puddingman
@swbell.net
| "Customize our anti-spam tools to maximize spam protection"
I go:
»my.yahoo.com
Mail
Mail Options
Spam Protection
"Customize our anti-spam tools to maximize your spam protection:"
SpamGuard Plus
I can set it on or off.
Image Blocking
?????? Not sure what they're talking about.
It's really very simple. I want/need to customize the spam filter such
that Email containing the text string "Replica Watches" are diverted
to the spam folder. I'm getting about 5 "Replica Watches" messages/day.
Too much to ask of ATT/Yahoo's facilites?
Gawd, but I hate web sites allegedly designed by single-minded marketers.
Thanks,
Puddin' |
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McSummation
Mmmm, Zeebas Are Tastee.
Premium,MVM
join:2003-08-13
Round Rock, TX | Do like a lot of us have done and use SPAM filtering in your email client. I use Thunderbird and it allows this filtering where YAHOO is horribly stupid about SPAM. |
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puddingman
@swbell.net
| said by McSummation  :Do like a lot of us have done and use SPAM filtering in your email client. I use Thunderbird and it allows this filtering where YAHOO is horribly stupid about SPAM. It makes very little sense to filter at the client level when spam can and should be filtered on the server. I don't want the garbage on my pc.
It would appear that ATT/YAHOO is horribly stupid about the needs of its customers.
P |
|
McSummation
Mmmm, Zeebas Are Tastee.
Premium,MVM
join:2003-08-13
Round Rock, TX | The server folks don't know what you consider SPAM. |
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puddingman
@swbell.net
| said by McSummation :The server folks don't know what you consider SPAM. That's silly.
For years, the industry has been developing products to identify/isolate spam. All ATT/Yahoo has to do is pick/buy a robust product (or write one).
Lest you misunderstand, it should be a product that allows the user to configure it to his/her individual needs.
Eh?
P |
|
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
| No matter which product you consider, the product doesn't know what you consider to be spam. There is no universal description of what is spam.
WRT your question:
Image Blocking
?????? Not sure what they're talking about.
A lot of spam contains links to remotely stored images. Any remote links which would be accessed by the web client should be disabled in the client, otherwise the client confirms your email address to the spammer.
SpamGuard has been working reasonably well for me, but I've also spent a lot of time on the web site, marking spam to the Inbox, and hitting the "Spam" button. Takes a long while to train the filters.
The concept that all spam should be trapped at the server is highly idealistic. Unless you are allowed to control the server; but, with upwards of 10 million users wanting to control the server, do you have any idea of what a mess that would be? The only reasonable way to control spam at the email server is to get your own email server. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that your idea of what is spam differs from mine, and SpamGuard is trying to average our ideas together.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
|
McSummation
Mmmm, Zeebas Are Tastee.
Premium,MVM
join:2003-08-13
Round Rock, TX
·AT&T Southwest
| reply to puddingman
Methinks they don't want to spend that much disk space nor processor cycles.
I've seen the results of some of the "industry standard" anti-spam crap. Like, blocking all emails that come from a specific email server IP address. AT&T has, on occasion, blocked email coming from 1&1's servers. How stupid is that? |
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puddingman
@swbell.net
| reply to NormanS
said by NormanS :No matter which product you consider, the product doesn't know what you consider to be spam. There is no universal description of what is spam. So you second the silliness.
Of course it doesn't know what I consider to be spam.
Can you possibly imagine a spam-filter product that allows the user to "teach" it spam definitions?
IF MESSAGE BODY CONTAINS "Replica Watches" THEN MESSAGE = SPAM
Please to enlighten us, kind sir:
Where are SpamGuard characteristics defined?
Where, in the "ATT/Yahoo Wonderland", can I find SpamGuard documentation that will inform me as to what it will and will-not do re spam identification/disposition??
|
|
StillLearn
Premium
join:2002-03-21
Streamwood, IL
·AT&T Midwest
edit:
October 8th, @12:15PM
| said by puddingman :
Can you possibly imagine a spam-filter product that allows the user to "teach" it spam definitions?
IF MESSAGE BODY CONTAINS "Replica Watches" THEN MESSAGE = SPAM
A lot of email POP clients can do just that, either by watching how you deal with emails (Bayesian), or with explicit filters.
The ATT/Yahoo web mail lets you mark things as spam, and I expect that info is used to help tune spam filters for the whole. Those of us using POP clients are not providing that feedback.
said by puddingman :
Please to enlighten us, kind sir:
Where are SpamGuard characteristics defined?
Where, in the "ATT/Yahoo Wonderland", can I find SpamGuard documentation that will inform me as to what it will and will-not do re spam identification/disposition??
It sounds as if you are asking for a manual that spammers would use to avoid filtering.
A feature that I find to be exceptionally effective for avoiding spam is AddressGuard. There you can have multiple addresses, and you can give different addresses to different people or groups. You can also opt to turn off spam filtering, or not, for each AddressGuard address. The emails come in to your regular mailbox, but the To field will contain the address the sender used. If the address you gave your sister starts getting spam, delete that address and give your sister the new email address that you make for her to use. You can have a different email address to use for rebates or mailing lists. You can have over a hundred such addresses. If you want more info on AddressGuard, say so.
