GaryDean" wrote in said:
Years ago I was an Earthlink customer. One of the things that Earthlink did
very well was handle spam - they effectively eliminated the problem.
Reading the docs on Outlook, it appears that Outlook only went a little way
toward eliminating the problem. I am wondering if there is a way to have it
go all the way.
Like Outlook, they allowed me to maintain a list of email addresses and
domains for which email would be accepted. For all other email, they
automatically rejected it and sent a return email to the sender that said
something like . . .
"Sorry, because I get so much spam your email has been rejected. However if
you would like me to approve you as a sender please hit the button below and
send me a short message telling me why I should put you on my acceptance
list"
I was able to write the return letter.
This completely eliminated the spam problem. I never had to comb through a
spam folder reviewing each spam.
Is there such a feature that can be implemented for outlook? If not, does
anyone know of an email client that does have this capability?
Challenge-Response schemes are used by ignorant, lazy, and rude users
who only care that their Inbox is clean of spam without concern about
harming other users.
http://spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/329.html#CR
http://spamlinks.net/filter-cr.htm#issues-harmful
http://spamlinks.net/prevent-secure-backscatter-fake.htm
http://spamlinks.net/prevent-secure-backscatter.htm
If I ever get your misdirected "challenge spam":
- I will report you to the blacklists as a spammer. Your challenge spam
is unsolicited and you are spewing it as fast as you get spam.
- I will respond to your challenge. This ensures that you see the spam
that you attempted to use me as your unpaid and involuntary spam
filterer
When I send someone an e-mail, I am only going to send it once, not
waste my time or incur the delay to wait for a challenge to appear and
then hope my reply gets to them (which reduces the reliability of e-mail
delivery). Stop tossing your turds into someone else's yard for them to
cleanup your mess. I hope you enjoy handling all those challenges that
you receive when a spammer decides to usurp your e-mail address and
spews their turds that get to other challenge-response users.
Earthlink uses a C-R scheme. However, as I've been told, it is the last
filter. They employ other anti-spam schemes trying to detect spam
before resorting to their C-R filter. Unless you want to join the
"elite" of turd tossers, that option should be disabled in your
Earthlink account.
If you want anti-spam filtering that is better than the odd Bayes filter
that Microsoft incorporated into their 2003 and 2007 versions of Outlook
then go add some 3rd party anti-spam software. Some of it is free.
Warning: Do NOT bother with the free version of Mailwasher as it is so
crippled as to be worthless (see their comparison chart). Only their
Pro version has some value but still limited (and do NOT use their
bounceback feature as that qualifies as deliberately misdirected
backscatter that will get you reported to the blacklists). SpamPal is
free and runs as a proxy so it is compatible with all POP/IMAP/SMTP
e-mail clients. Alas, it doesn't support SSL connects so you need to
use something like sTunnel with SpamPal to connect to Gmail accounts
because of their requirement to use SSL to connect to Gmail. There is a
big industry of 3rd parties that vend anti-spam solutions that Microsoft
has yet to effectively address.
If you are reviewing suspect e-mails (spam) before deleting them, your
anti-spam solution isn't very good. You should only review the spam
folder *if* you expect e-mails that don't show up in your Inbox. You
might want to check once per week for false positives that you didn't
expect receiving. In Outlook 2002, I send spam-tagged e-mails (using
SpamPal) into the Junk folder and use auto-archiving to permanently
delete items over 1 week old. I also disable the Preview Pane for the
Junk folder and instead use the AutoPreview mode to show the first few
lines of each item in plain-text only. That way, I can see if there is
a Subject that might not be spam (that still exists after the
expiration) and Sender to see if there might be a false positive in that
folder and can also get a quick view of its contents without have to use
the preview pane to see it all.
If you want opinions on anti-spam products (better than what Microsoft
provides), post in the alt.spam forum or use look at prior posts there.
