Spam and Spam Filters
by Philip Bell
Hi Philip,
I have just received a message from someone at Radio One RPH extolling the virtues of a spamfighter and asking that I should install it and put him on the receiving list (the so-called "white list"). Do you know about this ?
How do they know what is Spam and what is not? I certainly get quite a few emails these days that are unsolicited and a damn nuisance but I just click on delete without even reading them. Do you think it is a good idea to install such a programme. This fellow gave me an address of www.spamfighter.com/Pro to access. Are they any good as far as you know. I'd be pleased to have your opinion on such a program before I go installing it
Hello Dorothy
Installing a spamfilter is another piece of software for you to look after, Dorothy. If spam is not worrying you particularly, why add another complication to your computing? Why change?
Here is what most of my friends in the computer club do - and what I do. But first about what different ISPs do.
Many ISPs run vigorous anti-spam policies and so stop most spam before it reaches their customers. A number of my computer club friends have chosen ISPs with such strong anti spam policies. Accordingly, they have very little problem with spam - just the odd one or two per day. They simply delete them unopened. I suspect that this may be your situation with Iinet.
Other ISPs such as the one run by the local PC Users Group computer club do not try to comprehensively block spam - acting on complaints from members that active spam blocking can itself cause a problem. There is always the possibility that legitimate email can be blocked if spam filtering is done by your ISP.
As you so rightly ask, how can you tell what is spam and what isn't. One person's spam is another person's cure for boredom. Detecting spam for "Everyperson" is a sophisticated and demanding software challenge.
So people who do not get any spam-filtering done by their ISP have to do it for themselves by doing what your friend at RPH does - put in a spam filter to help them sort out the sheep from the goats. The spam volume can be so huge that email would be difficult for them without such a filter. (For example, I heard that Bill Gates receives one million spam emails per day.)
On spam filtering, I am in a different situation altogether. I do what almost all younger people do nowadays. I don't use a traditional email program such as Outlook Express which resides on your computer. I use webmail. The major webmail providers have vigorous spam filters - and so a lot of webmail users don't have to worry about spam very much at all. Their webmail program solves the problem with their own inbuilt spam filtering. My webmail is Gmail. I have been using gmail now for over 3 years - and to my knowledge, their spam filter has never blocked a single email sent to me that was genuine - and that I would have been happy to receive.
What Gmail does is monitor mail for suspected spam - and diverts suspected spam into a separate spam mailbox which can be accessed if necessary below the "Sent mail" box. Gmail automatically deletes spam messages from the spambox as soon as they have been there for 30 days. So if you think you should have received a message and wonder if it has been diverted to the spam box, you have 30 days to look. I have never ever had to look there in 3 years.
The only spam I receive that is somewhat annoying is sent from an old schoolmate who sends me a stream of corny jokes. Fortunately, Gmail has a filter setting so that you can earmark all stuff from particular sources (or sorted on other criteria) to be sent straight to your email archive and so bypass the inbox. And to my knowledge all decent email programs have similar filter arrangements.
Regards - Philip
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