Peter,

> I got 230 spam this morning. A record for me. Mailwasher latest version
> gets rid of most of them but some completely new emails seem to get
> caught
> up in the deletion and I only see them as they are being deleted.
> Reading
> 230 message headers is a bit of a pain.

I get thousands of emails per month, so I reckon it would have to be
somewhere in the order of a couple of hundred per day.

I have a pretty good junk mail filter with Mac OS X, but can you really
trust them? What normally happens is that I leave them in a separate
folder, just in case a customer rings up and says "Why haven't you
responded to my emails!" - and I keep promising myself that I'll sit
down each month and quickly scan the junk mail folder before archiving
- but who has the time?

> It seems to me that most spam now is just idiotic. I think the only
> people
> making money are the people selling the CDs of 200 million email
> addresses
> for $xx.xx, whatever.

It's just filth and junk. Yes. CDs of lists I'm sure sell well, but
what about these guys trying to sell you solutions to Spam using Spam?
:-)

I put Cat 5 cable all through my house and have a cable modem and
router. My intention was to get my kids connected as they were
approaching that computer age and they certainly know that we have the
potential to connect us all up. But then every morning, I see the crap
that comes into my mailbox and I think - no way.

> Anyway what is the spam load of people on this list? I would be very
> interested in hearing of the latest programs to deal with it. It took 8
> minutes to get my 5 valid emails this morning. and I refuse to change
> my
> email address. (Or is that a silly attitude in 2003?)

Why should you? I've had my same address for 8 years, and have never
used it on adult sites or anything else that should invite the sort of
filth that I receive. An email address is (should be) sacred!!! If you
move your office, you lose your physical address, you (normally) lose
your phone and FAX numbers and possibly your postal address. At least
this modern technology has allowed us to keep our web address and email
addresses!!!

Don't get me wrong, I am not a prude or offended by *most* of the
material I receive. I just hit the delete key - but I also think to
myself - "What if this was my daughter's email address or my mother's
or my grandmothers?" - or worse one of these political nutters that
would love to see the end of "free speech" on the internet.

I can not see why the archaic engines of the internet - such as
sendmail etc. can not be modified so that the handshaking process
includes checking for a valid return email address and checking that
the email address (domain) is not blocked on various "official" lists.
The open relay lists are useless and if your server gets listed simply
because your ISP screws up - it's virtually impossible to get yourself
removed.

Alternatively, and more drastic would be to reverse the operation of
filters. Instead of disallowing mail based on rules, we could turn it
around - and only accept mail from particular email addresses (with
signatures). It is futile trying to prevent unwanted mail getting in.
If we had a system where the sender would have to make a call first to
have them added to your "accepted email list" or perhaps allow the
first and only the first email through - that would be far more
effective.

If the internet community does not act now, I fear that email is no
longer going to be the valuable tool that it once was.

Regards,

Sean

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