I must say one good thing about WSJ and spam, in that their tech columnist
Walter Mossberg suggested a very good spamfilter that has made my Net life.
Don't mean to diverge, but since spam is a problem to everyone these days I
thought the suggestion might be useful:
The program is Spamkiller (www.spamkiller.com) which can be downloaded off
their website. It may take a week or so to "fine-tune" to your preferences,
but the filters work like this:
1) Anyone in my Outlook addressbook is cleared, regardless of content.
Similar for Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.
2) Anything coming from a specified domain is cleared, regardless of
content. Here I put companies I do business with.
3) Anything coming from non-spamming top-level domains .gov, .mil, .edu,
.org is cleared, regardless of content. That includes granting agencies,
students, and the USMA list. This is a specific preference I set up.
4) The rest are screened for obvious phrasing ("viagra", "porn", "make money
fast", "accept credit cards", etc, with those containg such phrasing going
into a separate killfile. The phrasing definitions are extensive, with
updates available on their website.
Once a day I check subject lines and senders in the killfile, and then
delete en masse.
Alternatively since the program only downloads spam, while leaving legimate
mail on the server, I just let it run 24/7 on a high-speed daytime
connection while downloading legitimate mail at home or on my laptop. The
chance that something legitimate gets caught is extremely remote, and can
wait until I inspect the killfile.
The program isn't perfect but it helps a lot. I note Spamkiller has
recently been acquired by McAfee, so maybe spamfiltering will soon be
intergrated with the standard Anti-Virus suites.
Let's hope!
Nat
>
>
> (From: Nat Hager, > Subject: [USMA:19622] RE: European Union regulations)
>
> Off topic, but did all of you also read in the WSJ article that
> it supports
> the use of spam and cookies that spy out what you are doing on
> the Internet?
> WSJ opposes proposed EU regulations against spam.
> As far as I am concerned, decent companies do not spam, do not send junk
> faxes and do not engage in outbound telemarketing. The position the WSJ
> takes in this regard is deplorable, as it is on many other issues, metric
> included. The success of Le Pen in France caused WSJ Europe to
> print a very
> vicious commentary against the EU.
> And the WSJ's comment on road safety, in this case about 'bull bars' and
> accidents with pedestrians is disgusting. It looks as if more
> deaths on the
> roads are not a big deal to them.
>
> Han
> Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: U.S. Metric Association
> Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 12:47 PM
> Subject: [USMA:19664] Re: About the mailing list
>
>
> In a message dated 2002-04-25 22:07:57 Eastern Daylight Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
>
>
> Is the bit that says '[USMA:19624]' essential? It prevents me doing a
> meaningful 'sort by subject'.
>
>
> That, plus similar things on other lists, helps us detect and delete the
> spam more easily.
>
> cm
>
>
>
