Sneeky spam mail - devious ba****ds.

[Keygrip]

As we all are, I get swamped with bucket loads of e-mails every day that are complete and utter tripe - if not offensive.

Windows XP (and, no doubt, all its predecessors) can be ttold to stop sending it to you - but person by person.

For those that haven't yet - highlight a message, click "message" at the top menu bar, "Create Rule from message"...and then fill out your choice.

I usually say (from the top box) "If From lines contains people..." (and you are later given the opportunity to enter the names/addresses of specific people/senders then (from second box) "Delete from server" - and I never get them again.

Now, however, the devious barstewards are sending me mail with no sender name and no subject line - all I get is a mail icon and a date stamp.

This totally defeats the systems that I know of for stopping unwanted mail - and I've got all the Viagra and Stallion Cream that I can afford.

Any thoughts??

[DistantRumble]

Common problem at the moment...

but you gotta love the Open Source movement ..

check this out and let me know how you get on.. we're evaluating this at the moment

Currently getting to be a leading Spam killer.

http://sourceforge.net/potm/potm-2003-05.php

[Bo Lux]

Have you tried Mailwasher? Its free and allows the chance to examin mail before it gets onto your pc and bounce it back if it counts as spam. You teach it blacklisted addresses it etc. I wonder if an untitled/no address email could be taught as a blacklisted ID. If I ever get one, I'll let you know.

http://www.mailwasher.net/

[FJJP]

Like Bo Lux, I use Mailwasher. I keep OE closed, Mailwasher checks my mailbox and lists all therein. It gives you 2 tick boxes against each, allowing you the opportunity to delete or bounce (or neither) the offending message. If the title doesn't give a cue you can open the message in Mailwasher and then decide. You then 'Process Mail' where it will delete or bounce as you have determined, adding the bounced to the blacklist. It will still display the blacklisted later, but at a glance you can sort your mailbox. When it has finished processing it opens OE for you and loads the permitted mails. Bouncing hopefully automatically drops your address from the computer generated e-mail address lists. Great stuff.

[Mac the Knife]

Keygrip - my sympathies. After reading your post I tried playing around in Outlook to see if I could creat an appropriate filter but failed - it doesn't seem possible to write regexes using the OL Wizard though it MAY be possible to do so directly in the Registry or OL's application data _IF_ OL can deal with regexes at all. This site http://www.davidgagne.net/archives/003191.shtml#003191 has some references that seem to imply that it could by done by writing a VB plugin of OL and another that indicates it is possible using C++ and the Exchange SDK. Sounds like too much PT unless you're a real hacker.

I installed MailWasher a couple of weeks ago 'cos I couldn't cope with the spam deluge any longer. I have to say that it works a treat. The FAQ includes a URL to an excellent list of filters http://www.w5hq.com/MailWasher/MailWasherFilters.txt that work extremely well with little modification.

"..I wonder if an untitled/no address email could be taught as a blacklisted ID." Writing a MailWasher regex filter for this should be trivial - I'll try it later today and post it if it works.

POPFile looks REALLY interesting - thanks DistantRumble!

Incidentally, I have been trying to find info. on the usefulness or not of bouncing spam - opinions seem fairly evenly divided. Some say that it's useless because most of the return addys are false anyway and it just further congests the Net. Others think it may help. I dunno, I've been bouncing all that cr@p for 2 weeks now and it shows no signs of abating.

[BOAC]

As you know, I am a great fan of MW too, but I am still waiting a reply from them as to how to handle the incorrect return addresses. A significant number are coming in with these and I cannot bounce them. eg MW sees them as xyza@(). The actual return address is, eg, xyza@earthlink.

I use earthlink as an example 'cos I get a NUMBER from that ISP (yes, I have contacted them). A correct earthlink addy would be [email protected]

Otherwise MW is successful, but I do not think that the computer that is generating the spam even NOTICES the bounce!

Any ideas?

[Mac the Knife]

Ah-ha! If you using OL 2000 or 2002 then Outclass is a subset of POPFile that installs as a OL plugin. POPFile must be installed first -- WITH the optional Perl components -- but doesn't need to be running (in fact SHOULDN'T be running concurrently). Free (GPL), looks professional & cool, well documented - worth a look at http://www.vargonsoft.com/Outclass/

"Outclass has been tested with Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002 using Exchange, POP3, and IMAP mail, on Windows 2000 and Windows XP and with POPFile v0.18.1. Outclass can manually handle Hotmail accounts in Outlook 2002, but does not automatically classify Hotmail email at this time."

Run in tandem with Mailwasher? Just love the GPL....!

Keygrip, add the following line to MailWasher's filters.txt

[enabled],"Blank Subject/Sender",Filtered,16711680,AND,Blacklist,Delete,Subject,conta ins,.,From,contains,.

Haven't tried it yet but it's so trivial that it has to work.