How do you deal with Spam FILTERS

[leehljp]

There are lots of questions below that deal with the "concept" of setting up and checking spam filters.

Overall - How do you handle checking your spam filter for legitimate email?

•> What do you do to assure that you WILL get legitimate email that does not make it through filters but end up in Spam folders/filters?

•> How do you set up spam rules that delineates real spam from legitimate FIRST time inquiries?

•> Do you go through your spam filter box/folder daily or regularly to check for legitimate email?

•> HOW does someone new (legitmate) get into your "inbox" without being stuck in trash, spam filter or automatically deleted?

•> IF you check your spam filter . . .
a. Do you look at "From" and or "Subjects" only?
b. Do you open email to look at content?

WHY I AM ASKING:
I don't get tons of spam, perhaps 120 - 150 a day, but I do get regularly unsolicited email from first time enquirers concerning our work or needing help. I cannot afford to say, "OH, sorry, it went into my Spam or Trash Folder!"
. . . SO, I have to check my spam filter daily. 99.9% is spam, but there is legitimate first time email there 3 to 4 times a week that I cannot afford to overlook. I am very surprised to find that some people don't seem to care about any email that goes into spam folders or filters

I am also writing this in part because of aggravation from a couple of people who for weeks said that they were not getting my replies and suggesting that I was NOT replying or my account/ISP was not sending, - only to find out that my email to them was in their spam filter/folder. Are people so arrogant as to think that they don't have to check their spam filters for legitimate email? Or are they that good at setting up filters that knows "good" first time email and lets it pass through?

I have to check mine daily. My filter rarely lets a spam through to my inbox but first time inquiries usually end in the spam folder. I also have to set mine for Japanese text in both the body, headers and titles, so setting the filter is detailed.

HOW do you deal with this? If your spam filter gets it, it is gone?


Thanks for any suggestions and for letting me gripe!

[Mr__Bill]

Hate to say this, but, I think that a lot of people don't know they have a spam folder. Many are POPing their ISP inbox for their account and never go on line to look at the spam folder.

As for how do I deal with it? I use Spamgourme.com for all e-mail where the address is visible on line or may be picked up, for all places where an e-mail address is necessary to register regardless of the privacy policy and then I route all mail that mail through GMail and their spam filters grab most of the spam and rarely any real mail. Then I POP GMail and let Pegasus Mail (my client) spam filters at it again. By the time it's at my computer i'm down to about 5 a day. GMail gets about 100 and Spamgourme kills thousands.

I scan the from field for a name that I may recognize and then the subject for a topic that may be not spam and delete everything else. What is left I will open and pray....

If I am expecting something I may check GMail daily otherwise it's about once a week. I check my Pegasus Mail spam folder daily.

Bill

[cgallery]

My spam filter:

Any E-Mail that comes from known spammer IP's, or contains characteristic spam verbiage, or contains references to any web site, or includes any images, is flagged as spam.

If a flagged E-Mail contains any of the E-Mail addresses or phrases on my whitelist, it is delivered (and I can tell by looking at the header which entry/entries on the whitelist provided the exception that allowed it through).

Messages that were flagged as spam and were not passed by the whitelist are responded to by an autoresponder that explains that they looked like spam and therefor weren't delivered. The recipient (if a real person) is provided with instructions on getting it through.

Sort of a challenge/response system that allows much E-Mail from first-time writers through.

So, I never check my spam folder unless someone calls me and says, "I got a response from your spam filter, but I can't send it again cause [I'm too lazy, I don't know how, etc.]."

[sparkeyjames]

I use the Thunderbird Email client it's built in spam detection is excellent. Every now and again it puts a legit email in the junk box but this is rare. Out of the 70 or so junk mails I get daily it catches perhaps 98% and for a spam filter this is pretty good.

[cwithboat]

If I don't see someone's email and its important then they should pick up the phone and call me. If they don't have my phone number then its not important.

[leehljp]

If I don't see someone's email and its important then they should pick up the phone and call me. If they don't have my phone number then its not important.

LOL. That would normally seem to be about right, but in my case, it is kinda hard to get my number from the US Side.

The premise behind this assumption is that phones are the primary source of initial contact and are email secondary points of contact. I, and a few others have noted a subtle but distinct shift as of late - primary mode of initial contact being through email. It is quite cheaper and less invasive of critical times in many ways.

[poolhound]

First, I use an exchange server that does a pretty good job of filtering spam. The number of emails that get caught in there that shouldn is minimal.

second, I use a preset response form on my website that pre populates the subject heading so I can easily see which emails have come from my website. Spammers cant easily make use of this. As a geneal rule you should always use this type of mechansim and never publish you real email as a mailto on your website. this way the crawlers cant pick it up.

[dkerfoot]

The tip I give people is to have two e-mail addresses, one that you ONLY give to friends and family. Use the other account to sign up for things online. If you need to enter an e-mail address in any online form (including registering at BT3Central) use the Spam account. Once someone puts you on one mailing list, you are on ALL of them.

I use Small Business Server (Exchange) for my business and home. The nice thing is you can set layers of spam control. First of all, I have it checked against a "black list" to prevent the very worst from being downloaded at all. Then SBS sorts it and again deletes the very worst, but sends the marginal stuff to the junk mail box. Finally, Outlook has a look at what comes in and junks anything suspect. I'd say I get 1 or 2 spam messages in my in-box per day, 2-3 desired but commercial e-mails in my junk mail folder per week, and about 20 total spam in my junk mail box per day.

