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21 Replies
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Postedover 9 years ago

Back to Security

Getting Rid Of Porn Email!

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This post has 21 Replies |
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Posted by bluecat

on 30 Apr 2005 9:26 AM

Over the past month and a half I have been unindated with X-rated, Porn email! I have never gone to sites that would leave me open to this stuff. I've risen the level on Junk Mail but all that has done is change the color of mail that Outlook assumes is junk mail AND None of that junk mail includes this garbage. How can I stop this stuff? Someone PLEASE Help.....

Posted by mirrorshades Royalty

Royalty

on 30 Apr 2005 9:29 AM

I've been using the SpamBayes plugin for Outlook for several months now, and it works very well. It takes a bit of technical know-how to get it configured and running, but otherwise I'd recommend it to anyone.

Have a look here: http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/ (it's a free download)

Posted by bluecat

on 30 Apr 2005 9:32 AM

Thank you Mirrorshades. I'll check it out. Does it give instructions on how to load it? I'm not very technical at all.

Posted by rog Royalty

Royalty

on 30 Apr 2005 10:21 AM

bluecat, check this out. There you'll find instructions for Windows.

Posted by rog Royalty

Royalty

on 30 Apr 2005 10:22 AM

One thing you could always do is have your e-mail forwarded to your gmail account, and then pop your gmail account (Thunderbird is my preferred e-mail client).

That way, gmail would filter most (hopefully not misfilter) the spam before it hit your desktop.

Posted by donc

on 30 Apr 2005 5:39 PM

Bluecat if you operate a POP Email account, no matter what you do on your local computer you will still receive this junk. The best you can hope from a local anti-spam solution is to have Spam deleted before you read it - but it will still arive, it will still consume your bandwidth, and there is always a risk of Spam containing a viri or other nasty getting through and infecting your computer.

I am a big fan of letting my ISP deal with Spam on my behalf - Firstly most ISP's operate a commercial quality 'heavy duty' anti-spam / AV solution designed to filter hundreds-of-thousands of Emails per hour. Secondly they can offer economies of scale (because thousands of customers use the same anti-spam / AV solution it is very cheap for individual users and is often provided for free. Thirdly, your ISP will support this 24x7 on your behalf.

Have you called your ISP to explain the problem? - Chances are they can fix it for you very easily - and possibly at no charge or hassle to you.

Rgds, Don

Posted by bluecat

on 1 May 2005 8:18 AM

Rog, thank you for the info, I run on Mac so Windows won't help me. Donc, I haven't contacted them yet, but guess I'd better. When they come in it takes forever just to delete all of them. I don't always get the assistance I need from Road Runner, but I'll give it a shot.

Thanks much to all, I appreciate it.

Posted by bluecat

on 1 May 2005 8:37 AM

I run on Mac. I spoke with RR and they said they don't have a spam blocker for Mac. Said to find a third party blocker from either google search or altavista search. I find it very frustrating when providers can't seem to address Mac issues!

Posted by donc

on 1 May 2005 1:34 PM

Hi Bluecat,

Being owned by Time Warner, RR is the obvious exception to ISP's who help customers reduce Spam by deploying gateway Spam filters (draw you own conclusions as to why!) - All RR offer is anti-Spam software to load on your computer, and yes, for Windows machines only - hardly a responsible approach.

Rog's idea of fowarding mail to gmail is one way to help reduce your levels of Spam, although over the past few weeks gmail has been overloaded quite a few times so this might pose other problems...

All I can really suggest is to find a more responsible ISP... Sorry.

Don

Posted by dwelp Royalty

Royalty

on 1 May 2005 7:50 PM

One possibility is to change your email name to some thing that isn't guessable and start over.

You might try a text only email client like forte agent you might be able to leave the mail on the server and delete the spam before loading into outlook.

I know this defeats the purpose of filtering software but sometimes it is faster to scan a list than to try to get your legitimate email out of the spam filter.

Dave

Posted by mirrorshades Royalty

Royalty

on 2 May 2005 5:54 AM

I run on Mac so Windows won't help me.

The SpamBayes plugin runs on MacOS as well. http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/mac.html

I've not got it on a Mac, so I can't speak to how easy or difficult it is to install. I can say that it's not very difficult on Windows at all, so my expectation is that it would be as simple or almost as simple on Mac.

Posted by clement

on 2 May 2005 10:07 AM

You may also want to consider switching your mail client from Outlook to Thunderbird, which has a good Bayesian spam filter built in. The program is available on Mac platform. You can download it here.

Clement

Posted by themadhatter

on 2 May 2005 1:54 PM

hey dont know if this has been said, but i have had a lot of luck getting rid of porn emails in the past, i didnt see what email client you were using but if you click on the email and click properties and go through all the information you can usualy find a email or link to take your name of an email list. this information is pretty exstensive and time consuming but i have had alot of success from doing it, or you can find the source email and start spamming them :tongue; but youve probably fixed it by now just putting in my two cents good luck

Posted by tsaman

on 3 May 2005 9:57 AM

Googles' gmail.com has a great spam filter built in.

Get a gmail.com account and have all your current email forwarded to it. Then, set your Outlook client to POP from gmail.com.

I predict that 98% of the spam will never make it to your PC. If you want to filter the last little bit, consider using Thunderbird which has some decent "junk" mail features.

--mike

Michael J. Dargan Technical Services Librarian Waterloo & Cedar Falls Public Libraries

Posted by tascadmin

on 3 May 2005 10:43 AM

bluecat: what mail program do you use for Mac? Is it Outlook? I know many Mac people haven't yet attempted to use the built in Mail application but I absolutely love it. I own a 17" Powerbook and just installed Tiger over the weekend, but I've been using Mail for about 2 years now and I haven't been tempted to switch to anything else yet. The Junk Mail capabilities built-in have always proven mostly effective to me. A couple slip through here and there, but it 95% effective. In your account settings you can choose to auto-empty the Junk Mail when it's one day, one week or one month old, or even as soon as you exit Mail. Just something you may want to try. I fully recommend it to everyone. I work on computers for a living, both Mac and PC and I haven't seen anything compare yet. Mozilla Thunderbird comes very close, and I have now switched to using it instead of Outlook on PC, but for Mac I still stick with Mail.