Can anyone really stop spam 100%?

[goodone]

I've tried so many different ways to stop spam that I'm just about ready to give up!! I'm so fed up with spam that each time when I create a new email address I try not to give it out to anyone I don't know. Even when I don't give my email address to anyone I don't know, I still do recieve unknown emails from unknown persons.

What precautions do you take against spam? What's the best way to avoid spam? Is there anyone here who is not affected by spam?

[paul]

Use munged email address that will appear like this; username@ hotmail.com

Why use it?

Most of the spambots program crawl around the web to search email address embedded in web page, when they find your email address through their bots as username@hotmail.com your email address are being sold or circulated to unscrupulous spammers those looking for email add to send spam, if you will use username@ hotmail.com it will minimize the chances of your email address being harvested around web.

[Cassie]

He didn't say it was in a webpage - I had hundreds of versions of email addresses peppered throughout my websites - mistake I now know. I am now trying to consolidate them. I use a Javascript to hid them now but I am sure that is old hat and easily broken.

However many spammers just guess a few names and send them out - most likely using a name generator or something. So you will NEVER be 100% spam free. And once your domain name is out there - forget it - spam city !!

I use a program called Mailwasher so I can check all my emails without actually opening them or downloading them, and delete those which are spam (or just unwanted !!) It does have a bounce facility but I don't use it as most of the reply email addresses are fake anyway.

I think you just have to accept it and not let it stress you - or you just might send yourself M A D D D D D D D

ps - just checked my freeserve email address and have 2786 emails in my Spam Box - I only cleared it last week !!

[kev woodman]

Afraid Cassie is right - it's just one of those facts of life. My Gmail account tend to be very good at spotting spam and my othre emails redirect to it so I pretty much just quickly check my spam box once o week for false positives and then junk everything.

[paul]

Originally Posted by kev woodman

Afraid Cassie is right - it's just one of those facts of life. My Gmail account tend to be very good at spotting spam and my othre emails redirect to it so I pretty much just quickly check my spam box once o week for false positives and then junk everything.

Yes, also what I said that could be one of the reason how email address get propogated, I replied to OP assuming he has a site or he might be using email address in his signature in forums etc.

[Falesh]

Something to filter emails is a good idea. I use Opera's email client which has a spam filter that redirects to a spam box. Like kev woodman says it only takes a few seconds to check for rare false positives then junk the rest.

[paul]

Originally Posted by Falesh

Something to filter emails is a good idea. I use Opera's email client which has a spam filter that redirects to a spam box. Like kev woodman says it only takes a few seconds to check for rare false positives then junk the rest.

Especially gmail filter is worsening, my 15 emails marked as spam by gmail those were my regular mails as per my mailing list. Few spammers even use text embedded images and easily bypass the gmail filters that appear in my inbox instead of spam box.

[Falesh]

Originally Posted by Paul

text embedded images and easily bypass the gmail filters that appear in my inbox instead of spam box.

That's odd, Opera catches all the image only ones.

[kev woodman]

Yeah and I can't remember the last time I had a piece of spam get through my Gmail filters. If anything I would have said that the filter has improved.

[Administrator]

Most of the spammers initiate dictionary attack on your domain name in which it keeps on making thousands of permutations and keeps sending emails on those email addresses expecting at least few to get delivered.

Most common email addresses are sales@, billing@, support@, postmater@, webmaster@, tim, andy, james, john, paul, lol

their program receives delivery report for the email address to which email was successfully delivered and then it generates a database of genuine email addresses.

They sell this database to all online marketing companies and thats when you start getting all those medical advice spams.

[paul]

That I was not aware about dictionary attack, thanks for bringing it to my knowledge.

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by paul

That I was not aware about dictionary attack, thanks for bringing it to my knowledge.

Online marketing world is quite huge and this is not the only thing they do. They spend a lot in researching exploits for mass injection on websites and many more things to trap Millions of visitors.