Shelds up!

Juan Jimenez wrote:

Get off earthlink and get a free gmail account.

You really think gmail will stop spam. gmail/google and yahoo are too of the
biggest sources of it!
John

Well, I guess that's the way the world works.

I've had this account up for a couple of weeks and
have started receiving the same old spam loaded
with viruses.

Last year, one somehow got through and perty well
ruined the whole day.

So, for a while at least, I'm raising my shields to
max (one reason I picked Earthlink).

I don't have everybody listed in my address book yet.

So anyone sending a legitimate email will likely receive
a reply advising them how to complete the contact.

Sorry about this.

But I'm not going through that mess again.


Ta.

Richard

One of my main job responsibilities is admining our email system at
work, and I can tell you truthfully that auto-challenge systems (which
you seem to imply you're using) are not a good thing to put into place.
At best, you're going to tick off a lot of people who truly want to
communicate with you; done on an organization wide basis it can even
land a company's email server on a blacklist (ie, people who check the
RBL server will refuse to deliver messages sent by you).

If you want to drop the spam without resorting to auto-challenge
systems, you would do well to look into SpamAssasssin (it's free).
I've got it checking our incoming mail (along with my home mail
accounts). It uses a multi-tiered approach (blacklisting, RBL's,
content rules, bayesian analysis, online tests w/ DCC & Razor) that
does a LOT to help block it. I've also got my Postfix MTA set to use
greylisting. This combined with a freeware virus scanner has
eliminated over 99% of our incoming spam, and it's literally been
months since I got a spam message at home.

Try it out.

Mike Gaskins

Get off earthlink and get a free gmail account.

"Richard Lamb" wrote in message
ink.net...
Well, I guess that's the way the world works.

I've had this account up for a couple of weeks and
have started receiving the same old spam loaded
with viruses.

Last year, one somehow got through and perty well
ruined the whole day.

So, for a while at least, I'm raising my shields to
max (one reason I picked Earthlink).

I don't have everybody listed in my address book yet.

So anyone sending a legitimate email will likely receive
a reply advising them how to complete the contact.

Sorry about this.

But I'm not going through that mess again.


Ta.

Richard

Mike Gaskins wrote:

One of my main job responsibilities is admining our email system at
work, and I can tell you truthfully that auto-challenge systems (which
you seem to imply you're using) are not a good thing to put into place.
At best, you're going to tick off a lot of people who truly want to
communicate with you; done on an organization wide basis it can even
land a company's email server on a blacklist (ie, people who check the
RBL server will refuse to deliver messages sent by you).

If you want to drop the spam without resorting to auto-challenge
systems, you would do well to look into SpamAssasssin (it's free).
I've got it checking our incoming mail (along with my home mail
accounts). It uses a multi-tiered approach (blacklisting, RBL's,
content rules, bayesian analysis, online tests w/ DCC & Razor) that
does a LOT to help block it. I've also got my Postfix MTA set to use
greylisting. This combined with a freeware virus scanner has
eliminated over 99% of our incoming spam, and it's literally been
months since I got a spam message at home.

Try it out.

Mike Gaskins


Thanks Mike, I'll check into it.

With POP3 service the mail comes right to your computer.
Once there, it is difficult to deal with - without "opening" it.

This might be the answer...


Richard

Juan Jimenez wrote:

Get off earthlink and get a free gmail account.


More?

Richard

Have you tried MailWasher? They have a free version.

You look at mail before you let it download to your computer. You can
see who it is from and Msg text.

Can Blacklist or ident as Frind by address or domain before it
downloads.

You also should have a good Virus program on your computer.

Both my dial up and Road Runner have virus scanning in them and stop a
lot that might kill my computer.

Lots of ways to reduce the risk but no 100% I have heard of (

Big John
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` `````````



On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:44:53 GMT, Richard Lamb
wrote:

Mike Gaskins wrote:

One of my main job responsibilities is admining our email system at
work, and I can tell you truthfully that auto-challenge systems (which
you seem to imply you're using) are not a good thing to put into place.
At best, you're going to tick off a lot of people who truly want to
communicate with you; done on an organization wide basis it can even
land a company's email server on a blacklist (ie, people who check the
RBL server will refuse to deliver messages sent by you).

