Stopping spam

[Stevehiker]

I have Mailwasher pro, which I've had for about 1 week. I thought it was supposed to cut down on spam. Mine only seems to be increasing. I've had at least 70 today and the day isn't even half over. Plus, I still get the same ones again; "Cobra Health" and "Dazzle White" for two. Maybe I have a misconception of how the program is supposed to work.

Steve

[stan_qaz]

First, Mailwasher helps stop spam from getting to your e-mail program. That keeps your e-mail program and Windows from being infested with whatever malware the sender has included and keeps your e-mail program from letting the spammer know the message was delivered. Your anti-virus will also stop malware it is aware of but that still leaves you open to anything new. You can set your mail program to higher security levels to help prevent the notification problem, that does make good mail more hassle to read though.

Using the friends and blacklists, filters, the learning tool and the server based classifiers like FirstAlert and the Origin of spam tools makes sorting the spam and ham messages a lot easier.

Second, MW can actually help reduce spam if you set it up to report to a free spamcop.net account, spammers hate getting reported and if you are consistently fast and accurate in your reporting you can hope that the spammer will pull you off their list.

Third, If you use First Alert it will allow you to report spam to Firetrust and block anything similar in the future as well as sharing other's reports to identify your spam.

The one thing that does not work any more is the Bounce feature, the spammers figured out a way to turn that to their advantage so any time you bounce a message you are letting the spammer take control of the place the message is sent. That is rarely back to the spammer, it is often to someplace that will cause you grief.

You posted this in the section for discussing the forum and forum software so it may not get a lot of attention, for mailwasher issues you might get better results in the future by dropping down a few rows and posting in the MailWasher section. you could read more on bouncing there too if you have more questions.

[Stevehiker]

After reading your reply, I realized the fault is mine. I haven't done any setup, as far as blacklisting, filters, etc. More reading, and so forth to get a better understanding of how everything works, is in order.
I also got that this was posted in the wrong place.

[stan_qaz]

Not a problem, stuff gets posted all over, the admins don't move it around unless it is a problem.

Give the forums, the help file and the support pages at Firetrust a good look and you should be in good shape.

I'm doing quite well with MW and SpamCop.net as far as reducing my spam, between staying hidden and reporting the spammers MW does about all you could ask for to keep your spam load low.