Fighting SPAM Email

There are two basic approaches to dealing with the spam you already receive. One is to filter spam from real email using filtering software. The other is a fairly new technique called challenge/response.

Filtering spam. Most email clients such as Outlook allow you to set up rules for filtering spam. I used this approach for a while but I found that I had to continually add new rules as spammers became more clever with their messages. I also couldn't catch more than 50% - 60% of the spam coming into my account. There was also the danger of filtering out a real email. The next step is to purchase spam filtering software that will work with your email client and do a better job at catching spam. I used to use a filter called "I Hate Spam" from Sunbelt Software. It was only around $20 and it worked pretty well. It caught probably 95% of my spam emails and placed them in a "quarantine" folder. This allowed me to check the folder if I was concerned that a real email ended up in there (which did happen from time to time). The software allowed me to add "friends" and "enemies" to my spam filter so that emails from friends would always pass through and email from enemies would always go straight to the trash. The nice thing about using a product like "I Hate Spam" is that the software is constantly updated and learns how to recognize spam by gathering data from all the people who are using the tool. The only down side I found to using filters is that there will always be a certain percentage of email that slips through since the spammers constantly adapt their techniques to get around the filters, and the filters are always playing catch up. For me 5% failure was still 15 to 20 spam emails a day getting through.

Challenge/Response. This is a fairly new approach to contending with spam. I began using it a few months ago. The basic idea is to make the sender of an email prove that they are a real person before delivering their email to your inbox. This is accomplished by holding the email in a pending folder while a response is sent to them asking them to verify their email by typing in a series of numbers. Most spam is sent out by automated systems to thousands or millions of recipients. These spam systems would not pay attention to a challenge email and could not read the series of numbers because they are displayed as a graphic. The spam email remains in the pending folder for a period of time and since it does not get confirmed, it gets deleted. A human sender however would get the reply and can type in the numbers confirming their email and it is then released form the pending folder and goes into the inbox. This confirmation process only has to happen once for each sender because once they confirm, their address is automatically added to the accepted email list. You can add any email addresses you want to this accepted list and they will not be asked to confirm their email; it will go straight through.

This approach is almost 100% effective in keeping spam out of your inbox. The only spam I still receive is from email campaigns that are small enough that the sender might manually go through the challenge response when they get the automated reply. Usually these email, while unsolicited are at least real business offers that I can either ignore or add to my do not accept list and not receive again. It also protects me from losing email that might get filtered by a spam filter since it's up to a person to confirm themselves, not up to an algorithm to decide what to accept. I also have the option of looking through my pending folder to see if there is any real email that has not been confirmed yet. If I see it I can manually move it from the pending folder to my inbox and that recipient is automatically confirmed.

The downside of this approach is that I do not get my email instantly. My service checks my POP email box every half an hour. I can make it check whenever I want by manually clicking a "Check" button but if I don't do this I won't receive my email until the server checks 30 minutes later. Email is also delayed when sent from a person not already in my email list. They need to confirm themselves before I get the email. Sometimes someone might send and email and then shut down their computer. They might not get the challenge until the next time they log on. My pending folder gives a sender two weeks to respond to the challenge so it would be unlikely that the email would not eventually go through, but the delay is a downside. Of course, if I sift through my pending folder, I can often find such cases and move them myself.

Finally, there is a limitation when receiving automated emails that you want such as receipts and order confirmation from online purchases or email newsletters. Such emails are sent from servers and will not recognize the challenge. In these cases you need to use special email addresses that are pre-set to be approved. My service allows me to create up to 5 "trackers" that provide this capability.

[NOTE: Mailblocks went out of business and I'm back to depending on spam filters again - oh well]



I Hate Spam, Sunbelt Software (www.sunbeltsoftware.com) - $19.95 (30 day free trial)

I've used "I Hate Spam," so I feel comfortable recommending it. The rest of the items listed below come from Consumer Reports rankings of spam filters.

Spam Alert, Norton Systems

SpamKiller, McAfee (us.mcafee.com) - $39.95



Spamarrest - www.spamarrest.com - $34.95 per year