Spam - Are you getting enough?

[Site]

Analysis of more than 500 million junk messages found that addresses that began with an A, M, S, R or P were likely to receive 40 per cent of their mail from spammers.

The coincidence is these spell S P A M R - Interesting

Those starting with letters such as Q, Z and Y, by contrast, would receive less than a fifth of their mail as spam.

Richard Clayton, a computer scientist at Cambridge University who carried out the study, said he believed the difference could be explained by the first set of letters being more likely to appear at the start of names than the second set.

This is because people behind junk emails carry out so-called "dictionary" attacks in which they attempt to guess new addresses by taking the prefix of an existing address and placing it in front of alternative net domain names, such as hotmail.com or yahoo.co.uk

The research looked at 550 million email messages sent to customers of the Demon Internet service between 1 February and 27 March this year.

Dr Clayton, who presented his findings at a conference on email and anti-spam in Mountain View, California last month, concluded: "Measuring incoming email has shown that the first letter of email addresses makes a difference to the proportion of incoming spam."

He said the results could help in the development of anti-spam measures.

[akp982]

You learn something new every day

[paul]

So it is just to blame the name, Right?

[Brian]

I think Richard Clayton is under qualified for his job and fears losing it. Therefore he came up with a BS excuse as to why we get spam thus giving him a years extension on his contract. His next study I believe, is why the letter t looks like a t. Very interesting apparently.

[paul]

Well, just curious to know how much Richard Clayton himself getting spams per day? Because the first letter of his name is already on the radar.

[WelshTom]

It's surprising what a decent spam filter can do, I have really strong spam filters, no spam has reached my inbox in about a year now, it has all gone to the junk folder, but yes, my junk folder can receive up to 50 messages a day on each mailbox

[paul]

Originally Posted by WelshTom

It's surprising what a decent spam filter can do, I have really strong spam filters, no spam has reached my inbox in about a year now, it has all gone to the junk folder, but yes, my junk folder can receive up to 50 messages a day on each mailbox

Thomas, can you suggest me an effective spam filter for outlook?

[DPS Computing]

Originally Posted by paul

Thomas, can you suggest me an effective spam filter for outlook?

Thunderbird! (whoops! ).

[paul]

David, thanks for the suggestion.

[DPS Computing]

Originally Posted by paul

David, thanks for the suggestion.

Its OK. Obviously I know its not exactly what your looking for but if your willing to change email client I think you might find Thunderbird to be a little better and more effective. Give it a try and see if you like it .

[cranzi]

What about those people who are using Outlook for business related things (as in, for my work that is my only option). We have an awesome barracuda server setup for filters but it seems new ones still hit the inbox each day.

[_Chris_]

Originally Posted by WelshTom

It's surprising what a decent spam filter can do, I have really strong spam filters, no spam has reached my inbox in about a year now, it has all gone to the junk folder, but yes, my junk folder can receive up to 50 messages a day on each mailbox

Hi Tom,

Are you referring to filters at server level, or your pc level please ?

Am looking for very effective filters at server level, so that the cxxp never even gets near me !

Chris.

[paul]

A New technology is underway which will identify spam before even it hits the mail server. To filter spam at its entry point seems could be more effective although I hope spamassasin is already doing that.
"Junk mail can now be identified based on a single packet of data": technologyreview.com/communications/23086/

[_Chris_]

Originally Posted by paul

A New technology is underway which will identify spam before even it hits the mail server. To filter spam at its entry point seems could be more effective although I hope spamassasin is already doing that.
"Junk mail can now be identified based on a single packet of data": technologyreview.com/communications/23086/

Thanks Paul, interesting read there. Hopefully, things will get better in time Although I don't think it's necessarily a good idea for webhosts to filter our email for us ;-(

[DPS Computing]

Originally Posted by _Chris_

Thanks Paul, interesting read there. Hopefully, things will get better in time Although I don't think it's necessarily a good idea for webhosts to filter our email for us ;-(

For more experienced users obviously its more preferable to filter your own e-mail but I know many people which arn't fully aware of spam filters and they get frustrated having to read 200 spams to 1 genuine e-mail.

[_Chris_]

Originally Posted by DPS Computing

For more experienced users obviously its more preferable to filter your own e-mail but I know many people which arn't fully aware of spam filters and they get frustrated having to read 200 spams to 1 genuine e-mail.

Yep, for the more inexperienced people that's ok, but quite a lot of people are not in that category.

[DPS Computing]

Originally Posted by _Chris_

Yep, for the more inexperienced people that's ok, but quite a lot of people are not in that category.

Indeed, more people are becoming technically more aware and obviously for these people its better to give them control .

[paul]

Spam filter usually work nice but there is still hard part to recognize the common attributes.

[DPS Computing]

Originally Posted by paul

Spam filter usually work nice but there is still hard part to recognize the common attributes.

Yeah, I've got to say that once you get SpamAssassin configured it works very well - I don't know how I managed before without it!