On 10 Jun 2009 at 6:27, dhbailey wrote: > So I turned off that spam filter at my e-mail server and do > all that triage from my e-mail client.
I would suggest that you would be better off turning that spam filter back on, but directing it to *not* move spam to a junk mail folder on the server. That way, you'd get the benefit of your ISP's spam scanning (likely using SpamAssassin, which is very, very good), but you'd still be downloading all the spams, which you could then evaluate to see if your ISP's spam filter guessed right. When it guesses wrong, you should be able to whitelist addresses using the ISP's spam configuration interface. Also, I'd suggest using an email client with built-in Bayesian spam filtering, such as Thunderbird. You do have to train it, telling it when it guesses wrong, but it's definitely worth it. I don't get more than one or two spam messages per day. This has been the case since I killed all my old email addresses (going back to 1996) that I had foolishly posted all over the place on the Internet. The new addresses I don't post anywhere except mailing lists. I do occasionally get spam on this address, but it's not high volume enough for me to kill this address (which is only a forwarder and not a real email account) and replace it with a new one. But if you have spam problems, I highly recommend starting over with new email addresses that you never post publicly, and using forwarders for all the addresses that you expose on mailing lists, on the web and in public forums like Usenet. Most domain hosts offer this kind of email management, and often for very little money (my domain host is $55/year, which includes the full website with database and PHP, as well as yearly domain registration). Most of the inexpensive domain hosts offer easy-to-use control panels that offer way more features than anyone could ever use fully. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
