Anti-Spam Software for Mom?

daemondev asks: "As a software engineer and FreeBSD user, I've had no problem setting up and using the early anti-spam solutions like Spam-Assassin, TMDA and PopFile. I'm reasonably happy with where I am today, but it certainly could still be better! On the other hand, these solutions are not at all appropriate for my mom, who now has a huge spam problem (she really doesn't need all of that Viagra). I'm looking for something that works "out of the box" and doesn't require a lot of in depth knowledge about email and text filters, and which ideally doesn't need to be updated and replaced continuously. She uses Outlook 2000 on Windows ME. Has anyone found a good package that they would trust to stop spam but that's easy enough for their mom to use?"

Comments

Do it yourself

[Zach Garner]

If you are running that FreeBSD system as a server, you could run a fetchmail to get her mail off of her ISP's server, filter it, and let her then retrieve the filtered mail from your server. That may or may not be a lot of work, depending on your setup.

Re:Do it yourself

[trentfoley]

My parents had to change isp and email addresses due to a move. This pissed off my Dad. Well, I decided to help. I've got dsl with a static ip, so, I bought them a domain ($9 at godaddy), created an mx record at zoneedit (free), and configured my mail server to accept their domain.

My parents don't even know that I'm using spamassassin et al on my mail server. Also, they never have to worry about changing email addresses again, assuming the .com tld stays in business.

After about a year of running this, both my Mom and Dad have commented that they never get spam anymore. They hear from their friends and coworkers that the spam problem is getting worse every day. My Dad thought they were full of shit, until he was visiting and I showed him all of the spam that had been filtered from his account. Now, my Dad gets to brag about his "genious" son who can stop spam! I told him that I could also tie my shoes and spell "lose", but he wasn't impressed.

The downside is that whenever there is any kind of error from outlook express, I get a call, especially from Mom. "My email is not working. When will you have it fixed? And, whatever is wrong, it is also keeping me from seeing the internet" Its all my fault. But, Mom's getting pretty good at cycling the power on their dsl bridge and nat router. That usually fixes it all just fine.

Re:CloudMark's SpamNet

[icemax]

One little problem, CloudMark SpamNet has alienated the entire community it is based on. For 11 months, it was touted as totaly free community-based spam detection (using p2p bayesian filtering AFAIK), while the end-users beta-tested it. Now, as they reached their 1.0 release, a decision was made to charge $3.99/month for the "service" (which the community created by classifying mail as spam w/ their client). Read more on it here

Yahoo! Mail

[PoiBoy]

No, seriously. Does she have a Yahoo email address, or is she willing to get a new email address from Yahoo?

They have a spam filtering algorithm, and it does work rather effectively. I'm not sure what they charger per month, but they do offer POP service; using Outlook won't be a problem.

I use their domain hosting service, and I very rarely get spam mail. At least 99% of it is quarantined in a folder that I might check once a month or just allow to get purged automatically.

Re:Prevention is the best cure

[JBv]

Spammers are the scum of the net.

If you ever give them the notion that you read their junk-mail, they will laugh at your naiveness and bloat you mail box with junk.

I *never* click anywhere in a message, I don't even allow html mail to get images (ads) from the net.

All sites that ask to register a password via mail end up in an overbloated yahoo account that I use just for that pourpose. Why would anyone ask for my mail if not to junk it?

After 5.5 years, my mail account still gets about 1 spam on a bad day.

Re:Prevention is the best cure

[jzellis]

In addition to the aforementioned sensible ideas: if you really want to punish the evil bastards and you own your own domain, the guy who runs my ISP taught me a great trick:

Whenever you need to sign up for something that requires actual interactivity (i.e. reading the e-mail they send you and doing something with it), simply use the name of that site as the username on the e-mail account.

For example: I own zenarchery.com. If I signed up for a Yahoo! account, I would give them the address yahoo@zenarchery.com. Or friendster@zenarchery.com, slashdot@zenarchery.com, whatever.

When you start getting spam in complete violation of their privacy policy, you know whodunit -- and you can start hitting them with the usual cease-or-I'll-totally-0wnz0r-you routine.

This has so far prevented me from getting ANY spam, and taken a few years off the life of several unscrupulous sysadmins.

Vengeance is a harsh mistress, but Lord, is she sweet. Heh heh heh.