Have I ever told you how much I hate sounding like an advertisement? Well, it’s true. I do. But I also recall way, waaaaayyyyyy back when I was new to the online community. (Can you say 300 baud modem? I knew you could.) I had no idea what worked, so I probably spent a quarter of my student loans buying and trying computer crap that was about as useful as those dual 8-inch floppies that served as my operating system and file storage.
But I digress.
So, here we are in 2005 and I am regularly inundanted with email asking for my opinion about computer crap. Yeah, I’ve tried lots of it. Yeah, I’ve ditched 90% of everything I’ve tried. Most of the stuff I buy has to do with protecting my system from idiots who have nothing better to do with their time than work on ways to get at my “private” information… as if I didn’t know how to report fraudulent credit card charges, change my account numbers, and consider myself smart for forgetting to tell my husband what the new ones are.
Hmm. I think I digressed again.
The point is, I’ve been trying a new spam filter and, after 30 days, I have to recommend it. Now, when I say that I’ve been “trying” it, you have to keep in mind that I now get well over 700 emails each day, at least 400 of which are spam. No matter what I do — encrypting posted email links, sending unaddressed or incorrectly addressed emails to :blackhole:, using whatevername@NOSPAMmydomain.com — nothing has worked quite right.
For a while, I used a challenge-and-response system recommended by a friend. The only problem? My system’s “challenge” was treated as spam by the spam filters that other folks are using, which meant that our mutual emails were getting lost in the ether! Talk about sucking voids.
Then I spent a year using MailWasher, which didn’t stop the spam from coming in but at least highlighted it to warn me so I wouldn’t waste time reading it. But I still had to click hundreds of annoying checkboxes each day and, ultimately, I found that a pain in the ass. The two months we spent in a rental condo using DSL that wouldn’t accept my MailWasher settings prompted me to search for a different solution.
I found it in Outlook Spam Filter, and I loooooove it. Yeah, I know: there are plenty of you who’ll say Outlook sucks. To which I reply: bullshit. I find it the most convenient time- and contact-management program out there, and I love how easily it syncs with my PDA and cell phone.
Curiously, those who like to say that Outlook sucks seem to think so solely because it’s been so heavily exploited by spammers and code kiddies sending malicious virii through email. Which begs the question: if you can circumvent the spammers and virii, does Outlook no longer suck? Cuz that’s what Outlook Spam Filter does, and I’ve watched my InBox burden plummet down to a meager 140 messages per day. For me, that’s a relief.
So, please accept my apologies if I sound like an advertisement, but I love telling people about crap that works. It’s such a change for me since, like most computer users, I’ve come to expect just the opposite from software programs these days.
Monday, January 31st, 2005, 4:59 am | 
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January 31, 2005 at 9:01 am
Very oddly I get little or no spam – except on my old yahoo account which I rarely look at anymore. I know my boss does though and I will pass this along to him. Thanks for the review!
January 31, 2005 at 10:36 am
I’m not quite as popular as you are. I only get a few hundred a day and use Choice Mail as a filter. It has has a free version. For the real deal try http://www.projecthoneypot.org for a way to help rid us of email harvesters. By the way you did not respnd to my email for help.
January 31, 2005 at 11:57 am
I’ve been using SpamBayes for quite some time and it is an excellent filter. The description of Outlook Spam Filter looks very similar to SpamBayes. They’re both bayesian filters that plug into Outlook. A bonus with SpamBayes is that it’s free.
January 31, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Nice. The reason I don’t like Outlook though is because it is a resource hog. I’m sure it has many cool features, but it burdens my system when I’m travelling. For simple Spam protection, Gmail gets it right 98% of the time – just tosses all suspected Spam into my Spam file for review (if I want to)
January 31, 2005 at 3:49 pm
I’ve been using Cloudmark SpamNet (now, er, “SafetyBar”, I think) for a while now.
It’s not free (thre’s a small monthly charge – I got in early so mine’s like $1.95 a month or something piddling like that), but by God it works, since there’s a zillion people using it and helping configure the spam recogniser system collaboratively.
January 31, 2005 at 11:33 pm
In addition to having the same email address since years before modern informational hygene requirements were thought necessary, I’m also a former Usenet moderator, and I’m postmaster@, hostmaster@, webmaster@, support@, service@, abuse@, and root@ about 80 of my clients’ domains. In consequence, even after RBL filtering, my server accepts something in the neighborhood of 40,000 spams per day for me. I see maybe 5 or 6 show up in my actual mailbox on a bad day.
SpamAssassin. It’s The Way(tm).
February 1, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Ill second the spam bayes. It takes about a week to get it going well and
I also narrowed down the range of what what might not be spam. It sits
between your email program and the actual server. Requires some clue but
you need not be a total geek to get it working.
Also, if you ever get a new email address – the hell with your friends. Make
it a random letter # combo. This will cut a lot of the dictionary based
spam attacks down.
As for comment spam, if you use Pivot, check out Pivot-Blacklist. Talk
about a life saver.
February 4, 2005 at 1:59 am
After years of Outlook at work, too many years, I’ve capitulated and use it at home. It’s got all the tools, got all the managment. Finishing setting up myaccounts to forward to GMail for a repository/focal point, then POP3 from that down to my PC with Outlook. It flat works. Outlook’s updated frequently, and is well supported by 3rd parties. The overhead? Yeah, but the next MB upgrade will be to a dual AMD – you want the features, pay the price in hardware. Efficiency’s not a high priority among software vendors these days.
February 4, 2005 at 2:17 am
BTW, 300 baud and 8-inch floppies? Sherry, the “baudy” lady from Racal-Milgo? Can you say CP/M? Z80′s in Apple II slots? A whole *huge* 64K? Donated some of that, 8″ FDD’s ‘n all, to a university effin computer museum. My life as museum material. Sigh.