email Spam help

H

Harvey

Registered
Hello everyone, the spam filter built in with Mail hasn't been enough to stop spam getting through my account recently.

Is there anything to enhance it's spam catching capabilities?

Expecially the Spam in which the entire body of the email is a graphic, my spam filter seems to miss every time...

Any help appreciated!
 
It's a continuing fight. Spammers invent new ways around spam filters. I guess Apple will try and improve the spam-filters they're using in the next (big) update to Mail.app (i.e. with Mac OS X 10.5).

You could move to white-listing. That's what I've done. I have quite an extensive list of rules in Mail.app, which move incoming mails to specific folders. Everything else does _not_ go to my inbox, but rather the spambox. Which I only occasionally scan manually to see whether my rather harsh filtering wasted something important. (I guess my harshest filter there is that one of my "good" e-mail addresses must be present in the "to" or "cc" field. If a mail does not come from a known sender - covered by other rules - and I'm only in the "bcc" field, I don't get to see the message.)
 
I forward email from an account plagued with spam images to Gmail and then retrieve it from Google with Apple's Mail, thereby using Google's spam filters. This has worked very well for me with image ads for penny stocks.

Some details: Mail sent to minckster -at- isp.net forwards to minckster -at- gmail.com, goes through Google's spam filters, and is then retrieved by Mail. Within Mail, a rule moves email with a "To" address of minckster -at- isp.net from the Gmail account to the isp.net account. Moving the email to the original account sets up the correct return email address (minckster -at- isp.net) on any replies I write to emails. Of course, "Include when automatically checking for new mail" is unchecked in Mail's settings for the isp.net account. (The example uses fake email addresses.)

I use a preference setting from my ISP to forward all email to Gmail. I think one could also use Gmail to retrieve POP3 email.
 
minckster said:
I forward email from an account plagued with spam images to Gmail and then retrieve it from Google with Apple's Mail, thereby using Google's spam filters. This has worked very well for me with image ads for penny stocks.
Click to expand...
I have found this to work very well too. Google seem to have very finely tuned filters.

An alternative is SpamSieve, a pretty good Bayesian spam filter. You have to train it, but I found it better than other similar products.

P.S. Email Protector from Jim Tucek is a good way of hiding your email address on web pages (using a simple free Javascript).
 
Eeeeesh I'm getting pounded by penny stock image spam like an animal these days... I can't believe Apple's mail program spam filter can't handle it... I'm going to give the gmail filter a try!
 
Harvey said:
Eeeeesh I'm getting pounded by penny stock image spam like an animal these days...
Click to expand...

There's been a big surge in that junk.

I heard a story on NPR about it. The markets are basically illiquid with no buying activity so they pump out the spam to get at least a few buyers into the stock then they dump their holdings while there is at least a little activity. Then the thing goes illiquid again and the new buyers can't sell their stuff. Rinse and repeat with a different piece of cr*p stock.

They can make 5% - 6% in that very narrow window of activity.
 
That sucks.

I wish the Mail spam filter was as tough as the estuff I use for my Webblog, WordPress. Akismet and Spam Karma rock.
 
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