What to do about email SPAM?

Topic

New Reply

Overnight I received more than 150 SPAM messages, turns out they are using 2 new Domain extensions. Also had quite a few the previous 3 days. One is .xyz and the other is .link. The Domain name is slightly different in each message. Quite irritating. The messages were filtered out to the SPAM Folder but still have to delete them from my Domain Server.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

Reply | Quote

Replies

Sounds like your service provider needs to update their filters…

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Reply | Quote

@ Berton

You might want to look at Mailwasher Pro http://www.firetrust.com/

Have been using Mailwasher for more than ten years now. SPAM emails are no problem, mailwasher has “blacklists” and “whitelists”, and lets me see what is waiting on the server so I decide what to delete or download.

Reply | Quote

@ Berton

You might want to look at Mailwasher Pro http://www.firetrust.com/

Have been using Mailwasher for more than ten years now. SPAM emails are no problem, mailwasher has “blacklists” and “whitelists”, and lets me see what is waiting on the server so I decide what to delete or download.

+1 for Mailwasher. Definitely the easiest in my opinion. Spam never leaves the server and restores for mistaken deletes are easy in the newer version. Long time user.

Reply | Quote

You might want to look at Mailwasher Pro…

I used the original MailWasher for years and tried Pro when it came out but found it offered no improvements that interested me but added some things I didn’t care for. There is still a free version of MailWasher, by the way.

Lately, I’ve been looking around for something even simpler for a new computer. One thing I have been trying is PopTrayU. For a free SourceForge program, it’s not bad, but it has too many quirks for me to really like it that much.

Still looking for a better alternative.

Reply | Quote

I have also used Mailwasher Pro for 10+ years. Excellent software out of New Zealand.

K

@ Berton

You might want to look at Mailwasher Pro http://www.firetrust.com/

Have been using Mailwasher for more than ten years now. SPAM emails are no problem, mailwasher has “blacklists” and “whitelists”, and lets me see what is waiting on the server so I decide what to delete or download.

Reply | Quote

Are the email addresses on your website? if so and if you are on a linux server you can block IP addresses for countries to stop the spam robots getting to your email address. Loads of spam robots are in Russia and China

Reply | Quote

Coincidentally, a BBC article today about spam being less than 50% of email volume for the first time in over a decade.

…you can block IP addresses for countries to stop the spam robots getting to your email address. Loads of spam robots are in Russia and China

Are you going to block the USA too, by far the largest source of spam in the world? Or the few European countries which are around the Russia/China levels?

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

Reply | Quote

Lots of spam comes from Romania, other former Soviet republics, and African countries.

Are the email addresses on your website? if so and if you are on a linux server you can block IP addresses for countries to stop the spam robots getting to your email address. Loads of spam robots are in Russia and China

Reply | Quote

No point blocking IP addresses as it’s always a manual process and management is a pain. Stick to a decent spam filter.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

My only recommendation is to move your email management to either Outlook.com or Gmail.com–they’re the two I’ve used extensively in recent years, and spam and missed genuine emails are a thing of the past.

If you have business domain name needs, you can continue to use your current host for everything else. Your host support should be willing to help you setup your email accounts on Outlook.com or Gmail.com, it’ll lighten their server load too. You need to transfer your “MX records”, if you want to read up on it–it’s a bit tricky.

Don’t bother with IP block lists, white or black lists, challenge-response systems, or server-based solutions like Spam Assassin. They were always poor blunt instruments, akin to nuking a city and then proclaiming “Another 1,500 criminals eliminated!” I say this from both sides, ie also having had to deal with them as a small-time server admin.

If you must stay away from Outlook/Gmail, then I suggest you get a good local anti-spam solution–don’t use a server one, except perhaps at its lowest setting if you must. The local should be Bayesian based so it’ll learn what’s spam and ham for your particular profile. I got PopFile up to 99.4% accuracy a decade ago, but it’s probably overkill unless you get thousands of email a day.

