I am sure you are all already aware of this but I will remind some people (yeah some of you nice theatre hire companies etc are still sending me unsolicited mail!!)

There is new legislation that effectively makes the sending of junk mail illegal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3120628.stm

You cannot send mail to anyone unless they have specifically "opted in" to the scheme and want to receive the mail.

This applies to everyone that sends mails to personal e-mail accounts but not those that send them to business accounts (not sure why?)

I have not personally seen a reduction in the amount of spam that I receive however I have noticed a number of companies associated with amateur drama and theatres still sending this unsolicited mail.

I am sure that the law makers will be looking to make examples of the first people to flaunt this legislation so don't let it be you.

We send out a newsletter but only to group members and past audience members who have asked for it. It's not a big list really.

There are bodies set up to stop junk emails, as well as unsolicited mail and phone calls. At home our junk mail and cold call phone calls have been considerably reduced. The problem is that not all sources of the junk have signed up to the scheme so some still gets through.

I have to say, I'm not overly optimistic about this new law. (1) It doesn't go far enough. (2) It's dependent on an overworked department. (3) How are they going to deal with spammers from outside the UK?

ok so there's legislation but how do we stop all the junk. We know not to open them, cos otherwise they know your email address is active and result is even more.I get over 100 a day on my old email, but still have to keep trawling through for the odd genuine message.

Can I just add here that amdram.co.uk has a very strict policy about this. We have never sent unsolicited emails. We have two opt in mailing lists and have very occasionally bulk mailed the members of this forum to bring to their attention changes.

We also NEVER give out addresses. If someone emails you and says they got your address from amdram.co.uk then the only place will be the databases which are available to everyone (the forum isn't).

Jane

Don't worry if you run a newsletter because people "opt in" to receive that newsletter and as long as you give them the chance to leave at any time there will be no problem.

The law only applies to the UK as far as I am aware therefore the main producers of spam outside this country will not be affected.

I would advise everyone to not open any spam at all, there is a number of internet banking scams knocking around as well.

In fact I received one today, the URL that they asked you to click on was that of a bank. they then put a @ sign or a : which tells the browser to ignore before that

FOR EXAMPLE: www.thebank.com/3213728478235423:@dodgysite.com

Microsoft have raised several lawsuits against a number of companies for the production of spam, in fact they believe that the worlds major producers of spam are limited to a very small number of companies
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2...MicrosoftFS.asp

I think Microsoft have decided they have had enough, people with Hotmail accounts should notice a difference because they have stepped up the filtering on the account as well I believe.

The forum is an excellent defence against spam e-mail but if you have posted your address anywhere on any site then it will be picked up time and time again unfortunately!

Its just like the text message scams that people are receiving on their mobile, I would recommend people don't use the free sms sites on the internet because they record the numbers for advertising later (Or so I believe)

Where ever possible I do recommend that people use a completely different email address for open posting on the site (the production database etc). That way if it get's too much just delete that one create a new one.

Jane

There are many SPAM tools out there and some are supplied by ISP's like BT in varying different flavours.

If you dont subscribe or benefit from this sort of service as you have multiple email addresses then there is still help at hand ......

Spam Inspector is a tool that plugs into various email clients on your PC - Outlook etc

As you download the email to your pc it checks it against its database and weeds out the SPAM. If it misses one - you can select it as spam and this information is then used to block it on others PC's.

Its a seriously good bit of software and for the money worth every penny.


Spam Inspector Website

I am sure there are others out there and i have no connection with this company.

I have to say, I hardly ever have trouble with spam. I have a home address that I seldom give out to anyone other than friends and a work address that I use for buying stuff, competitions, discussion boards etc. The company have a pretty good firewall/anti virus protection so all the spam I would get is filtered out without me having to worry my pretty (sic) little head about it. Obviously this is of no use to those who don't have a large company willing to pay for their secret internet life.

I personally use Mailwasher but you do need a pop address to use it. You can check your emails on the server and delete them before they hit your in box. You can blacklist addresses and they appear as spam in the program. This is very useful for viruses as well! Worth a look - and it's free, just send a contribution if you like it!

