I’m Drowning in Junk Mail!
In a little under 20 hours, only FOUR percent of the mail I received was actually asked for. The other 96% was SPAM.
Why not 24 hours? Why bother going for another four?
Because I was already drowning in junk mail!
I actually received into my various email boxes over six hundred email messages in the last 20 hours.
Interestingly, around 350 made their way straight into the junk mail box thanks to the junk mail filter that comes with Mail (Apple mail client). So that only left another 270 odd for me to manually delete.
Net result : only 24 new messages out of over 600 that I had some “vague” interest in that were meant for me. Do the maths… thats just a lowly 4% of mail received that was wanted!
OK.. I’ve got a few domain names with different email accounts on each one… but that’s not uncommon with someone who’s in business on the net!
What IS annoying is the TIME it takes me - every day - to weed out these extra 250 junk emails that populate my inbox.
AND EVEN MORE AMAZING… that’s what I get AFTER Spam Assassin has done its work on the mail server… so I wonder how many emails it’s killing before I even see them…
Er - NO - I’m not turning Spam Assassin off to find out either!!!
Let’s leave the topics and content of these spam emails for another rave… The quantity is enough to cripple you!
Just imagine how much crap is really floating around out there in the email spectrum of the universe…
Too Cynical @ January 1, 2008
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[…] I’m Drowning in Junk Mail! […]
[…] Configure Spam Assassin on your web server, and have it set to at least the default level of 5. Any higher than that (1-4) you run the risk of killing legitimate email. Spam Assassin will catch a significant portion of (but NOT all) the spam that gets to your domain (as this report attests). […]
You are prejudice to the responses left here. I think Spam Assassin sucks.
Eh? Whatever…
I’m pretty new to the internet, but I’m also drowning in this crap. Who exactly are these scum, these vermin who spew this garbage into my email box everyday? Why don’t they come out and show their filthy face or let me meet them in a dark alley somewhere?
They waste precious hours of my life that I have to spend deleting their unwanted fecal matter.
I thought I had the answer with fake bouncing, but now I just found out that that just exacerbates the problem.
What the hell can I do? I want to scream in their face.
I am not really savvy about all this, but this is my understanding: I work very hard at a job all day, busting my butt to make a hard earned buck. But it seems their are a few lazy ass, subhumans out there, who’s one desire in life is to push a few keys on their keyboard, and then magically, my hard earned cash is going to leave my wallet and be transfered into their bank account to purchase the useless junk they are peddling? Did I get it right?
I’m sorry that their are a few idiots out in cyberspace who are STUPID enough to open these spams and actually buy this crap, but I’m not one of them!!!
if these filthy spammers want money, why don’t they go out and get a real job and break their back everyday to earn it as I do?
Lowlifes. Vermin. Leaches. Cockroaches and flies. And those are just my nicest words to describe them.
if there is ANYBODY out there who has a way to fight these pinheads please, please PLEASE tell me, before I lose my frickin mind.
Hey Doug… I hear your pain!!!
Here’s some pointers to help you stop pulling your hair out…
Golden Rule #1 - NEVER reveal your main ISP or web server login email address to ANYONE! Never use it as an email address! It is for logging in only.
Instead, set up MULTIPLE additional email accounts and/or aliases/forwarders for different purposes.
Whenever any of these start to get overloaded with spam, kill em! End of problem.
Golden Rule #2 - NEVER click on a link in an email for PayPal, eBay, your Bank, or for ANY other service which you have an online account with.
Whenever possible, ALWAYS go direct to their home page in your browser (type it in yourself) and then login from there!
Golden Rule #3 - If you have registered domain names, use a shielded whois service (if available) to HIDE the email alias used with that domain name, otherwise you’ll get spam mail from that source.
Golden Rule #4 - DON’T waste your time trying to track these guys down to “fix” the problem. You won’t be able to. Get on with your life
Cheers
Stephen
Thanks man!