Out of Office and Spam (NB)

[zefender]

This has nothing to do with Boating I'm afraid but I know there are good ITish folk hereabouts, so here's my question:
I get (alongside squillions of others I'm sure) about 50 or so spam emails every day. On Outlook, when I go on holiday, I set my 'Out of Office' status which sends a 'once only' out of office message to inbound email. However, given that most spammers want to get hold of legitimate emails addresses, presumably by sending them an out of office message I am confirming that my email address is valid. Is there a way of preventing this, apart from setting rules so that it only goes to nominated senders?

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[pessimist]

Sadly you are quite right - you will be confirming your details to spammers. I never use automated replies for this reason. I don't use outlook so I'm not sure if you can set the rules as you suggest.

<hr width=100% size=1>A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts

 

[BrendanS]

Who is your ISP? It's possible with many to set spam filters at the server level so that the spam doesn't get as far as your inbox - and you can review later to check that nothing important has slipped through. Otherwise, consider using anti spam software to filter out the spam, then you only send automated responses to emails that are legitimate

<hr width=100% size=1>Me transmitte sursum, caledoni

 

[AJW]

Apropos to spam and not out of office specifically....

I had terrible problems with Spam. Tried Mailwasher but ended up the uncanny feeling that the freeware version actually ATTRACTs it(!). Eventually ended up changing my email address on the advice of my ISP (Virgin) from a "joe.bloggs@isp.co.ik" format to something less obviously "firstname"."surname"@isp.co.uk and have had virtually nil spam since!

AJ

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[MainlySteam]

I have a similar problem in that I have all my mail forwarded to me while away and downloading spam on gprs is a severe waste of money, or tiresome if one just downloads the headers to try and sort through.

What I do is rely on our ISP's spam filter. Some ISPs' spam filtering comes in for alot of stick but ours is extremely good. I have never known it to mark as spam a legitimate email and it only lets 1-2 a day through - sometimes when really good I may only get that many in a week. I set it to just delete all spam it identifies at the ISP's server. Every now and again I check by having it just tag spam and send it to me for checking - 100's roll in a week but never found it tag a good email.

If your ISP is as good that is the best solution, just let it delete spam at the ISP server.

If that is not a good solution in your case then responses to spam are, I would have thought, handled automatically at the spammers end - like I assume the spammer does not sit reading them all. Assuming all your desirable emailers are reasonably clever, then in your own email client's (Outlook, Outlook Express, or whatever) email account setup, where it asks you to enter the email address you want others receiving your email to respond to (not the place you put your account email address though), for while you are away change it to something nonsensical but understandable as being you to others. For example if you put "Imaway"@{whatever your ISP is} a machine at the other end will take that as the responding address and put it on the spammers list as far as I am aware. If anyone else receives it and doesn't realise it is not correct and they respond, which would be unusual in response to your holiday message, then you will not get it as it goes to a ficticious address. You can test that by doing the change to your account, and send yourself an emial then respond to that email - it will disappear into electrons somewhere.

Alternatively, you can change the address in your email account, as above, but to someones who is not on holiday and is happy to receive and hold/forward any responses should someone decide, unusually, to respond to your "I am away on holiday auto responses".

There may be better and other ways - I am interested in those too.

John

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[dralex]

I found the best solution was to change e mail address. I changed from Freeserve to Virgin Broadband and got a different e mail address. I then just informed the people I wanted and have kept close reign on the address since then. We now get no spam. Our e mail address is also not conventional.

<hr width=100% size=1>Life's too short- do it now.

 

[Andrew_Fanner]

If your email address is an alphanumeric jumble such as 1A2B3C@isp.com you are very unlikely to get robot driven spam, which makes up plausible combinations of names and isps and them sends email to those combinations. This bot based stuff accounts for a goodly amount these days.

However, before you all rush to stand me a beer for cracking the problem (yeah, right!) most antispam software includes a filter that screens out addresses that are alphanumeric jumbles, so your private email will become an irritating process of bounced or failed messages, even the possibility of a telling off from your ISP, accusing you of being a spammer. Been there, done that and reverted to forename.lastname@isp.com and commercial antispam software, McAffee which I've found very effective.

<hr width=100% size=1>Two beers please, my friend is paying.

 

[MainlySteam]

I think a problem a number of us face, and I assumed zefender too as he refers to "out of office", is that the email address is used for business and it is not a good idea to change it. It is also useful to have an address that reflects ones self and the business, and sounds kosher. Is not very heartening to clients if one is the president of Acme & Co and they find they are emailing you at, or being emailed by joe99@whereever.

But what you say, is the easy solution for non business sites.

John

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[BustinAround]

Yes outlook can do exactly what you want!

What you need to do is set up something called a "rule" rather than using the out of office thing. I'm not going to give you a tutorial here, all you need to do is read the help on it



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[Talbot]

Definitely worth getting an anti-spam filter. I use Norton Anti-Spam (came with Norton Internet Security Pro) seems to do a very good job, and very few get through the filter. It is def. time that the ISPs started filtering this rubbish themselves. having an anti-spam filter does not reduce the amount that you download, just the number that you see in the In Box.

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[ubuysa]

You could always try using the free Thunderbird email software from Mozilla, you can get it <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/>here</A>. Thunderbird looks and feels a lot like Outlook so you'll be at home pretty quickly. Where Thunderbird really scores is in it's ability to learn what you consider to be spam. You have to spend a while teaching it which emails are spam and which are not, but once it's learned what you want the vast majority of spam can be either automatically deleted or delivered to a spam folder.

I've been running Thunderbird for several months now and it detects (and saves to a spam folder) about 90% of my spam. As has been suggested elsewhere in this thread I also have "rules" set up in Thunderbird (similar to Outlooks rules) to filter emails from known senders into specific mailboxes. Everything else (that's not detected as spam) ends up in my default inbox, which is like a second-level spam folder containing emails from people I don't know.

Another plus with Thunderbird is that it's not Outlook and so isn't vulnerable to the trojan and virus attacks that use your address book to spread themselves.

Tony C.

<hr width=100% size=1>There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[zefender]

Re: Many thanks

Loads of good ideas here. Got 48 hours to try and sort out which to use! Many thanks for all your help.

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[BrendanS]

He specifically said <without> using rules, so I think you can assume there is no need for you to give a tutorial

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