stating that emails may be delayed due to a larger than expected volume of email being sent through their mail severs. I suspect they may be having issues with their own SPAM filters or are in the process of modifying them.

I second the spam filter in Outlook it catches every piece of spam with a near 0% false positive on my PC.Thanks for making me curious enough to look into what Microsoft is doing these days.
Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 has many new features to block junk e-mail (spam). The most notable feature is Microsoft's Junk E-Mail Filter with Microsoft SmartScreen Technology. SmartScreen Technology is based on a machine-learning Bayesian technology that uses a probability-based algorithms to determine whether email is legitimate or spam. To educate the SmartScreen "filter", more than 100,000 Hotmail spam fighters submitted or classified their actual e-mail as either spam or good e-mail and sent that e-mail to Microsoft to be processed.I must sound like I'm making money from selling Bayesian filtering, but really I'm just a huge fan of that approach.

I just got one from I.P. Nightly... I'd open it, but it depends...

Has anyone noticed the latest pile of SPAM seems to be a pile of "undelivered", "unknown recipient" bouncebacks? SPAM filters seem to let those through, but they are all junk.

Has anyone noticed the latest pile of SPAM seems to be a pile of "undelivered", "unknown recipient" bouncebacks? SPAM filters seem to let those through, but they are all junk.

Well, technically those aren't spam, but responses to spam. It (likely) means a spammer is spoofing your email address (ie. pretending to be you) when sending spam; any email that doesn't make it through gets returned to your email address. It's not easy for a spam filter to filter out these type of emails, as in general if someone doesn't get an email, then the sender really would want to know that.

When you change your e-mail account, change it to something that is "difficult" to guess. Yup, has worked for me.

Do not use Outlook Express or put your email address into Internet Explorer. Those are sure ways for web sites to harvest your email.

Dump Sympatico and go with a smaller ISP. Sympatico and other large ISPs are a prime target for attacks by spammers.

Do not publish your email address on forums or webs sites. These have been harvested by spammers for over ten years.

Be careful who you give your email address to. Even trusted people can cause problems if they do not run a firewall, an up to date virus scanner and spyware scanner. Viruses and worms are popular ways to harvest email address books from Windows computers.

Do not give out your primary email address to anyone. Use one or more secondary addresses that can be changed easily or use a service like Hotmail.

On a side note, I started getting spam after giving my email address to someone on this site who could not PM. Thanks Hugh. :(

The only upside to all of this spam is 2 things:

1. I now have a endless source of places to help enlarge my penis.

2. I know I can always get laid by horny college coeds

Crispy

For a couple of years now I've been using Popfile (http://popfile.sourceforge.net/) but for Windows I'd recommend K9 (http://www.keir.net/k9.html) because it has a nicer interface.

(snip)

p.s. I suggest NOT using the available Black list / White list features, they actually reduce the accuracy of the algorithm over the long run.

I just installed K9 last night... went pretty smoothly. Filed abunch of spam ... new annoying sp am tha t doesnt spe ll correctly.

I hope it sorts it well enough for me.

The only glitch was the automated install changed my outgoing mail settings on Outlook, I had to change these back to get my outgoing mail to work. Do you know why K9 needs to change the outgoing mail settings?

Despite the above advice, I decided to add some family, and mailing list servers to the whitelist.....

I'll give it a good trial and see how it goes.... back before rogers, I was using spampal, but it was pretty much just a blacklist program.

Regards,
Petee C

The only glitch was the automated install changed my outgoing mail settings on Outlook, I had to change these back to get my outgoing mail to work. Do you know why K9 needs to change the outgoing mail settings?No, I can't imagine any reason for it to change the outgoing settings. As I said, I've been using Popfile and it does not touch the outgoing settings, only incoming.

Looking at the docs, I don't see any mention of K9 changing the outgoing settings, so I suspect it is unintended. Sorry about the glitch.