Get your free Mailshell anti-spam software Wed. 12/5.

Tomorrow, Wed. 12/5, your nonprofit can take advantage of getting free Mailshell anti-spam software from TechSoup Stock as part of TechSoup's "Stop Spam Now" campaign. You can register your organization to take advantage of this 1-day deal. You can also download TechSoup's spam prevention toolkit, which has a number of useful articles, tips, and techniques for stopping spam. Be sure to also check out this TechSoup blog entry that shows an artist who has made hand-lettered paintings based on spam one-liners. My favorite painting is "the answer to your question is yes!"--I always wonder how spammers know what my question was before I even ask it. :wink;

What spam-fighting tool or tip have you found to be most effective? Let us know here.

--Megan

Hello, Megan,

That's an interesting question. Besides the usual spam filters, etc for our designated email addresses I tried a new approach of configuring the catch-all email to point to a specific email account. That specific account was then configured to issue an auto response while forwarding the message to the trash.
In the auto-response I began by stating that the message was auto generated by our system and do not reply, then it informed the sender to confirm the spelling of the intended recipient's address as the address they sent to did not exist. It further informed that if they are receiving several of the auto responders then their computer or server might be compromised. This did result in a resort in West Virginia contacting us to confirm their mail server was compromised and being strengthened, and a business client of an associate of our Society sending thanks when her machine was cleaned from a mass mailing worm.

On the downside, this method could mistakenly target our site as spammers so I employ it only when there's a surge in attempts to spam multi-addresses. Hope this helps someone.

Talk to you later,

James

Thanks, James, that's a good tip. I agree that for implementing this measure you'd need to weigh the pros of halting multi-address spamming attempts versus possibly having your site targetted as a spammer.

Best,

Megan