Email spam filtering?

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PhilANZ

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#115990 14-Apr-2013 18:06

I assume I'm not the only one with spam pouring throught my email since Xtra had its problems. I'm not with Xtra - but obviously a lot of people I email are and while Thunderbird was OK at filtering, it's just not coping now. One of the main problems is mails that show my address - but when you look at the code, thats a different field = not "from: (although the latest message has me in from and to).

All the filter tools seem to work on from addresses which of course changes often, despite still showing up as me. So I'm just wondering if anyone knows of any other tricks.

Thanks

mattwnz

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#799240 14-Apr-2013 18:08

Usually the spam filtering is handled at your providers end, so you should be able to adjust it in your email providers system. eg if you have a domain using cpanel, you can adjust spam assassins settings.

PhilANZ

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#799328 14-Apr-2013 20:51

Aha - should have thought of that - I forgot CPanel's got email settings as well. I've turned on spamassassin - and we'll see it that does anything.

Thanks

freitasm

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#799329 14-Apr-2013 21:03

Not all spam filters work based on address - actually this would be the less effective spam filtering strategy. Outlook has a good spam filter, most cloud services had good spam filtering (Google Mail, Outlook.com, etc).

There are plenty of anti-spam filter software around (most AV/anti-malware will have a module) or you can just use Mailwasher Free Spam Filter.

And moved this to Desktop Computing forum because it's not a Windows problem at all.

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insane

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#799331 14-Apr-2013 21:10

There are companies out there which offer email spam/virus filtering services. SMX is one that comes to mind, and Maxnet another which provide 'SMTP filtering'.

You'll need to have your own domain though as you point your domains MX records to them, and they then scrub it and deliver it to a mailbox or forward it onto your mail server.

BlakJak

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#799334 14-Apr-2013 21:24

In my experience spam filtering will detect a variety of things that're known to be spam-like, not simply the from address (which is often forged anyway).

I work for SMX so if you want info on their offering, happy to provide advice. They also off a 2-week-free-trial if you want to give it a go. You do require your own domain name, and as insane says, we can either host it on our platform (POP/IMAP/webmail) or relay to your own mail server via your own fixed-IP connection.

Remember with most anti-spam systems there is a degree of 'whack-a-mole' about them; they're reactive in nature and so there's often a small gap between a new spam run, and a signature capable of accurately identifying and blocking them without creating a mess of false-positives.

Most systems work on a 'scoring' basis with an aggregate tally of 'spam-like' features adding up to a threshold definition of spam (or not). SpamAssassin is like this. SMX's is a little bit different, and the false-positive rate is surprisingly good as a result, but no system is 100% accurate, so bear that in mind too.

No signature to see here, move along...

mattwnz

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#799344 14-Apr-2013 22:01

The other thing is that if a system has been hacked and is sending out spam, then the IP of the sender will get blacklisted in the universal RBL. So if your provider subscribes to an RBL, which most good ones do these days, then this should stop a lot of those spam emails getting through before they even reach your email server. Instread the sender will get heaps of bounce backs saying they have been blocked by an RBL

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gzt

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#799573 15-Apr-2013 12:14

If you have the freedom to change your mail provider (running your own domain for example) then consider Gmail using Thunderbird to pick it up.

Gmail's spam filtering is very well done. I get several thousand spam messages per month but would be lucky to see one or two per month in my inbox. I can recall only a couple of false positives during the several years I've been using it.

PhilANZ

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#799635 15-Apr-2013 13:38

I guess I've been using email so long it's just part of life (started with Compuserve) - it's always been there and always worked - but this has brought out some new areas I needed to know. - maybe Xtra has it's uses afer all . Thanks for all the info.

Ragnor

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#801032 17-Apr-2013 14:40

Signup for a gmail or outlook.com account and setup mail fetching to pull your xtra email into your new account.

Then phase out your xtra account over time.

PhilANZ

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#801087 17-Apr-2013 16:23

I've never had an Xtra account - I only metion it because I assume the sudden upsurge in spam is due to me being in address books belong ing to Xtra customers.

As for gmail / outlook - I don't use much MS plagueware and all my email addresses are associated with domains I have - so using a gmail address is a backward step. Sadly if current trends continue I suspect simething like that may have to be done in future.

Incidentally - I've turned on spam assasin - didn't even know it was there before. I've also installed SpamFighter to see how that goes. All in all my spam is now mostly identified as spam and moved to junk. Have a few falsely idenfitified as spam, but basically it's a lot more manageable than it was.