[Mac Write]

I have had my .Mac/iTools e-mail address since an hour after iTools was announced. I love using iSync, Bookmarks (when they work), and my excellent short e-mail address @mac.com. My problem is though, I get loads of spam (use it as my contact for my domains). I also use it to signup for e-commerce and forums. The problem is in the last year spam has gotten out of control on this address.

Apple really needs to offer a client/server side solution (like server side filtering/whitelisting etc). Until Apple does that (like discard e-mail with spam score of 5+, only allow English e-mail and so on). What can I do other then continually train Mail.app to declare it spam? 90% of my .Mac e-mail is now spam! I don't want to give up a excellent e-mail address.

At least on my VPS for all my domain e-mail I use SpamAssasin and it deletes mail with a score over 5 at present.

[moonmonkey]

They need to do something about this on the server side, Mail apps filtering used to be good but it now fails to catch a lot of things.

[Madrag]

there are services that will check the incoming emails for spam, but I've never used these, and also I don't trust an "outsider" looking at my emails...

[RAILhead]

SpamSeive. End of discussion.

http://c-command.com/spamsieve

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by RAILhead

SpamSeive. End of discussion.
http://c-command.com/spamsieve

Not server-sided.

Can you forward emails from your .Mac address to another address ?

I've had very good experience with SpamAssassin, server-sided on my IMAP account.

http://spamassassin.apache.org/

-t

[Mac Write]

I have been thinking about forwarding to my domain e-mail and as for SA it's not that perfect, it's only one piece of the Spam fighting system.

[Hawkeye_a]

I was about to start a topic on this subject as well.

It has just started for me (had the account since iTools was introduced).

Im getting "stock tips" for various ISPs in europe for soeme reason, and there's no "get me off this F*cking list* link........ .mac detects their junk just fine. but i dont want to constantly get em.

[veryniceguy2002]

Well I only have very few spam with my .Mac email address (once a month or so) until about a week or so ago, which I start receive 2-3 per day. All those spams are text in a graphical attachment (no ASCII or HTML in it), so none of the server side spam filter recognise it based on keyword score etc.

I use Mozilla and Thunderbird, and it start recognising those are spam after I marked a few of them as spam and learnt it pretty quickly. Now any server side software can recognise those graphic based spam??

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Im getting "stock tips" for various ISPs in europe for soeme reason, and there's no "get me off this F*cking list* link........ .mac detects their junk just fine. but i dont want to constantly get em.

Following the "unsubscribe me" links only proves to them that your email address is active and being looked at by a human, causing them to sell it further as a "hot" address. In other words: NEVER, EVER reply to spam in any fashion.

tooki

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by Mac Write

I have had my .Mac/iTools e-mail address since an hour after iTools was announced. I love using iSync, Bookmarks (when they work), and my excellent short e-mail address @mac.com. My problem is though, I get loads of spam (use it as my contact for my domains). I also use it to signup for e-commerce and forums. The problem is in the last year spam has gotten out of control on this address.

Apple really needs to offer a client/server side solution (like server side filtering/whitelisting etc). Until Apple does that (like discard e-mail with spam score of 5+, only allow English e-mail and so on). What can I do other then continually train Mail.app to declare it spam? 90% of my .Mac e-mail is now spam! I don't want to give up a excellent e-mail address.

At least on my VPS for all my domain e-mail I use SpamAssasin and it deletes mail with a score over 5 at present.

Now you see why I guard my .mac address (my primary e-mail) very closely.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Mac Write

I have been thinking about forwarding to my domain e-mail and as for SA it's not that perfect, it's only one piece of the Spam fighting system.

True, but trained and maintained well, SA can be a very powerful tool.
Should be definitely better than your .Mac spam filter...

-t

[sabrejim]

Originally Posted by tooki

Following the "unsubscribe me" links only proves to them that your email address is active and being looked at by a human, causing them to sell it further as a "hot" address. In other words: NEVER, EVER reply to spam in any fashion.

tooki

Whenever following those links I've had a definite reduction in spam. Although I tend to not get the "typical" enlargement , drug, nigerian scam mails that people moan about.

[Big Mac]

The answer is simple - do not sign up with dodgy companies on an email account you care about. I have had my iTools/.Mac account for a long time as well, but since I only give it to close friends and reputable companies I have absolutely no spam issue.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by kaze0

Whenever following those links I've had a definite reduction in spam. Although I tend to not get the "typical" enlargement , drug, nigerian scam mails that people moan about.

No, can't be.

By definition, spam is UNSOLICITED. That also means they don't care if you want it or not.

The stuff that you unsubscribed is most likely stuff that you directly or indirectly subscribed to. Sometimes, w/o your knowledge, but still. As long as you can unsubscribe it, it's not really spam, IMO.

Real spam doesn't give a sh!t. Real spam will use those unsubscribe links as tooki explained it.

-t

[TheMosco]

This is what I do. I have 3 email accounts and a gmail account. I forward everything to my gmail account. All my email is in one place and can be accessed from any computer. Not only that, you can make it so when it sends your email from gmail, it looks like it was sent from your mac.com address. I try and keep my gmail account secret.

[Dark Helmet]

Originally Posted by moonmonkey

They need to do something about this on the server side, Mail apps filtering used to be good but it now fails to catch a lot of things.

Exactly, always checked my .Mac email online and there is zero spam filtering. It got so useless I canned it and got an almost equally short gmail account for free instead.

[Rumor]

I have 8 active email accounts. If I have to sign up for something that seems iffy, I use one of my Spam accounts.

[higuy83]

Originally Posted by verniceguy2002

Well I only have very few spam with my .Mac email address (once a month or so) until about a week or so ago, which I start receive 2-3 per day. All those spams are text in a graphical attachment (no ASCII or HTML in it), so none of the server side spam filter recognise it based on keyword score etc.

I use Mozilla and Thunderbird, and it start recognising those are spam after I marked a few of them as spam and learnt it pretty quickly. Now any server side software can recognise those graphic based spam??

I have been getting these same spam emails all of the sudden, too. LIke others here, I've had iTools/.Mac since the beginning, and can't believe that I'm becoming a target of this strain of spam all of the sudden.

How can one stop this image-attachment spam from coming into Mail.app? Just out of curiosity, how many others are getting this same type of spam lately (besides myself and verniceguy2002)?

[Corpse of Chewbacca]

i use thunderbird for my email client. it's beautiful at catching spam.

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally Posted by Corpse of Chewbacca

i use thunderbird for my email client. it's beautiful at catching spam.

Yes, thunderbird and Mozilla can catch those image attachment spam after training it for a few times... but it's very annoying that it keeps coming (and they are personally address to my .Mac address!), because it does occupy my a fair bit of my email account space (size of each spam ranging from 15k to 56k).

Is there a way to tell Apple to boost up their .Mac server side spam filter?

[sabrejim]

Yeah, so I post here and then get 2 spams this morning within 20 mins of eachother.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by kaze0

Yeah, so I post here and then get 2 spams this morning within 20 mins of eachother.

-t

[Dark Helmet]

The only way to deal with spam is not to get it in the first place. Do not enter any contests or use it to sign up for any forums or online ordering. get a hotmail account for that.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

The only way to deal with spam is not to get it in the first place. Do not enter any contests or use it to sign up for any forums or online ordering. get a hotmail account for that.

I disagree.

Even email addresses that you keep strictly for personal communication can leak, if you have idiots that pass them on in chain letters, showing all addresses in To:, not BCC:.

In my experience, every email address will be compromised at some point. I own my own domain, having my email address be [email protected]. I do not ever want to change that, so I am ok with spam as long as my filtering beats it well enough.

Right now, my server-sided Spamassassin setup (on Dreamhost) gets less than 99.5% false positives and negatives, which is good enough for me.

-t

[Dark Helmet]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

I disagree.-t

Well my main email address is 6 years old and i get maybe 1 spam a day. ONE.

By gmail is 1 year old and I only use if for forums/contests etc and I get about 10 Spams a day.

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

I disagree.

Even email addresses that you keep strictly for personal communication can leak, if you have idiots that pass them on in chain letters, showing all addresses in To:, not BCC:.

In my experience, every email address will be compromised at some point. I own my own domain, having my email address be [email protected]. I do not ever want to change that, so I am ok with spam as long as my filtering beats it well enough.

Right now, my server-sided Spamassassin setup (on Dreamhost) gets less than 99.5% false positives and negatives, which is good enough for me.

-t

I agree with what_the_heck said.

I have an email address (actually it's an email alias) which I never use for communication, never used for sign up anything, not even mentioned in my signature block (don't ask me why I got that email alias at first ), yet I do receive a fair amount of spam on that email address until the alias provider upgraded their spam guard server software.

As far as I know some spammer just randomly (may be not-so-randomly) generate possible username combinations and spam it...

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

Well my main email address is 6 years old and i get maybe 1 spam a day. ONE.

Without any spam filtering, even from the provider ?

Amazing, actually, almost effing unbelievable. If you could sell that recipe, you'd be rich.
And please don't tell me "Just be careful with who you give your addi to." I wish it was that simple.

-t

[Dark Helmet]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

Without any spam filtering, even from the provider ?

Amazing, actually, almost effing unbelievable. If you could sell that recipe, you'd be rich.
And please don't tell me "Just be careful with who you give your addi to." I wish it was that simple.

-t

Yep, I get ONE a day and that one gets caught by filters.

I showed my friend how to forward stuff without the headers, don't go on any mailing lists and also ask people not to send me evites and other crap.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

I showed my friend how to forward stuff without the headers, don't go on any mailing lists and also ask people not to send me evites and other crap.

Well, yeah, if I had only ONE friend, I guess I'd be safe, too

-t

[Dark Helmet]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

Well, yeah, if I had only ONE friend, I guess I'd be safe, too

-t

OMG you're so funny. How you come up with such brilliant, original material?


I am sorry my methods work for me and you seem to be mad at me for it

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

OMG you're so funny. How you come up with such brilliant, original material?

Props go to that SWF, who doesn't know the difference between singular and plural.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

I am sorry my methods work for me and you seem to be mad at me for it

Well, the difference might be that I have FEMALE friends. All advice to them is irrelevant

-t

[sabrejim]

Crazy crazy crazy. I have all my mail sent to GMAIL accounts which I then have automatically forwarded to my phones email account. I've never given the phone email out, don't use it for anything else, it's not in any reply to fields. But the day I made my first post here I started getting spam to the phone email. I thought it was my main mail account that was getting the spam, but lo and behold, it wasnt. How wierd is that.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by kaze0

How wierd is that.

Bad karma ?

-t