The downside is that these are @yahoo.com addresses. Ideally, you would only give out the spam guard addresses. It is probably a bit late for that with your existing address, which will continue to work if you don't change it. But you could let the filtering continue on those addresses, and set up AddressGuard addresses that bypass filtering. This is all based on my current understanding and I could be mistaken on some portion. I do use several AddressGuard addresses without problem.
One more thing: the address that you give your domain registrar gets put into a publicly accessible database that is mined for spam. That would be a good use for an AddressGuard address. When spam becomes heavy to that address, create a new AddressGuard address, change the data with the registrar, and turn off the old address.
If you gave nobody the longish email address for the single email account that these addresses all come into, you could just delete any address that starts getting spam. Tell your sister that your email address just changed from puddingman-sis@yahoo.com to puddingman-sis2@yahoo.com. |
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| reply to puddingman
said by puddingman :said by NormanS :No matter which product you consider, the product doesn't know what you consider to be spam. There is no universal description of what is spam. So you second the silliness. If you insist it is silly, then it is silly; the truth is often silly.
Of course it doesn't know what I consider to be spam.
Can you possibly imagine a spam-filter product that allows the user to "teach" it spam definitions?
K9 and POPFile; both do just that. But you need to download the email to your computer for them to build a database to work with.
IF MESSAGE BODY CONTAINS "Replica Watches" THEN MESSAGE = SPAM
Except to the 0.05% who respond to that kind of thing.
Please to enlighten us, kind sir:
Where are SpamGuard characteristics defined?
Where, in the "ATT/Yahoo Wonderland", can I find SpamGuard documentation that will inform me as to what it will and will-not do re spam identification/disposition??
All that I know is that I spent nearly a year, checking my email first at the web site, and clicking on the "Spam" button, until SG finally started getting it almost right. Almost, because one local user gets political broadsheets, and SpamGuard can't seem to get a handle on the difference between spam and the political broadsheets.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
|
dleehend
Howdy
Premium
join:2002-03-11
Jasper, TX
·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to puddingman
said by puddingman :
Lest you misunderstand, it should be a product that allows the user to configure it to his/her individual needs. That would require a separate instance of SpamGuard for every email address on the server. Imagine what that would do for server performance.
--
Live carefully today! Tonight you may answer for your actions. |
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puddingman
@swbell.net
| reply to StillLearn
Think aobut it: there are myriad anti-spam programs out there, taking myriad approaches to filtering. Is it really practical for spammers to study specific filtering techniques of a single product like SpamGuard?
Your suggestions are much appreciated, but I have an ironclad aversion to running any ATT or Yahoo software on my desktop.
And I'm none too fond of the software that runs this forum!
Cheers,
Puddin' |
|
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| said by puddingman :
Think aobut it: there are myriad anti-spam programs out there, taking myriad approaches to filtering. Is it really practical for spammers to study specific filtering techniques of a single product like SpamGuard?
If spammers spent half as much time at honest labor as they do at figuring out how to defeat spam filters, they'd be making twice as much money as they do make. Don't underestimate their efforts.
Your suggestions are much appreciated, but I have an ironclad aversion to running any ATT or Yahoo software on my desktop.
StillLearn did not suggest any AT&T, or Yahoo! software. "AddressGuard" is not any kind of a desktop application. It is a method of creating disposable email addresses, up to 500, on the Yahoo! Mail web site.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
|
puddingman
@swbell.net
| said by NormanS :said by puddingman :
Your suggestions are much appreciated, but I have an ironclad aversion to running any ATT or Yahoo software on my desktop.
StillLearn did not suggest any AT&T, or Yahoo! software. "AddressGuard" is not any kind of a desktop application. It is a method of creating disposable email addresses, up to 500, on the Yahoo! Mail web site. Again, thanks to StillLearn , but I don't see how AddressGuard would help in my situation.
It is my primary, "real" address that I need to protect.
P |
|
NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
| If your primary email address is already in the hands of spammers, it is too late to protect it.
OTOH, AddressGuard does have certain advantages. I run my own MTA, so I have something akin to AddressGuard; the ability to create an infinite (not just 500) number of email aliases. Well, within the capacity of the software/hardware combination, anyway; more than 500, if need be.
I create an alias for every online signup I make. I created one for RedOrb ("Broder" in reverse; the game publishing affiliate of Broderbund software at one time). It was intended for information related to a couple of RedOrb games I had. After while, the email stopped coming. Then, a couple of years later, I started getting spam to that email address. I checked the RedOrb domain; it was registered to a company completely unrelated to either Broderbund, or any game publisher. I assume that the email address was sold as a RedOrb asset (despite being in my domain!) when RedOrb was bought by another enterprise.
Finally, to illustrate the beauty of running my own domain and MTA, I just set up the MTA to issue a "554" error when the RCPT includes that email address. Were it an AddressGuard email address, I'd just kill it. Either way, the sender eats bounces.
As for protecting a "primary" email address: Don't use it. You give it out to friends and family, and one of them will forward a "Joke of the Day" to 50 people, not using Bcc:, so 49 other people, whom you don't even know, will get your email address. And if just one of them is infected, your email address will fall into the hands of sleazy operators. And, once that happens to an email address in an ISP domain, you are dependent upon the domain email administrator for filtering; and he has to balance what you want with what the others want. And that leads to a cycle of spammed recipients complaining until the filters are tightened, leading to another group of users complaining about missing email, until the filters are loosened, leading to complaints about too much spam, leading to...
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
|
