I've been geting realy sick spam and I don't know how to stop it. Please pray that I won't get anymore.

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Never Forget to Pray!

"...prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Ghost can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer. Pray for prayer---pray till you can pray; pray to be helped to pray, and give not up praying because you cannot pray, for it is when you think you cannot pray that you are most praying. Sometimes when you have no sort of comfort in your supplications, it is then that your heart---all broken and cast down---is really wrestling and truly prevailing with the Most High."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, from the pamphlet, "Effective Prayer"

Next, make a filter that checks for some of the more common dirty words in those types of porn mail and puts those kind of mail in a "spam" folder.

There are also some products that filter mail for you. If you're a programmer you probably don't want one that blocks everything at the ISP level or deletes automatically, because some legit messages can get blocked by mistake and you'd never know. My broadband ISP has that and after signing up I lost some legit mail over a few days, no way to ever know how much or get it back, until I set up another e-mail account to get around it. (What happens is that some of the anti-spam blacklists use unethical techniques to stop spammers--by affecting legit companies too so that they will put pressure on the providers to stop the spammers.)

But there are very good products that flag bad mail and you can review it to make sure it's all junk before deleting. A good one is http://spamassassin.org/ -- I don't have it on my computer, but one of my e-mail providers uses it and it's good. It's free, but for UNIX, however, there are commercial versions for Outlook and Eudora. I'm sure there are other good ones too, I don't know the names but they shouldn't be too hard to find.

To avoid spam, careful about putting your e-mail on any website where it can be picked up. (I speak from big time experience and loads of spam, since I was careless a few years ago and overwhelmed with spam on that address now!) If you are selling and promoting a product or service, and also for obtaining stuff, you need to provide an e-mail, but you can be careful which one you use.

Curry

P.S.: I hope this is uplifting to you. I can't recomend much on the technical side short of saying get a new adress. If you do go to www.safeplace.net . Their a copany supplies filtered internet and have free web mail (I think). Give it a try and see.

I'd still put friends on the whitelist in Mozilla, despite the "0 false positives" claims . . .

http://www.mozilla.org
http://www.pmail.com

A link to how Mozilla's new spam filters work:
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html

Some advice for avoiding spam:

-Do not give out your E-mail address unless you have to!

-Do not give out your E-mail address unless you have to! (repeated on purpose)

-Whenever you sign up for anything, look for boxes that allow opt-in or opt-out, and for "special offers"! They say "spam me"! This includes software installation. A lot of software (usually shareware or adware) on the Internet will have "offers" also.

-I rarely visit chatrooms. I don't know if this contributes to spam or not, but I defnitely would do everything to avoid having my E-mail listed anywhere where everybody can read it.

-Try to use anti-spambot language for your E-mail address when possible - using the word "at" instead of "@" or other ways.

-Don't send spam back or attempt to counter-flood the spammer. You'll make the situation worse. In fact, sending mail back oftem verifies your E-mail address, opening you to a flood of even more spam.

-If possible, turn off "confirm reading" in your E-mail program - many E-mail programs will confirm you've read the message, allowing another way to confirm your E-mail is legit.

-Only unsubscribe if you know the company sending you spam is legit, or you really did subscribe. (This is a grey area, since it's difficult to figure out who's a legit business/mailing list and who's a fake sometimes)

-If you really need to take drastic action, try to find the spammer's ISP and have them shut the spammer down.

-If you're only getting a small amount of spam from a single address, you can use your E-mail program's filters. Many programs can do partial matches, so if part of an E-mail address is changing, it can still be filtered.

-Pegasus Mail and some of the more powerful E-mail programs can do content filtering (filtering based on keywords in the body of the message).

-If all else fails, get a new E-mail address, and keep it under lock and key! This means family members and work-related E-mail only!

-Most of all, use common sense.

I've never had to take any of the more drastic actions, but most of this advice should be good advice. I've rarely received spam. I'm talking months without spam here.

[This message has been edited by CobraA1 (edited January 22, 2003).]

~Angel~

When you use your email address on message boards or online ordering, your email gets out as well.

There are spyder programs that scan sites for email addresses and grab your email address and puts it on a mailing list.

My friends and I made an email and all we did was send game ideas to it. The funny thing is, the email account rarely gets spam (about one every week).

I'd get a new email address, but keep your old one and use it for online ordering and messageboard stuff. If you use MSN Hotmail, messenger tells you what's coming in if you happen to be at the computer, but otherwise, just delete everything else. That's what I would do. The filters at hotmail help as well. I WAS getting 50 spams a day, now I get 8 to 12. I delete those and continue on with my life.

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Much greatness is achieved thru faith and perseverance.

[This message has been edited by BluePaladin (edited January 22, 2003).]