Best Spam Blockers

It is estimated that 50% of the data traffic on the Internet and more than 80% of the email going through Internet Service Providers (ISPs), corporate and college mail servers are unsolicited messages for products - spam.

Techies started to call unsolicited and untargeted email spam due to an old Monty Python skit where the British jokesters repeated the word ad-nausea and even sang about it. It is a nice analogy for something that clogs our inboxes and wastes our time.

There are three ways to get rid of spam using software or services:

ISP Spam Filters

The easiest way is to filter it out through your Internet Service Provider, who can keep on top of spammers ever-changing tactics. Log onto your ISP's Web site user interface and look for their email settings. Activate the spam filters and frequently check your filtered messages to see if mailing lists and friends who "Carbon Copy" or CC you on email have messages that end up in this box. If so, then add them to your "white list" which should let future messages from those email addresses come through.

Your Internet provider's blacklisting software downloads a current list of known spammers domain names and compares messages received in your mailbox to these known bad guys. I do not like this method as some mailing lists that you legitimately subscribe to could be marked as spam because of overzealous programmers or people who have a vendetta against the mailing list owner. This could make you miss emails that you really intended to receive.

If you are an AOL user and do not want to change your screen and email name, then look for better filtering software by using the keywords "Marketing Preferences" to access an area of AOL where you can turn off electronic, email and even telephone messaging on your account. There are several methods that AOL can use to contact you, so make sure you click on all the pages to turn these annoying delivery options off.

Google Gmail

My favorite way to filter spam is to send all of my davemathews.com domain email to Google's Gmail service. Those boys at Google are software geniuses who have figured out how to look at a message and determine its likelihood of being spam. They investigate the messages on a message-by-message basis and do not aggregate it like black-list software.

The algorithm learns quickly and only falsely sends legitimate messages to my spam folder occasionally. There is currently no fee for this service but getting a gmail.com address is not that easy since they are in a trial mode that requires you to be invited from a friend who is a member. Other web-based email providers such as Yahoo! and HotMail offer junk email protection, although my experience has shown that it does not work as well, but you can look for their filters and settings on those sites.

If you use POP email, which is typical for ISPs and college campuses, your best bet is to install a program that takes a "first look" at your email inbox while it is on the server, before your email client pulls it down to your computer. A favorite program that I have used is called G-Lock SpamCombat. This free program logs into your account and pulls messages from your email server then flags them as potential spam or good email.

Third-Party Services

My least favorite method of spam prevention is through third-party services, which send an email back to the sending party asking you to click on a link and authenticate yourself before they deliver the message to the intended recipient. This method will not work for "robots" that send you confirmation for airline tickets, hotels or even updates of your eBay auctions.

Since no method of spam prevention gives you 100% positive results, you will frequently need to check your filtered messages folder to ensure that email you actually want to read is not getting accidentally dumped in there. Finally, because of the cat and mouse game between spammers and those of us that filter it, occasionally a few spam messages get past the filters. Thankfully your delete key is a quick way to blast them, or look for a "Report Messages as Spam" or "Junk Mail" button in your email client.

It is going to be a long time before all spammers are stopped, but the first court cases are putting the biggest offenders away and charging them with huge fines. This will scare many spammers off but the small and nimble ones will persist for as long as email exists.

"Gadget Guy" Dave Mathews has been sending email since 300 baud modems ruled the world and remembers when the Internet was seen in black and white and had no spam. More of Dave's stories can be found on his website at DaveMathews.com.

© 2008, Young Money Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

Are You a Spammer?

Did you know that you could be a spammer, too? Don't reply to messages with just a "Thanks!" or "OK!" Nobody wants to waste time deleting those messages.

Steps to eliminate spam:

1. Don't sign up for free offers with your primary email address - use a secondary one you can cancel once it gets "clogged."
2. Do not post your real email address on a web page - post a graphical image of it or spell out your.address at your.domain dot com since "robots" can't collect those easily.
3. Look for junk filtering options from your Web mail or Internet provider
4. Use a "Pre-popper" to delete your spam before your mail client even gets it - I recommend G-Lock SpamCombat.
5. Try a mail client like Outlook that will provide junk filtering automatically.
6. Use the U.S. Post office "snail mail!" Just kidding. They have junk mail, too.

• Email This
• • Stumble It!
• • Digg
• • Share on Facebook
• • Save to Delicious

Comments