Controlling Spam

[JonRosso]

Ok,

I've just read the book, and I'm trying to deal with my biggiest time waster: going through spam. I figure I spend about 30-40 minutes/day deleting, checking spam mailboxes, etc..

Now, I've just spent the last two days trying to get a spam service that works and to no avail, so I'm hoping someone may have some suggestions.

The Situation: I have 5 different e-mail accounts (for various companies I operate), a PC, a laptop, and a Blackberry.

I just tried a service called SpamArrest, it sends anyone who sends me an e-mail a scrambled word (like when you sign up for this bulletin board). That should eliminate 99.9% of my spam. The problem with SpamArrest is it doesn't work with multiple e-mail addresses with my Blackberry (Outlook on pc and laptop work fine). I can receive e-mail's from all my addresses, but when I reply, I can only reply from one e-mail address.

I've heard you can use Gmail to clean your e-mail before it gets to Outlook/Blackberry, but when you send an e-mail is says "yourname@gmail.com is sending this email on behalf of yourname@yourcompany.com" - and that just looks very unprofessional!

Has anyone had any luck managing spam with Outlook & a Blackberry (with multiple e-mail accounts)?

Thanks, Jon

[admin]

Hi Jon,

The best I've found is www.spamarrest.com. Check it out and see what you can do. Others may have similar suggestions or other ideas.

Good luck!

Tim

[final_id]

Another solution:

Inform all your potential correspondents about your spam problem. In your auto-responder, include the following statement: "I receive a lot of spam, so if you don't hear back from me, then perhaps your email has gotten lost. Please consider trying to contact me in a different manner." (Or something similar, whatever fits your circumstances.)

During busy season at one place I worked, we used to just delete as spam any emails that brought with them the instigation of new problems or projects even though we knew they were legit. Then when someone got back to us irate about our failure to respond, we played dumb. "Oh, you contacted us? Our spam filter must have erroneously deleted it. What is your email address, and I'll put you in my 'safe senders' list." Works like a charm. Spam is your friend. :)

Another trick. Eliminate everyone with an AOL address. "I'm sorry. My domain server hosting gewgaw doohickey says that AOL isn't up to snuff with true internet protocols. Never has been. It won't accept emails with an AOL domain."

[neuromancer]

Google has the ability to send as another email address. I use Gmail for all my business email communications. I also keep spam to a minimum by using an email for anything that might generate spam. Finally, I use my domain names for all email. I set up an account for that correspondence for that business and if I start receiving spam on it above and beyond what my google account can handle I just send out a broadcast to everyone using that email address that it will change. I then setup the new account and set the old one to auto reply saying the address has changed, a broadcast email was sent informing everyone and to check the web site or call the new one. Finally set the old account to auto delete any incoming email. It can be left running indefinitely.

Total cost $0.

As far as the blackberry goes, ditch it. It goes against the 4 Hour Workweek rules. If you can't do without it, have a separate account that you funnel all your emails to without deleting them from the other sites, set it to delete the files once a day and just use it to keep track of email flow. If there is anything you must respond to, respond to it via the gmail account it came from.
If you want an example, PM me your email address and I will respond to ya.

[JonRosso]

Thanks for some of the tips. I've tried to get GMail to work, but when I reply to an email is has ""From customaddress@domain.com on behalf of yourusername@gmail.com."

I have the BB off 95% of the time, I only use it when I travel (it's easier than lugging a laptop around for e-mail). I actually thought it was the greatest tool, since I could respond to e-mails in the airport, in the air, etc..

I decided that I really don't need 5 e-mail accounts, so I've purged and merged, now I'm down to 2 (plus a personal). What I think I'm going to do is get two SpamArrest accounts (it's like $4/m each, and I don't have to do any maintenance), so far I've moved 3 accounts, and I've already reduced my e-mails by half. It's amazing how much more relaxed I feel, seeing my emailboxes under control (not having 10 in the inbox, 15 in the Norton Spam folder, another 10 in Outlooks spam mailbox, and another 12 in the ISP's spambox.


Thanks, Jon

[laniers]

To deal with spam I switched to Thunderbird for all mail and canned Outlook. You simply start marking spam as junk and thunderbird starts to learn what you consider spam. Future spam is tagged as such, I give the titles one quick glance, push one button and bye-bye spam. the other great part is it's completely free.

[Crickwat]

For some spam messages you get an option to unsubscribe where you have to visit a link to stop getting mails. I sometimes don't even bother to look at the spam messages and just empty it every time I open my mail.

[kamakiri]

Move your domains over to google apps. They blow outlook and thunderbird away.

[zhongguohua88]

I use Google and it filters over 99.9% of the spam I receive; out of the 2,000 spam messages I receive in a month usually only 1 or 2 get to my mailbox. I have 8 different email addresses I use for different purposes (one personal, one to subscribe to websites, one for Elance, etc.) and every messages sent to one of them is redirected to my main email address with a label. I have a different label for almost every kind of emails coming from various sources and this makes it much easier to browse through my emails. Whenever I send a message from my main account, it sends it on behalf of the account that received it so the people receiving it are never confused.

[insidethenewrich]

FWIW i believe the ultimate anti-spam service out there is postini (www.postini.com). i have been using them for 3 years and went from roughly getting 100's of spam emails a day to virtually none. extremely flexible, easy to use and highly recommended. if you have any questions on their service feel free to ask.