Spam Blocker

BruceYBruceY S. Jersey
edited June 2003 in Science & Tech
Does anyone know of a spam blocker for outlook express. I was at QURB.COM and they have on that will only let mail in from people in your address book, unfortunatly it works with Outlook only. Every day about 15 spams and am very tired of it.
Thanks BruceY

Comments

  • BlackHawkBlackHawk
    remembers that Coaster had put one in DOTD thread in the old forums
    Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited June 2003
    remembers that Coaster had put one in DOTD thread in the old forums
  • edited June 2003
    haha 15 spams a day you got off easy! At work I get hundreds.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited June 2003
    Your worrying me because I have loved ATT cable internet as they eliminate a lot of the spam and the user setup on their website allows you to filter some stuff before it reaches you.... and Comcast recently bought them out in this area so very shortly I will be going thru Comcast for email and I think thats who you said you have right?

    Tex
  • edited June 2003
    Actually, I am not sure who you were asking that question of.... BUT, I know that ComCast is blocking some spam. They also have an ongoiong problem, though. They have a bunch of new email servers coming online and they are using Brightmail software but keep forgetting to limit forwarding especially on the newer email servers.

    Open forwarding makes it easier for them to propagate email faster through dynamic routes but makes it easier for mail transfer agents to route things that yield massive spam spreading through those servers. To do BOTH they need to use a separate email net with limited access and they are just bringing in enough router capacity to do this (courtesy of AT&T Broadband in part, as they own a lot of Cisco routers that are very high capacity). Before AT&T Broadband's assets became available (I am sure there are technically lease inter-operations agreements going to satisfy legality but the nets ARE merging as far as actual routing goes-- traceroutes give a decent picture) and were brought onstream, ComCast could not afford to do heavy spam removal or AV scanning because they simply did not have the router or emails server capacity to do so.

    When @Home dumped them in essence they did not get @Home's hardware assets-- instead, ComCast had to build its own network. Comcast then went for volume to get the cashflow to build up its hardware assets for both routing and email.

    The problem with that strategy is that you get a time gap where many more folks are fighting to use same assets thatn there were before. Merging with AT&T Broadband got them both more hardware and more flexible bandwidth options-- and the volume is still growing.

    If you are afraid of email, here is what I had to go through to even GET ANY email during parts of this mess-- I ended up tracing my outbounds and picking my email up from the farm in Texas on an inbound server that was functional in both directions.

    They fixed email, and now are bringing more routing power online in my area (Florida). I and quite a few others yelled and screamed and shouted and literally TOLD them how we got our email a day before the neighbors were getting theirs and told them fix or lose a bunch of power users. Comcast tech support does not like me-- they get a reaction like Joihn Dvorak gives when he sees junk from me.

    When tech support mysteriously became unavailable for amonth, Comcast got ticket gens in Tennessee, North Carolina, and 6 other states (essentially, I used every 800 line I could find) complaining about every outage. I got told: "we do not have to support FTP" from one tech in Miami, another said that email was a special case and had to come last, another told me things would be fixed in a month (6 months before this happened), adn I tended to downrate every tech response that beat around the bush without studying the bush itself. Finally a bunch of us told comcast its customers for HSI were power users mostly, and if they did not want to have a massive customer exodus they absolutely had to start supporting power user utilization and speed alone was not enough. So, actually, your area should get benefited first as the main eamil farm is in Texas.

    Part of the problem is, Yahoo itself is wide open as far as relays go. Netscape is fairly open. Hotmail is having to content filter because their servers are so relayable and so many kids ahve hotmail accounts that they are having to default block email-embedded images on the webbable Hotmail site. With those problems extant, either we accept 3-4 day email propagation or end node filter email. OR, every Comcast customer pays for the infrastructure (hardware in this case) and capacity buildup. That is why Comcast does not have flat national rates anymore, the areas that have a very good network builtup are pricing more for volume and the areas that are not are selling services and are charging more.

    I would say for now and perhaps for 5 years down the line we need to end-node spam filter and virus-scan. When base services are up and running solid then perhaps we can expect more solid spam filtering using any excess capacity or dedicated capacity just for that as a service.

    In my case, domain blocking Yahoo (Netscape address filters anything with @yahoo straight to trash because I told it to) filtered about 3\4 (overall average, less when you think of hotmail, more with others) of the spam volume I am and was getting right into the trash folders. This is true of Hotmail, Netscape, and my Comcast email, and my own domains' email traffic. I have a few friends with new Hotmail accounts for this and other reasons.

    John Danielson.
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