Solution to stop spam in your inbox permanently

[jammin]

As many of you know, most e-mail systems have some sort of spam filtering software that checks incoming mail to some type of database to determine whether it’s a legitimate e-mail or spam. Regardless of how "great" these software are, they are not fool proof and spam sometimes does still get through to ones inbox versus going directly to the bulk folder as it should.


Earthlink has somewhat addressed the issue with its customers with an Earthlink e-mail address. When a non-Earthlink customer sends an e-mail to an Earthlink customer, the spam filtering software on Earthlink's end compares the incoming sender's e-mail address with the addresses in the Earthlink receipients e-mail address book. If there is a match, the e-mail goes directly to the recepients "Inbox". If there is no match, the e-mail goes into the "bulk folder" which is considered spam.

I absolutely love this idea of no more spam in my inbox and I wish Yahoo and other e-mail providers would institute this or give its customers an option to do this.. Since I rearly get e-mail from people not in my e-mail address book, 100% of those mail would go into my bulk folder for review before I delete them or add them to my blocked address list.

The only downside I see to this is that for example here on Jamaicans.com, where sometimes people e-mail us based on the e-mail address in our profile, that e-mail would automatically go to the "bulk" folder as not being recognized as a legitimate person sending us an e-mail.

What are you thoughts on this or how do we best fight spam.?

[Rebycman]

Re: Solution to stop spam in your inbox permanently

Actually this is my current site project that I'm working on. I see so many ads for Internet access and programs that do a myriad of tasks from speeding up your Internet connection to indexing your hard drive. What I don't see is a real solution to take control of your inbox. Users spend thousands of dollars annually to upgrade computers, get faster Internet access, and update virus protection but often don't spend any money to protect e-mail accounts.

I have configured my mail portal to require a few things before any mail hits your inbox.

1) PTR/Reverse DNS required (any mail server without PTR is usually a on a dynamic IP, an infected zombie, or just isnt setup properly to send mail on the net. In any event we don't want these emails so all mail from them is rejected.)
2) RBL check against all incomming mail (I use 4 Relay Black List's). RBL's are a service anti-spam foundations offer netizens for free. Its a database of known spammers, which we compare against all incomming mail. If we find a match we terminate the connection.
3) Virus Scans - just delete all virus
4) Blocked attachemnts - deletes most known file types used to infect pc's. (24 types from exe to scripts)
5) Content Filters (scans emails for banned words and holds any mail with at least 4 banned words. The user can auto-release the email if I mistakenly held it as spam. These emails are also flagged SPAM so they can be filtered by most email clients to a spam folder instead of the inbox)
6) Agressive banning of spamming domains and IP's. Any abuse of my systems = ban. No muss no fuss.
7) Sender Policy Framework (SPF) check for phishers.


ISP's don't care what email they deliver most the time, any mail with your name on it is dropped into your mailbox. This is why email is such a popular vector to infect pc's with virus. I setup my own mail server to protect myself and in the process I've picked up a lot of clients that are tired of spam and not having control over their inbox.

Its a balance act between blocking as much spam as possible without blocking valid emails. Its not a perfect solution but I have beat down my personal email spam levels from over 300 a day to less than 2. Works for me.

I'm not soliciting or offering any services here. I am just explaining what I feel is the minimum required safeguards on an email server to actually protect users.

-Reby