Jane

SpamBayes. It works directly with Outlook using the existing settings, supports multiple email accounts, sorts email into spam and suspected spam and gets better the more you use it - you can also train it. Oh, and it's free!!

Free is always good....

Well just downloaded it and set it up which was painless enough in fact it only took 5 mins to set it up and train it - amazingly for a freebie there doesn't seem to be any down sides to this, no performance loss or interference

Thanks Kenny for the suggestion - highly recommended

I haven't tried SpamBayes but I have tried Mailwasher.

I like Mailwasher because you delete the SPAM off the mail server before you download to Outlook. You can bounce unwanted posts and its virus identification is fairly good.

I am very fussy about the way I collect my e-mails, I update my virus checkers and firewalls and then collect my mail. This has allowed me to avoid most virri.

The latest virus distribution idea is through spam, you accidentally open a spam message which in turn infects you with a virus...nasty!

My ISP filters my e-mail for SPAM and I have to admit they do do a fairly good job but I have had my e-mail address for a great number of years now and I was never careful in the past about where I posted my e-mail address.

I went on forums and was on a large number of joke distribution lists therefore I can expect lots of spam.

As for webmasters I have been told and I don't know if this works but try and have contact forms on your website rather than MAILTO links.

If the visitor wants to contact you then they use the form rather than them seeing your address directly

(I know you can see where the form is posted to but I believe this works)

Good points re Mailwasher - I think I'll check it out. My only concern is that SpamBayes (and other programs) do occassionally make mistakes and I don't like to lose genuine email. Meanwhile, My firewall (Zone Alarm Pro) and virus checker (PC-Ccillin) handle the security side of things more than well enough.

Re mailto links vs forms, another good point. Another option I have heard of but not tried is to embed the mailto link in an equivelant javascript code snippet - I understand email harvest robots can't handle those. Of course, the 5% with javascript disabled won't get the mailto link to work ...

i.e. Non-spiderable mailto links with Javascript.

p.s. just tried that script on this page on my own site and it seems to work a treat.

For reference and those less familiar with stopping spam, the BBCi website has the following usefuly little tutorial on How do I stop getting spam?.

There have also been a couple of interesting and perhaps provocative news articles run by the BBC recently.
- Viagra spam fills inboxes
- Microsoft aims to make spammers pay
- Junk email costs an hour a day

Not quite spam but found a useful free program on the web that removes all that nasty spyware which creats pop up ads etc. I used it to remove Hotbar a down load that A-M had foolishly installed on her machine, it also got rid of a site that had hijacked my machine's home page no matter how often I reset the default HP in I.E it came back after the machine was restarted

Spy bot it's amazing how many files it removed on A-M's maching (well over 2000!) and how much better her I.E now is

You would be amazed what spyware (or adware) is on most computers. Most of it is quite harmless mainly causing pop up ads to appear, but some does interfere by affecting your web selections.

I regularly screen all my computers.

I use Ad-Aware which is another very good free utility for this purpose.

Does anyone use, or know how to use, the Spam Block List from the Spamhaus Project? It strikes me that it's primarily a tool for network-side rather than client-side/consumer.

p.s. I think I've just partly answered my own question - on trialing the free version of MailWasher I've found you can add the Spamhaus SBL/XBL server to the blacklist validation settings.

Adaware 6 is a must have tool, keeps my PC nice and clean of unwanted stuff.

I would also recommend Zone Alarm as a firewall.

As for a good pop-up stopper, I found that the google toolbar has an excellent build in pop-up stopper. Handy toolbar too if like me you use google a lot.

I used to have freesurfer but this is much more efficient.

Anti-virus has got to be AVG for me.

I used the cloudnet anti-spam software, but the rest of my email is protected through my servers spam assassin. It's never been much of a problem for me, luckily.

All of this has kept me clean - and it's all free.

Amazes me how many people still do not protect themselves, especially those connected to broadband.