Stopping the endless spam and viruses!

All --

How are you and your organization dealing with the mountains of spam going around the Internet -- especially the most recent spate of viruses?

Are you filtering? If so, on an organization-wide level, or individually?

Do you just hit the "delete" key?

Do you report spammers ever? Is there even a point in doing so?

Are you taking steps to keep your work address off of public Web sites so it's safe from harvesters?

Check out this article on "How to Deal with Spam":
http://www.techsoup.org/howto/articlepage.cfm?ArticleId=542

I don't subscribe to garbage.

If I ever need an e-mail sent to my personal account, I use a forwarding service, like jetable.org.

SpamAssassin tags the spam; Eudora, filters it to my folder.

All in all, I get relatively little spam. This allows me the time to either call their ISP and/or report them via SpamCop.

Nice overview. Here are some thoughts:

How are you and your organization dealing with the mountains of spam going around the Internet -- especially the most recent spate of viruses?

I would actually distinguish between "spam" and "email virus". Running antivirus software with up-to-date definitions should take care of all but the most newly-released virus email. However, antivirus software will do nothing for the endless stream of mortgage, inkjet, or (ahem) "personal enhancement" ads.

Use e-mail software with built-in spam filtering features.

I would add Mozilla's Thunderbird email client to this list. The built-in Bayesian filtering, once tuned to your email, is very effective in keeping out the junk while letting the real mail through.

Having recently purchased a home, it only took a couple tries before the legitimate email with the words "mortgage" and "interest rate" made it through to my inbox. 8)

DO report spam.

You can do this, but in my opinion it really isn't worth the time and effort. It is trivial to forge much of the information in email headers -- and since a number of spam messages are sent via SMTP servers on home computers infected with viruses/trojans, often times it cannot be traced back to one ISP.


And, as Rog has indicated, the best way to get OFF junkmail lists is never to get ON them in the first place. I have been a satisfied user of Sneakemail (http://www.sneakemail.com/) for several months now -- they provide "disposable" email addresses that link to a genuine address or addresses that you provide. In this manner, you can avoid giving out your real address, but still receive messages. (They also offer 100% anonymity on outgoing messages, which is a nice bonus.)

Another "disposable email" service is SpamCon DEA (Disposable Email Address).

For spam filtering, I use Spambayes. It has an Outlook Plugin available. It can be a little difficult to setup, but it does a great job of filtering. (It puts emails into three categories: Good, Spam, and Unsure. I've only had one "good" message fall into the Spam folder since I began using it, and I suspect that was due to pilot error. :smile; )

At Shelby Residential & Vocational Services we have a little over 100 desktops. For the past several years I would monitor email looking for spam. I would add the patterns I saw to Trend Interscan eManager. Interscan also has a VirusWall that stops viruses. Well detecting and adding patterns was exhausting and hardly effective. It would catch around 450 spams per day but still other spam go thru. Every now and then it would stop important staff email. Around the first of March, 2004, the virus NetSky sneaked thru and infected 20 or so desktops. My staff and I were desparate so we downloaded the trial of Trend's Spam Solution Service. It took a substantial effort to setup but it has been everything it claimed to be. Our virus problems have become very quiet again and spam has stopped altogether. THe anti virus part of the program stop 30 to 40 infected emails per day. The Spam Solution stops 400 to 500 spams per day without any intervention on my part. Now if we can afford it....

Hi,

We're a small organization (Cat and Dog Rescue) and we've been able to keep viruses and spam to a minimum by just being very careful. We keep our antivirus program and firewall very up-to-date and NEVER open an attachment from anyone we do not really know. In fact, we can tell by the name we don't know them and never even open them. We just delete. So far, we have not been infected.

It doesn't take too much time and we're waiting to see what the Microsoft SP2 update will do to help.

A very simple and FREE (for the application downloads) way to setup a secure email gateway that will flat stop spam and viruses is to use the open source applications:

o Mailscanner http://www.mailscanner.info
o SpamAssassin http://www.spamassassin.org
o Pyzor http://pyzor.sourceforge.net
o Razor http://razor.sourceforge.net
o DCC http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc
o ClamAV http://www.clamav.net
o MailWatch http://mailwatch/sourceforge.net

You need Linux Skills to install and configure these applications but this is a great way to stop +90% of the spam and all of the viruses. It is very easy to install this type of gateway in front of an existing mail hub (read: Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, etc.)

In the spirit of "full disclosure" I must disclose:

1. Julain Field, the developer of MailScanner is a friend and the CTO of our company.

2. I run a company that provides commercial support for these applications, but you don't need to use our services to enjoy the benefits of MailScanner.

The support available on the MailScanner email support list is absolutely great. Much better that the competing commercial applications.

I currently work as volunteer for two Non-Profit groups and I will be happy to advise for no fee (assuming that I'm not overwhelmed) any Non-Profits that want to implement these excellent open source applications.

steve@fsl.com

This actually does help ...
Use the Direct Marketing Association's e-mail opt out program www.dmaconsumers.org/consumers/optoutform_emps.shtml
you can also decrease your junk mail and telemarketing using this site too. www.dmaconsumers.org

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We are a small non-profit with 15 computers and a server, running WIN2000 and Exchange. Our spam was getting unmanagable so we ordered and installed Symantec Mail Security for MS Exchange 4.0. This program is very hard to set up and configure. Our software consultant even has a hard time. Unfortunately, Symantec does not offer product support for software from Techsoup, so we muddle through and get about 3/4 of our spam identified.

We also have Norton Anti-Virus Corporate Edition. Between the two programs no viruses have gotton through.