How Do I Stop SPAM E-Mails?

squinney- You must be on the same E Mail list that I am. I get the same sort of stuff as you do on my Outlook Express. (The Nigerian scams are on my Yahoo account). I don't know what to tell you. I block the offending E Mail, but that really does not help, as the spammers change names frequently.

If I get a phishing letter, if I am in the mood, I will inform the real company that nefarious mailings are going out under their name. Once I got a nice E Mail in return from the company thanking me for the information. The other times I got no response, which kind of dampened my desire to be helpful in this area.

You can't stop spam. The best you can currently do is try to limit the impact.

Make sure your operating system, E-mail program, and antivirus program all have current updates if you are going to use the preview feature.

i have mcafee "total protection" and it seems to do a good job , but also seems to slow things down a bit .
my e-mail comes through my server's system rather than directly ; they seem to be able to remove a lot of chaff .
hbg

Crikey! I was hoping there was an easy solution.

I've tried sending them back and get an undeliverable mail message.

Jerks! What makes them think I want their lousy P*H*A*R*M*A*C*Y crap to lose weigh*t or that I want to last L*O*N*G*E*R?

We need a national spam relief law like the no call law.

I have had good luck with Spam filtering.

My email program (I use thuderbird from Mozilla but others do the same) has a Spam button. When I push the spam button, the offending email not only get's sent to the Junk folder, but the program also learns from my selection-- it has a little artificial intelligence (Bayesian filtering is the mathematical technique) that learns what patterns exist in email that I consider spam.

This software gets pretty good after a week or so of learning. Now, I simply need to check the "Junk" folder once in a while (to make sure no one I like got filtered) but the spam filter is almost always right.

According to CNN 9/10ths of all e-mail messages are spam.

Some things help - sorta, anyhow, some of the time - but the only way to come even close stopping spam is via whitelist; allow into your inbox only mail from senders you specifically have pre-approved. And even that isn't foolproof - its quite possible an approved address could be spoofed or hijacked.

I asked what a white list is on another thread to no avail.

Is it the same thing as your address list on, say, yahoo?

How can you tell if you are only getting email listed on your white list?

I ask because I'm getting some email but not others, including from a2k, and it is very weird. I've only gotten one bulk mail item in a month, and while my spam mail has been much less since I left my email provider via my telephone company server in California, I've still had at least some. I suspect I have some emails that I want to see going to Outer Space. (Also, some of the emails I'm not getting are from people on my Yahoo address list.)

Is that why you haven't been answering my emails, Timber? I was starting to take it personally.

Osso,

What email program or website are you using. The way white lists or filtering work depends on how you are reading your email.

here is what the top of my e-mail inbox shows :

Delete | Undelete | Blacklist | Whitelist

it allows me to decide what to do with incoming e-mail messages .
hbg

Yahoo.com, ebrown.

I just checked (I have an old email account I don't use any more). It appears that Yahoo doesn't support a white list.

Do you have the Yahoo SpamGaurd thing turned on? This supposedly filters spam into your Junk folder.

You might have better luck if you have your own email account and can use an email client. This would let you manage your own tools-- but it would cost a couple of bucks each month and be a little harder to set up.

I am sorry, I don't have any better advice-- except that my setup seems to work pretty well.

osso, a whitelist isn't the same as your addressbook, contacts list, or "freinds" list; its a list of specific individual senders you've selected from whom to receive eMail - all eMails not from whitelisted addresses`automatically goes to some other folder than your primary inbox. That folder or folders can be anything you care for them to be - go diectly to trash, go to the junkmail folder, go to <whatever> mail folder, even "bounce", or return-to-sender-as-undeliverable, as you choose and set up. Webmail, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail, for instance, while permitting some filtering, generally does not allow for the precision filtering available through an email client such as Outlook (my choice), Outlook Express, Thunderbird, MacMail, or the like. Still, even with your choice, Yahoo, you can set a filter which will pass to your primary inbox only emails from senders you specifically have pre-approved ... its just a little tricky-fiddley to do.

