Using just the tools in Eudora (not very complicated or sophisticated) I catch virtually all the spam I receive. On any given day, I receive something between 300 and 500 e-mails. Probably half that is spam. It takes no more than 5 minutes to check and delete.
OK, so we have looked at several approaches to spam filtering:
* Let the ISP do it for you. But you never know what they're blocking.
* Do it manually. But it's labor-intensive. And, if you're paying the labor to do it, it's expensive.
* Maintain filters on your email program (like Eudora). My experience is not as good as Burgess' in that regard. I set up and maintained filters in Eudora. The best I ever caught was about 50%- 60% of the spam. Not too bad considering, but:
- Over 70% of my email is spam.
- The filters need frequent additions.
BTW, the most productive filters (the ones that picked up the most spam) looked for the words "viagra", "penis", and "Oprah".
But there is another approach: a special-purpose spam filter that lives on your PC. All the spam would still be downloaded, but it would wind up quarantined (either in your trash folder or a spam-only folder). I use a very good one called "Spam Assassin" (scproxy is the software), which is a free download from the web. (Don't remember the site, but look it up.) It catches about 90% of the spam that hits my computer; that's MUCH better than my own Eudora filters.
When I first set it up, I directed the spam to a folder named "spam" (imaginative, ain't I?). I looked through it to see if non-spam was being caught. I ran across only two such messages in two months (Tom Wishon's promo email, and a bargain "flyer" from the one printer-ink company I actually buy from). The software allows you to override their rules, so now it doesn't block Wishon-grams or RLG flyers. After the first two months, I decided it was stable, so I directed the spam to the trash bin.
Try it. You may like it.
DaveT
