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DNSBL really stops spam! I used it on my server and it cut 95% or more crap. Best installed on the mail server itself it also can be user on client side, for example see http://www.spampal.org/

Use SpamPal. It comes with blacklists, but you can turn it off because the reg expressions that came with it are very effective. There are also modules to decode base64, filter on spammed URLs, clean up web bug crap, block by country etc. & it's free.

It does, but it's worth it.

Windows users have SpamPal which does lookups on spammed URLs. You can use the RegEx & URL Body filters and get 99% of spam with no falses. If you're getting hard core spammed, add the RBL lists. & it's free.

ConTEXT Superb text editor. Can't recommend it enough.
GAIM
MS VC++ Toolkit 2003 (Don't hate me. It's pretty good)
SpamPal: Nifty little spam filter. Works with almost any client.

Just suggestions. Not affiliated to any of the above in any way except as an end-user.

Well, an ISP which allowed you to choose to ban email from China, Brazil, Argentina and anyplace else you don't have friends or family, would probably find that it could make a few extra bucks from the service. Or, it could be a setting in the extra-cost spam filter that most ISPs already seem to offer.

I've been telling everyone I know to use SpamPal. (Windows, client-side, blah, blah blah) It lets you block email originating from all those countries, and more. And with the URLBody plugin, you can block mail containing URLs hosted in those countries, too.

They also ignored any kind of freeware, not only Linux ones, SpamPal for example.

Also, their reviews were pretty shallow, I would expect at least to know how am I to connect to this spam filter, there are numerous ways, some better, some worse.

Thunderbird spam filtering didn't meet my needs either - but SpamPal in combination with Thunderbird works fantastically. I'm using the service (Beta) Spampal build - I've had no problems so far.

http://www.spampal.org/ checks mail on several RBLs.. personal black/whitelists, and it's free.

First, there is no spam magic bullet. There never will be.

This is very similar to what SpamPal along with the URLBody plugin does. (Client-side, Windows-only, also not a magic bullet.) The only difference being that this checks URLs against existing DNSBLs, and this is a new DNSBL specifically for this purpose.

... if there were some P2P means of establishing how many individuals had received a particular spam.

There is - check out DCC.

It is also the best type of spam filtering I've ever used. Catches about 75% and only one false positive ever. Combine with the Bayesian & RegEx filters and you have an almost perfect system.

If you're into Bayesian there is a plug-in but only recommend for people who like to tinker. Spam Pal works well enough OOB to waste time on that.

I used to be against RBLs but they work so well, it's a beautiful thing. I have had one false positive in the last month (out of 3000 total mails), and fished it out, nothing lost.

In my mind ostracizing their IP's is the only way to bring these rogue ISP's into line.

What I do now is use SpamPal (it's open-source) and use SpamKiller to delete anything with **SPAM** in the subject line. Setup SpamKiller to use SpamPal as your email client.

This setup slaughters spam. I think I've seen three spams in the last week with no false positives. My email is all over the web so I was receiving 200+ spams and infected mails a day.

SpamPal is a generic anti-spam prog which filters on regular expressions and can be set up to use plug-ins, including RBLs. Most of the issues I noted above with Spam Killer have been addressed already by others with SpamPal.

A new method would be cool but speed is more what I'd look for. Using SpamPal http://www.spampal.org for intelligent white/black listing and DSNBL with the http://spampalbayes.sourceforge.net/ Bayesian plugin seems to be working 99.9% for me. I'm still convinced that the Bayesian text based filtering methods are THE BEST way to filter spam. A well trained filter with some inteligent rules to whitelist & blacklist email address works wonders.

SpamPal is good, too. It uses a plugin architecture that currently supports a regex-based body text scanner and Bayesian categorization. It also natively supports filtering of mail using DSNBLs for those of us who want to also use something other than content scanning.

I just installed a spam filter for the first time, SpamPal. However, of the 50-70 spam messages I get per day (and perhaps 10-15 non-spam), it flags non-spam around 1% of the time, and lets spam through about the same percent. I can handle a few spams a week.

So my question really is, is the state of spam-filtering still improving, or have we reached a plateau where the spammers will just find more and more ways of defeating them. Much of the spam I receive contains characters like: Viagra so the filtering is a bit harder.

1. Create a Trustic account
2. Once you've verified your registration, go to Trustic's DNS Query Information page for your account and note the second DNS query address.
3. In SpamPal, open the Options dialog and drill down to the "Extra DNSBL Definitions" section. Click the "Extra DNSBL Instructions" button for information on adding a DNSBL to SpamPal. Read this text and then close the file.
4. Click the "Extra DNSBL Definitions" button. This opens "extra_dnsbl.txt". Add a new DNSBL entry as follows:

   LIST Trustic
   NAME Trustic DNSBL
   TYPE STANDARD
   WEBSITE http://www.trustic.com/
   ZONE queryaddress
   DESCRIPTION Trustic is a community-based block list that prevents untrusted servers from sending spam. It is a new approach to the spam problem, and it is better than existing solutions.

   Substitute the personalized query address you saw in step 2 above for queryaddress.
5. Save and close "extra_dnsbl.txt", then exit SpamPal and relaunch it.
6. Open SpamPal's Options dialog and drill down to Spam-Detection, Blacklists, Public Blacklists. Trustic should now appear on the list. Select it and click Apply, OK.

1. Create a Trustic account
2. Once you've verified your registration, go to Trustic's DNS Query Information page for your account and note the second DNS query address.
3. In SpamPal, open the Options dialog and drill down to the "Extra DNSBL Definitions" section. Click the "Extra DNSBL Instructions" button for information on adding a DNSBL to SpamPal. Read this text and then close the file.
4. Click the "Extra DNSBL Definitions" button. This opens "extra_dnsbl.txt". Add a new DNSBL entry as follows:

   LIST Trustic
   NAME Trustic DNSBL
   TYPE STANDARD
   WEBSITE http://www.trustic.com/
   ZONE queryaddress
   DESCRIPTION Trustic is a community-based block list that prevents untrusted servers from sending spam. It is a new approach to the spam problem, and it is better than existing solutions.

   Substitute the personalized query address you saw in step 2 above for queryaddress.
5. Save and close "extra_dnsbl.txt", then exit SpamPal and relaunch it.
6. Open SpamPal's Options dialog and drill down to Spam-Detection, Blacklists, Public Blacklists. Trustic should now appear on the list. Select it and click Apply, OK.

Count me in as a very happy SpamPal user. I have it set up with the Bayesian filter and the Notify plugin and it just works. It's still a bit rough 'round the edges because I have only been running it for a month or so (so there are still some false positives--mail tagged as spam that should be clean) but it's easy to retag as clean. Opera 7's new mail client includes complex filters which can easily filter on the tags SpamPal adds to suspected spam.

spampal is pretty cool too. It's also open sourced.