Mine is Outlook / or Outlook express - whatever came with Windows XP Pro. But with over 1500 residents, plus vendors, developers, boss, ad agency, etc. I couldn't possibly set up a whitelist.

Guess I just have to keep deleting.

Outlook Express, right-click the message (with the message closed) and select Create Rule. Follow directions. Click Apply at the end. Then, under Tools>Rules and Alerts, choose the Email Rules tab, select Run Rules Now, then check off the rules you want to run and click Run Now. You can also, if you don't want to write a rule, right-click an unopened message and select Junk Email, then follow the directions for whichever option you prefer.

For Outlook, I forget (it's Outlook at my office, I can check today), but it's probably similar.

This is what I do -- it's a combo of blacklist, whitelist and greylist, plus use all help afforded and keep a throwaway address or 2 for orders and such, plus never use preview, and it almost doesn't matter which type of system you use. Here's how it all works:

1. Blacklist -- known spammers, known evil words in the title of spam (e. g. mortgage), those are all on the junk mail list or a rule is written to cover them.
   
2. Whitelist -- everyone I know and love gets their address listed as a safe sender. This may take a while but it assures that, in case they mess up and put a verboten word in the title of an email, that their mail has a fighting chance of getting to me.
   
3. Greylist -- this isn't an official term, this is my own term, for people who don't fit into either of the above 2 categories. These folks I check and then categorize accordingly. There shouldn't be too many messages that go on the greylist at any one time. These are also false positives (stuff tagged as spam that isn't) and false negatives (stuff not tagged as spam that is). Those should also diminish as time goes on.
   
4. Use all help afforded -- if your ISP or email provider affords a spam guard or filter, use it, and help it learn by reporting things as spam or not spam. If your ISP or provider doesn't have this feature, use SpamCop or the like and help them learn what is and isn't spam. A lot of this is fuzzy logic which is why spammers keep misspelling the name of their product or throwing a line or two out of some long-lost novel into their notes. They are trying to fool the machines. Humans are still smarter so we need to help out the machines.
   
5. Keep a throwaway address or 2 for orders and such -- you have 1 address which you give to everyone you love, and another for A2K, and another for a specialty task such as looking for a new job, and another for ordering stuff online. And never the twain shall meet. This helps a lot. If you keep your private main email address off all of these lists and don't post it online, you cut the amount of spam. Spam is never really, truly gone, because it's possible to conjure up your address with a random generator, but at least you aren't adding to the fun by your own actions. This means, yes, that you have several email accounts, but that's not so bad, and it may keep you more organized if you know that all of your online ordering is at address 1, your family stuff is on address2 and your job search is on address3.
   
6. Never, ever use preview -- your computer sends a silent message back to the sender when a message is opened, and it's possible to read that information. This tells the sender that you're a live one. Never mind the fact that you didn't really try to open the message or that Outlook (stupidly, I might add) adds a Preview Email feature as a default setting. It does not matter. What matters to the spammer is that there may be a live one behind your address. Hence, in addition to just sending out messages to randomly generated email addresses (many of which bounce, of course), spammers also sell each other lists of live email addresses. And, guess what? By opening messages, your address is on those lists.

Like I said before, spam is never truly, completely gone, unfortunately, but you can keep yourself from drowning in it and not taking over all of your time. As CNN says, it's 90% of all email. But it doesn't have to be 90% of your email.

Excellent info, Jespah. Thank you!

I had no idea using the preview would allow the spam senders to know anything.

I've already done as you suggested with the "Create Rule" and stuff. It's just that if I put in penis I also would have to put in 100 variations since they change them around.

I didn't want to have to individually deal with each one, creating rules, clicking to label as junk, etc.

That could easily take up an hour of my day.

Oh, boy. I didn't realize what I was saying could be taken out of context .

On review my screen cut off the top part and started with "Its just that if I put in penis...an hour of my day." I suddenly got this image of working in a penis factory sorting and labeling!

Silliness.

Actually, some words give you a lot of, shall we say, bang for the buck, if you write a rule for them. My 5 fave words for the blacklist rules:
* mortgage
* bling
* enlarge
* shame
* cover