Yesterday, I heard that version 2.0 of the Thunderbird email client had been released, so I decided to check it out. I would have switched a while back except for one annoying problem -- I prefer the two-paned view with a separate window for reading messages, which works great in Thunderbird except that when I...
[read more]

I recently signed up for a test drive of BidFuel.com (which I cancelled during the free period--it didn't look useful enough). Since then, I've started receiving spam at the email address I gave them--an email address I created uniquely for them. No one else has ever seen that email address. I recommend not signing up...
[read more]

Yesterday, in response to an article by Marc Orchant that I read in More Space: Nine Antidotes to Complacency in Business, I overhauled my email filing structure. Most of the old structure is still there (maybe when I get a faster computer, I'll be satisfied to use search tools rather than filing to find messages,...
[read more]

I had the idea yesterday that a standardized protocol could be created the enable email clients to interact with whitelist-based SPAM blocking software. Given the complexity of identifying SPAM by textual analysis, whitelist-based SPAM protection appears to be getting more popular. I plan to start using it myself with some of my email addresses in...
[read more]

AOL and Yahoo! are implementing a new system which will guarantee a free ride past their spam filters for senders who pay something in the neighborhood of a penny for each email they send. As long as they don't alter their spam filters in ways that generate more false positives to try to force people...
[read more]

Ugh! Not this again! Tim Bray appears to be in favor of a scheme for reducing spam by having people pay a little bit for each bit of content they send or post that they want getting past the spam filters of the future. ongoing - Internet Stamps. Since such a system would require some...
[read more]

With all the efforts we go through to stop spam and to convince people not to respond to it, the fact that we still get so much proves that it must be working for somebody. Why does it work, and how can we try to stop it?

Even though only a tiny, tiny percentage of...
[read more]

Wired News: FTC Would Kill the Messenger: "Home computer users who unwittingly send out spam e-mail should be disconnected from the internet until their machines are fixed, the Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday."

Yeah! Let's hope that zombies used for purposes other than spamming are cleaned up at the same time!

"The FTC said...
[read more]

One quick tip for getting the maximum value from your mail client's SPAM filter. Once you've got it configured or trained so that it's not getting many if any false positives, be sure to have it automatically file new SPAM messages in their own folder rather than leaving them tagged as SPAM, but sitting in...
[read more]

I just had an entertaining daydream about a way to strike back at spammers. Of course, there are a lot of details between a daydream and effective execution. Behold the mythical Smeagol spam filter.

The idea was born when I recieved a spam message titled "Personals: do you want to meet boys?" To which my...
[read more]