That may sound like a lot or a little, depending on what you deal with, but I receive mail to 5 different domains, two of them with "catch-all" accounts coming to me. i.e. If you send an e-mail to BigStupidJerk(at)KeyLlama(dot)com it will come to me. If I didn't have spam controls, I would literally receive thousands of spam messages a day.

The other thing I do is whenever I sign up with a vendor, I always use their name as the address: BT3Central(at)KeyLlama(dot)com That way, if I start getting spam to an address like that, I know who sold or compromised my information (and I start sending that address to a black hole).

[smorris]

My spam folder is /dev/null when it hits that it is gone forever and never seen. I'll accept some collateral damage. If it's important they should call anyway, email is not a guaranteed delivery mechanism per the RFC.

[crokett]

What Charlie said. With gmail I haven't seen spam in forever. Every few weeks I go and delete everything out of my spam folder but I never check it for things I might have missed UNLESS I've either ordered something or joined a new forum and I don't see a confirmation email. If I haven't told gmail your email address is not spam and I miss something you send unsolicited, oh well. If its important chances are you have other ways to contact me.

[leehljp]

I realize that I did not make everything real clear. What I really want to do is find a way to not MISS the one or two legitimate emails. A few addressed this issue in different ways.

Everyone is giving great tips on filtering spam but that is not a problem for me. I just do not want to miss legitimate email enquiries. I do get the idea that some do not care if they miss legitimate email. LOML is kinda like that. She feels that the computer and email are an intrusion into her life. Now the phone is another subject entirely for her!

To me and my work, email happens to be some peoples lifeline, and that is what I do not want to miss. So I wade through each one header by header and sender by sender, spending about a second or two visually scanning each.

[milanuk]

lee,

One option might be to use some sort of challenge-response validation system. In this sort of setup, any new emails go into a virtual 'sandbox' and the sender receives a response stating that they need to go to the server page (link provided in the email) and they see one of those images w/ numbers/letters that they have to type into a box to verify that a warm-blooded human being is sending the email, not a 'bot.

SpamArrest offers this service for a few dollars ($4-5) a month. I was getting between 150-300 spams per day, and turning the filters up high enough to kill *most* of it resulted in way too many 'false positives'. If you know you're getting a new automated mail (such as joining a forum, etc.) you can go in and 'authorize' emails individually, or upload your addressbook to do bulk authorization (those individuals will never even 'see' the filter as anything they send will automatically be passed through). I still get one or two spam per month, but thats about it. I go in and mark those accordingly and it seems to slow even that down.

One could argue whether its any more effective than say, Gmail which others have already forwarded. From the sounds of it, in terms of sheer spam reduction, probably not. In terms of making *sure* that new 'human' users can get ahold of you (assuming they have enough grey matter to fill out the validation form), I couldn't say. SpamArrest certainly works for me, as I'm involved w/ several clubs and organizations as a board member, representative, etc. and I get some off-the-wall contacts from people looking for one thing or another - valid emails, and part of the 'job', so I can't afford to take the chance of *not* being accessible to these folks. I would presume that something similar exists for M$ Exchange or whatever you are using for server software.

HTH,

Monte

[dkerfoot]

I realize that I did not make everything real clear. What I really want to do is find a way to not MISS the one or two legitimate emails.

I am with you - I get orders and business inquires by mail all the time. I can live with the occasional spam in my in-box, but I can't afford to miss any legitimate e-mail. That is why my system is tuned the way it is.

My "have two e-mail addresses" suggestion might work for you. Give the one address only to people that you always want to receive from. Check the spam account only when you are expecting something (like you order something and expect a shipping confirmation).

[Mr__Bill]

If you really don't want to miss a legitimate e-mail then have all spam flagged mail drop into a folder where you can run multiple searches on the text of the message looking for key words in you business lexicon. Move the hits to another folder and search on known spam words and tricks, like V*I*.... etc. move those back. In the end you will have a few false hits that have to be culled manually and perhaps the one true e-mail you should not miss.

Pegasus Mail for Windows is one e-mail application that can automate this process.

Another way is instruct your clients to use specific wordage in the subject of the e-mail, and move from the spam folder all e-mail with those words. This is a pain, but if your using a Mail to: link this can be automated.

In my opinion the challenge response system does nothing but confirm to spammers that the address is real and then piss off those who are legitimate correspondents. You would be better to just send a confirmation to all mail in the spam folder with your phone number in it and asking them to call you. A simple, Oops, this was flagged as spam and Lee will never get to see it, please call him at 1-800-555-1212. I expect that would be appreciated more than instructions on how to properly format e-mail to avoid spam filters. Of course then you have to deal with caller-ID blocked calls.

Bill on the Sunny Oregon Coast where it's raining today

[milanuk]

In my opinion the challenge response system does nothing but confirm to spammers that the address is real

Who cares? They ain't getting thru unless you think they are going to take the time to authenticate themselves just to send me an extra-special Nigerian money laundering scheme? Doesn't matter how many emails they send, I don't see 'em.

and then piss off those who are legitimate correspondents.

Again, who cares? If they get pissed off over a one-time inconvenience of 30 seconds, after which they never see anything other than regular email correspondence, well, I guess they didn't want to talk to me very bad after all, now did they