Spam is an ever increasing problem and unfortunately, something which isn’t going to stop for a very long time.
There are certain measures that you can take to help eradicate the spam that reaches your inbox and here are just a few that I can recommend.
Be proactive
If you do get spam e-mails, don’t click unsubscribe links or enter your email address into any web-pages that say they’ll remove your address. These are normally places that confirm your email address exists and you’re likely to get more spam by following the links.
3rd party
You can employ a third party to filter your e-mails for you. If you have your own web-hosting and use a domain name to send and receive your e-mails, you can see what options your web-host has to help protect your e-mails.
I employ a system called MailScanner here, which does a good job of finding and tagging e-mails coming into the server. As an example, 75% of e-mails coming into my server are spam and are tagged that way.
Many hosting providers and ISP’s give you basic spam filtering options which are relatively easy to setup and use.
Software
You can install additional software on your PC or Mac, which can aid in the detection of spam.
Theses pieces of software are primarily for use if you use Outlook or similar program to download your e-mails.
POPFile
POPFile is an easy to install, small piece of software for windows based computers. Once installed you change a couple of settings inside Outlook to filter e-mails through POPFile. If any spam e-mails do get through, you have an easy to use interface which enables you to tag an e-mail as spam. This trains the software into learning which e-mails are spam and good.
Cost: £free
URL: http://popfile.sourceforge.net
SpamSieve
SpamSieve is very similar to POPFile, but orientated to the Mac OS X operating system. A little bit easier to use and configure compared to POPFile, it does exactly the same. Change one setting in OS X Mail and you’re away. Tagging e-mails as good and spam is far easier as you can do it via the OS X Mail interface, instead of through a seperate interface.
Cost: $30
URL: http://c-command.com/spamsieve
[tags]internet, software, spam, email[/tags]