If you want to drop the spam without resorting to auto-challenge
systems, you would do well to look into SpamAssasssin (it's free).
I've got it checking our incoming mail (along with my home mail
accounts). It uses a multi-tiered approach (blacklisting, RBL's,
content rules, bayesian analysis, online tests w/ DCC & Razor) that
does a LOT to help block it. I've also got my Postfix MTA set to use
greylisting. This combined with a freeware virus scanner has
eliminated over 99% of our incoming spam, and it's literally been
months since I got a spam message at home.

Try it out.

Mike Gaskins


Thanks Mike, I'll check into it.

With POP3 service the mail comes right to your computer.
Once there, it is difficult to deal with - without "opening" it.

This might be the answer...


Richard

("Mike Gaskins" wrote)
[snip]
If you want to drop the spam without resorting to auto-challenge
systems, you would do well to look into SpamAssasssin (it's free).
I've got it checking our incoming mail (along with my home mail
accounts). It uses a multi-tiered approach (blacklisting, RBL's,
content rules, bayesian analysis, online tests w/ DCC & Razor) that
does a LOT to help block it. I've also got my Postfix MTA set to use
greylisting. This combined with a freeware virus scanner has
eliminated over 99% of our incoming spam, and it's literally been
months since I got a spam message at home.


Our ISP is now using Postini. We're very happy with the results.
http://www.postini.com/

I got flagged just today. I checked in with Postini, through the e-mail link
they send, and saw it was my own yahoo.com messages. I had recently sent a
few saved messages to my home e-mail account.

I clicked Approve Sender (me!) and all was good again. 4 years ago we were
getting 10-20 per day, now we're down around 5 spams a month.

When Postini first kicked in we only lost a couple of people. We checked
daily for known addresses before deleting the junk. Now it's on autopilot.


Montblack

You can "pull" POP3 mail into a system to process it further.

I'm guessing you're running a Windows system, and most of these are
Unix utilities, but IIRC most have Windows versions out there. My
home setup is to use fetchmail on a cron-job. Every 5 minutes it goes
out, checks my two POP3 servers for new mail, and grabs if present. It
then hands the mail off to Postfix via SMTP for processing and at this
point it behaves just as if you were running your own mail server.
Postfix uses Amavisd-new along with SpamAssasin and ClamAV for
spam/virus filtering.

Messages that fail these tests are quarantined and I never even see
them unless I specifically go and look. Messages that pass are given
to procmail for local delivery and sorting. I then run Dovecot as an
IMAP server so that I can access the mail with any mail program of my
choosing.

This not only affords good spam protection, but I can also check my
email from any computer in the house and pull up the same set of
messages. I also have setup a webmail system (Roundcube) that accesses
the IMAP server, so that I can also check my email remotely just as
easily. You don't have to go quite this elaborate (if I'm not mistaken
fetchmail can hand directly to procmail which can invoke SpamAssasin if
you like), but the tools are out there to help. All of the ones
mentioned here are also free of charge, as well as open source so you
can make changes to the program if you like.

Mike Gaskins

Juan Jimenez wrote:
Get off earthlink and get a free gmail account.

Get off a virus vulnerable operating system.

Seriously. A Salvation Army $30 pc running a lightweight version of Linux or an old second hand Mac is more than
sufficient for email and usenet. Probably good enough even for most web browsing. Way cheaper than all the
anti-malware you can buy, especially when you consider the on-going subscription prices.

yes, I know there is free anti-virus available, but its using your compute power to run. Much better to not have
the problem to begin with than have to band-aide it.

BTW, I am not trying to start an OT OS religious war. I am the system and network administrator for a 200+ node
medical clinic. Due to our applications, we have to run Windows of various flavors. There is no way, though, that
I allow any of these systems to touch the internet, nor do I allow external media (floppies, CD ROMS) on site
without my approval.
--
Frank Stutzman