What to do with Spam Emails

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › What to do with Spam Emails

Bee

732 posts

Ultimate Geek

#101602 4-May-2012 13:38

Hi,

Some feedback and then a dumb question for a Friday afternoon.

I've changed my spam blocking settings to just tag messages that are suspected spam emails and threshold is set to 10 high. So far its identified some legit emails as spam and does not identify a lot of emails that clearly are spam.

Has anyone had good results with these settings or are there plans to possibly improve it?

Also, once a person is getting a whole lot of spam emails - is there anything that can be done to reduce or eliminate these emails that doesn't involve getting a new email address?

Doing your best is much more important than being the best.

Bee

732 posts

Ultimate Geek

#623530 11-May-2012 13:35

Dear Orcon,

My powerbill email is NOT spam!!! seriously what is the point of having a spam tool that doesnt even work properly???

Doing your best is much more important than being the best.

jaymz

1133 posts

Uber Geek

#623552 11-May-2012 14:19

Bee: Hi,

Some feedback and then a dumb question for a Friday afternoon.

I've changed my spam blocking settings to just tag messages that are suspected spam emails and threshold is set to 10 high. So far its identified some legit emails as spam and does not identify a lot of emails that clearly are spam.

Has anyone had good results with these settings or are there plans to possibly improve it?

Also, once a person is getting a whole lot of spam emails - is there anything that can be done to reduce or eliminate these emails that doesn't involve getting a new email address?

Short of going through the entire web, wiping your email address from every spam list, no. there is no way to stop the spammers using your address.

Also, on your comment about Orcon's spam filter. Does it have a "Add to safe senders list" option? if so you should use that. No spam filter is completely full proof and false positives can happen all the time. Spam filters take a certain amount of "Training" by the user to become fully effective.

OldGeek

901 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#623579 11-May-2012 15:38

Bee: Hi,

Some feedback and then a dumb question for a Friday afternoon.

I've changed my spam blocking settings to just tag messages that are suspected spam emails and threshold is set to 10 high. So far its identified some legit emails as spam and does not identify a lot of emails that clearly are spam.

Has anyone had good results with these settings or are there plans to possibly improve it?

Also, once a person is getting a whole lot of spam emails - is there anything that can be done to reduce or eliminate these emails that doesn't involve getting a new email address?

The problem with spam is that there is nothing that can detect it with 100% accuracy. I tinkered with Orcon's spam detection some years ago and ultimately turned it off. In the days of dial-up ISP connections there was some advantage in having your ISP filter out spam before download but this is not the case now. I would expect any internet security software that has spam-detection would be far more reliable and easily customised than anything Orcon can provide because it is part of their stock-in-trade.

Use your anti-spam software (I use Norton Internet Security) to mark spam with some text (usually on the SUBJECT) then use the filtering capability of your email client (ie Outlook Express etc) to move it to a specific folder. You can then monitor spam and deal with it easily even if there is a large volume of messages involved.

Spam can only be stopped at source if you contact the sender and the sender actually stops sending you spam - a waste of time 99.99% of the time. The only other option is to change your email address.

reven

3743 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#623581 11-May-2012 15:48

the free spam programs (what most ISPs use) arent all that great, they catch around 95% (which sounds like a lot, but really isnt), commerical ones catch around 99-99.5% of spam.

unless you're willing to pay (not all that much for a cloud based system eg http://www.spamdunk.co.nz/products/product1.html) not a lot you can do.

you could try filtering emails through gmail, use gmail to connect to orcons mail server and then use gmails antispam stuff (works well for me). and if you dont want to use gmail as a client, you can connect outlook/thunderbird etc to gmail and just download your emails like you always did.

disclosure: im a developer for mailmarshal spe :)