I can’t recommend anything current to you, since I haven’t had any spam for a few years now.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

Reply | Quote

Another +1 for Mailwasher. It deletes stuff you don’t want while it is still on the server, so it never gets downloaded to your email client. It will show you a list of all the emails waiting, and you decide if each one is good or spam. It has a “learning” feature, so that similar emails in the future will be automatically marked as good or spam, and you can set up filters based on email address, the “From” line, the Subject line, the actual contents of the email, and a number of other factors . For a known source of spam, you can set it to silently delete in the background so you never even see those emails. But it does put deleted emails in a “recycle bin”, so if something gets deleted that you really wanted, it can be retrieved. Check it out at http://www.firetrust.com/en/products/mailwasher-pro.

Reply | Quote

Another +1 for Mailwasher. It deletes stuff you don’t want while it is still on the server, so it never gets downloaded to your email client. It will show you a list of all the emails waiting, and you decide if each one is good or spam. It has a “learning” feature, so that similar emails in the future will be automatically marked as good or spam, and you can set up filters based on email address, the “From” line, the Subject line, the actual contents of the email, and a number of other factors . For a known source of spam, you can set it to silently delete in the background so you never even see those emails. But it does put deleted emails in a “recycle bin”, so if something gets deleted that you really wanted, it can be retrieved. Check it out at http://www.firetrust.com/en/products/mailwasher-pro.

I’ve used MW pretty much since it was first released and endorse the positive comments made by other posters.

However, the one option that has not been mentioned is the ability to read the message headers that you otherwise never see in email programs. I regularly get emails from unknown persons in various countries contacting me in relation to my business but many ‘unknowns’ can either be spam, malicious software and not genuine client enquiries.

They don’t always get flagged as spam, so I open up ‘Email/Preview Message’ to check, thenif I am still uncertain after that, I open ‘View Complete Header’ and look through the otherwise non-viewable data. If in doubt I record the URL, delete the incoming message without downloading then email the alleged sender and ask for more details, all of which I can read from the server.

These features make it easy to see which emails are malicious and what I call the ‘Double Dot’ hiding of a malicious executable behind a normal file is shown up in all its twisted glory. Typical examples are XYZ.pdf.zip, XYZ.doc.zip and XYZ.jpg.exe (where ‘XYZ’ is usually an innocent-looking file name).

Cross fingers, but I’ve not been caught out for some years.

Cheers

Billy

Reply | Quote

Referring back to #1, in addition to .xyz and .link I am now seeing a new Domain type, .work. These are difficult to block as every SPAM message using the extensions have a different Domain name.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

Reply | Quote

If you don’t envisage ever getting “valid” email from .xyz, .work etc, then MW Pro can “block” those domains in a single right click and “block domain” command. It would seem that MW Pro is favored here much more than the single poster so far that doesn’t like it. Recommended IMHO.

BTW I have used Firetrust support (MW Pro) several times over the years. It has always been excellent.

K

Referring back to #1, in addition to .xyz and .link I am now seeing a new Domain type, .work. These are difficult to block as every SPAM message using the extensions have a different Domain name.

Reply | Quote

Spam comes from wherever the spammer can compromise machines / persuade the ISP to let them spam. Country of origin is not relevant.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

The easiest solution for me would be to dump all incoming emails to the delete folder, then white list those you do want to the folders you like. Is there any way of doing this? I keep getting more and more junk and filtering each one is a hastle since they keep coming from new/different sources — it’s like my email address is being sold and resold continuously. The idea I would like is becaus my spam to legit is at least 2:1 or worse.

Reply | Quote

Mailwasher Pro handles whitelists, blacklists (both by domain or individual addresses). The best thing about MW Pro is that it downloads the email headers so that you can decide (and remember if you want to) what you want to do with specific emails. I use MW Pro ahead of Outlook 2013. MW Pro is set to automatically check for email. Outlook is set to NOT automatically check for email (but a Ctrl/M in Outlook brings the email in after MW Pro has “washed” the email.

K

The easiest solution for me would be to dump all incoming emails to the delete folder, then white list those you do want to the folders you like. Is there any way of doing this? I keep getting more and more junk and filtering each one is a hastle since they keep coming from new/different sources — it’s like my email address is being sold and resold continuously. The idea I would like is becaus my spam to legit is at least 2:1 or worse.

Reply | Quote

It’s time you changed email address.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote