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'R.D.D.'
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pam Filtration for the Masses (Free!)
I was getting hundreds of junk emails every day and finding only 1 in a 100
that were actually useful to me. It was taking forever to sort through the mess.
So I got mad. I no longer need offers for bigger, longer, or lighter body parts.
I don't want insurance quotes, nor online gambling nor pornography offers.
I did some research and decided to try out a few of the new free email
filtration sites out there. If one or two valid emails get bounced back to the
sender - so be it .. that will be the price of my new found spam-free freedom.
My situation. I recently changed ISP, so no one out there really knows
my actual new email address. However, I also have maintained this website
for the past seven years, and most of my email, along with all the junk,
is forwarded via this site .. eg. rdavies@ssdirect.com,
upgradepc@ssdirect.com, and everything-else@ssdirect.com
all getting passed back on to me at my current real pop email account. I also
maintain a free email forwarding service at ssdirect@canada.com
and a free hotmail account at ssdirect@hotmail.com.
Attempt 1: How it was supposed to work. I signed up for a free account
with www.tmicha.net and www.despammed.com.
The website info looked promising. Any email send via my new rdavies@tmicha.net
or ssdirect@despammed.com accounts
was to automatically get filtered, analyzed, and passed back to me at my real
pop email account, if spam-free, or back to the sender if otherwise. So, I set
my email forwarding on my ssdirect.com and canada.com accounts to route through
these new tmicha.net or despammed.com accounts. Simple? So I first thought.
- email addressed to me@ssdirect.com is
mailed out
- my ISP at ssdirect.com forwards the email to rdavies@tmicha.net
- the tmicha.net service filters junk email and bounces it back to sender,
valid email is forwarded to my real pop email account
- Spammers get there email back - or it gets lost on the net.
- I receive valid emails in my real pop email account.
The problem with www.tmicha.net. They sent me an email a day after
starting to use the service saying that I am a spammer because my junk email was
hitting their system - and my account was cancelled. Hmm. Me no spam nobody.
That is what the service was supposed to do, eh. So, the www.tmicha.net
site was useless to me. Ditto for www.despammed.com
.. I never ever actually heard a peep from them after registration, nor did I
ever get any filtered email via this 'service'. Garbage, garbage, garbage.
I realized I needed to search further.
Attempt 2: Success! with POPFile. I then found some cool free
open-source software .. the POPFile project ( http://popfile.sourceforge.net
) to manage the SPAM problem. POPFile is a POP3 application proxy that contains
a Bayesian text classification engine and a web configuration interface which
allows you train the program over time to accurately classify received email
messages received. In English, that means it is a program that detects junk
email for you.
Email is analyzed in to 'bucket' categories you set up. In my case, I set up
a [family], [work], and [junk] bucket. Email arrives in your regular email
program just as before, but now with a [tag] in the subject line indicating the
'bucket' classification determined by POPFile. If you feel the program has made
a mistake, go to the History section of the administration
page and click on the desired 'bucket' classification. This information is
used to better classify future emails. You can also set up your favorite email
program to route classified email into desired locations (like the trash bin).
The result: It's cool. And it works. I am getting very little junk
email anymore. Can you just hear the deafening silence. Ahhh. Stay tuned - or
send me an email
.. it's getting lonely over here .. ha!
Attempt 3: Another winner - MailWasher.net. I recently found another
neat (and free) program called MailWasher running on a client's computer. It
looked like an updated windows version of my old favorite SpamBuster. Sooo,
I download the latest version from http://www.mailwasher.net/download.
Installation was a snap and it works with both Hotmail and POP3 email accounts.
You run it before running your regular email program. It gets a list of the
email headers and flags potential spam and other junk. You can easily flag
emails for deletion, bounce them back to sender, or blacklist them. Just double
click to view the message text .. without image or bug infected attachments. It
is a nice option, but I like POPFile better. Why? MailWasher is good .. but it
makes me have to think and work too hard. I get tons of junk email and I have to
put my thinking cap on and flag all those junk emails. However, after my part is
done, MailWasher does make the deletion of those flagged emails very easy.
POPFile on the other hand, has the brains to categorize and flag the messages
for me and my automatic email filters flush the categorized emails into the
appropriate slots for me.
Recommendation: For me I settled on using POPFile. It requires a bit
of technical expertise to set up, but once it is set up it just runs in the
background, is very easy to use, and categorizes my emails with excellent
accuracy. Others of you may be perfectly happy with the MailWasher program,
especially if your spam levels are not extreme. MailWasher provides an intuitive
interface and has some neat email processing features.
Be cool!
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