My Private War on Spam

My Private War on Spam

I've been using Cloudmark's SpamNet for a while, and I think it's really good. It's an MS Outlook plugin, so it's zero configuration. It sticks two buttons on your toolbar -- block and unblock. When a spam message comes in you click block instead of delete. One click. It gets moved to a graymail folder. More importantly, that message is distilled into a signature and sent to the SpamNet server. Almost 500k people are using the service, so most of my spam is blocked. I get some anyway.

The fundamental network was created as a freeware project named Vipul's Razor. SpamNet is a private company, and intends to begin charging me $2/month for this.

This highlighted another flaw. The client-side application takes processing time. All the messages (50-100 in each account) pour in, then are one by one moved out of my inbox. Maybe the laptop I've been using is just a little too slow. But the processing time is like watching your computer delete a bunch of videos, or rotate a large image. It's slow. Though I'm not clicking anything, I'm still wasting some time with the spam.

Others might complain that it only works with MS Outlook, though that's not an issue for me.

So I have investigated alternatives. A free project that is highly recommended is SpamAssassin. In the past, I couldn't find a front-end to plug into my Windows/Outlook environment. Now there is one, called SpamAssassin Proxy. It's a very simple concept, really, but now somebody has made one for me to install easily and use.

The neat thing about SpamAssassin is that it plugs Vipul's Razor into its spam ID toolkit, as well as a range of other tools. So we'll see how well it works! I've just shifted one of my accounts over to it.

A final strategy, the nuclear option, is changing email addresses. I've been considering this for a while now. Three of my addresses seem to be all over the spam lists: amol and asarva, both at drownout; and amol again but at howtoburn dot com. I think the howtoburn thing happened due to my profile listing on Salon. The asarva happened due to Network Solutions listing my email address in its registry for anyone to see. And the amol started happening at a strange time, when I was very carefully protecting the address. I think someone gave it away on purpose, but that's just me being paranoid. A final address, the one I put up on my websites and stuff is amol at plural dot org. It has started getting some spam, and no doubt will continue to. I'm just going to accept that reality. You need to have at least one email address publicly available.

So I am still contemplating an address change. But I still have to work out the most elegant method. Stay tuned.