The song went signs, signs, everywhere signs, I think it was in the late 60’s or early 70,s, but in 2013, the song would be rewritten..
Spam, spam everywhere spam
It doesn’t seem to matter what I do, I am faced with an ever growing inbox full of emails from people and companies I’ve never heard, never will hear of, and never want to hear from again.
As with many useless things in life, I just don’t get it? I only ever delete the emails, and I assume so does everyone else, so why do spammers continue to spam me? Some people must visit the links within the emails, otherwise why do spammers, keep on keeping on?
Top spammers that do my head in..
- Background Checks – Find out all the secrets on your neighbors, friends, or spouse
- Seduce Any Woman – How To Get the Women You Desire Into Bed
- Sgt. Scott Orlando Us Army – Us Army Responding To Treatment.Can I Entrust $10,000,000.00 Us Dollars in your care?
- Paralegal Studies – Take paralegal courses or earn your paralegal certification online
- Valentine Discount – Bid on amazing brand name liquidations now
- Life Insurance Choices – $10/Month for 250k Life Policy
- eHarmony Specials – Valentine’s Day Weekend Only – Communicate at No Cost on eHarmony
- Lowermybills.com – President reduces Amount-homeowners-Owe – Curious how much you-could-save
- Online Education Degrees Guide – Find an online education program to suit your needs
- Saffron Slim – Start Melting Your Fat Away Naturally – 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
- Zbiddy Auctions – Bid on amazing brand name liquidations now
- Different Senders – Order Tracking
And the above list does not include the emails we have already identified and blocked as spam..
- Your Telstra Email Bill – 2197717691098 = Telstra is not our ISP
- Jetstar = wouldn’t fly with them on principle
- Vodafone = we do have an account with them but not to the email address they keep sending mail to*
- Qantas Telephone Sales Australia = never flown with them
- Woolworths Supermarkets – Customer (dis) Satisfaction Survey
- Australian Taxation Office = we have an accountant meaning ATO emails go straight to them
- Canadian Pharmacy – Pharmacy Store : Viagra* + Cialis !
- Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) = yes we bank with them but dont use this email address
- 21st Century Education = oh dear!
- Coffee Bean Extract = now these spammers really do our heads in! Thousands of them!
and there are thousands more.
How can we (we being everyday people on the net) guard ourselves against these unwanted, idiots who clog up our inboxes with spam?
* I do laugh at the number of ways they think of spelling VIAGRA.. there are hundreds. Mind you, I don’t mind spammers suggesting I need a bigger willy, its when they think I need bigger breasts that makes me angry.
This morning…
- Inbox: 84 emails = 80 spam!
- Junk E-mail folder = 4049 spam emails
- AVG Virus Vault = 34 emails
- Deleted Items = 3913 emails (many straight there through alerts and rules)
My delete key is just about worn out.
Message rules and block sender is a waste of time because they just use a different sender, user, email or subject.
So, what is the answer?
How To Stop Spam
We use anti-virus software (AVG) which is great but it is not helping much with spam. We have a couple of hundred Message Rules to deal with common senders and subject lines, but the reality is, the more rules we create, the more ingenius the spammers become.
I tried googling the question: how to stop spam emails
Stopping Spam Software
It was no surprise to find there is software that does the job of filtering and managing email including spam. In the search I did above, a couple of programs popped up, but if there are two, then logic tells me there are likely to be 22, so I found a Software Comparison page.
It is unfortunate that spam and junk email is cluttering up everyone’s email inbox. Spam filter software can assist a user in managing these unwanted solicitations. With a spam blocker in place, users can spend more time reading valid email instead of wasting time manually filtering unwanted email messages.
At the time of review (2013) our top three spam blockers are SPAMfighter Pro, Cloudmark DesktopOne Pro and MailWasher Pro.
When I started this morning, I had not intended doing much more than commencing my fight against spam by learning ways to combat it. After researching the topic, it became clear to me that while I can stem the tide, me alone and a few setting changes were not going to do much or save me much time. Unfortunately, spammers figure new ways of getting around settings, and we see the same message we just blocked but from another sender.
2022 Update
We sacked SPAMFighter (removed review and updates) and replaced it with SpamBully
Source: Spam, spam everywhere spam!