Larry wrote:
I'm a newbie here, but not having seen mention of them, you folks should be
aware of a few programs which will help. Pop3ScanMail and MailWasher will
allow you to delete these on your server without first having to download
them. I use MailWasher Pro which allows blacklisting, whitelisting and
filters to help you automate these tasks. I'm using a filter for Swen
which is about 99% effective. Saves a LOT of time.


I've been using the freeware version of Mailwasher for nearly a
year...just leave it running in the background all the time. Someone on
a sailnet list I'm on put me onto it, and it's cut the amount of spam I
ever actually see down from over 100/day to less than 5. It also deletes
mail--and also bounces anything blacklisted back to the spammer as
undeliverable mail directly from my ISP's mail server. It takes a little
tweaking about once a week to keep the blacklist up to date, but I love
it! Also has filters that allow me to screen and delete before
downloading any posts that don't interest me on the e-mail lists I'm on.
Once in a while it's a little overprotective and bounces a legitmate
email--for instance, I've included a wildcard expression on the
blacklist to delete any mail with *free* in the return address, so it
thought an email from a friend who's last name is Freeman was spam and
bounced it. But when I found out, all it took to fix it was adding his
email address to the "friends" list.

Fwiw, just munging an email address slightly (i.e.
@msndotREMOVE THIS.com...or tomATaol.com
etc) won't defeat spammers' harvesting software...they have other
software that cleans it up. That's why I use clue in
it as to my real address. It was working here...I wasn't getting any
spam till I made the mistake of joining a game site called jackpot.com
that ignores opt out requests and has software that knows how to collect
the address from everyone that even closes popups. Within 24 hours after
joining, my spam went from -0- to 50 to over 100 a day and increasing daily.

Check out mailwasher...I think you'll like it. It's at
http://www.mailwasher.net


Peggie
----------
Peggie Hall
Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987
Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and
Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor"
http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html