Are you tired of spam? one solution is to forward all incoming email to the recycle bin. Sounds silly? well to be frank yes, but we must agree it would stop spam.
Of course such a system could only be implmented as the result of a badly phrased wish to an evil genie in an episode of a non-offensive US sitcom, as it would also mean you receive no real emails, yet Earthlink now offer a spam blocker along those lines.
Lets say you have example@earthlink.net. Everytime that mailbox receives a message the sender is requested to complete a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). If he doesn’t then it is assumed the sender is an automated spam bot and the message is sent to the earthlink users recycle bin.
The only way to avoid the CAPTCHA is by having the owner of the earthlink address update his whitelist.
From: example@earthlink.net [mailto:example@earthlink.net]
Sent: 06 August 2007 12:30
To: Ambrand Dot Com
Subject: Re: testI apologize for this automatic reply to your email.
To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.
If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.
Click the link below to fill out the request:
https://webmail.pas.earthlink.net/wam/addme?a=john.doe@earthlink.net&id=123abc123abc123
But seriously if you are looking for a good spam blocker, then here at Ambrand Dot Com we recommend and use SPAMfighter, which is an EUR 25 (per annum) plugin for Outlook.
Where I work our users complain when they get spam, they complain when they get an email containing a list of the spam that was blocked (so that they can release them if need be)and they complain when a genuine message gets tagged as spam and they have to release it.
I think some folk believe that there should be some magic Faerie out there who will divinely know exactly what is spam and what isn’t and be right 100% of the time.
Agreed, the only foolproof spam filter is a well-paid human*, but even then “human error” would results in a few false positives
* such a person would be called a secretary
Embrace the spam! Spam has given me a beautiful Russian wife, made me incredible rich from a secret Spanish lottery, and gave me one hell of a massive micky! Don’t just delete spam, it contains the jewels of the internets!