De-spamming Your Inbox The Hard Way

ajain writes "Even after using precautions like dummy email address in public forums, I have been plagued by the spam mails for long time now. Accidentally, I hit upon a not-so-elegant but effective solution recently: Ever thought of shutting down the mail server temporarily to stop spam to your inbox permanently? Well, it seems to work. In my case, a two-day shutdown resulted in 97.5% decrease in spam traffic! Here are the details and a step-by-step guide to this desperate-method of spam reduction. I think I'll model, simulate and then optimize the amount of shut-down time required for spam levels to drop to zero!"

Comments

My First Karma Whore :)

[brobak]

Site was slowing down, so here's the text:

Even after using precautions like dummy email address in public forums, I have been plagued by the spam mails for long time now. Two years back it used to be a few per day. And since then it has been a steady increase in the volume. As a result, till last weekend I used to get around 200 spam mails a day on my Institute's life-time email account. Then, one fine day (well, actually we were given notice 3 weeks in advance) our Institute decided to upgrade the Exchange mail server to the latest version. Hence the mail server was shut down for approximately 2 days/48 hours (4th Dec evening to 5th Dec noon). During that time, all the mails sent to my mail account were of course bouncing. Between the time when the system was shut down and the time when the system came back online on 5th noon, something miraculous had happened: My spam traffic had reduced considerably. Now I am receiving 'only' (!) 5-6 spam mails everyday! That is a 97.5 % drop in spam traffic! Interesting, eh? So what's happening is that the spammer dudes are dropping the bounced mail IDs like a mad-cow disease affected, well, cow. There doesn't seem to be a second try from spammers: Apparently they don't use the bounced email IDs again. I would assume that after the two-day shut-down/start-up of mail server, my spam traffic would have become zero. My current 'very low' spam traffic is only probably because of my email being available in public domain on webpages where I can not remove it from (damn my early Internet days' Naivete).

Essentially, for this De-Spamming methodology we can draw an analogy with the routine detoxing of the body. Example: On the basis of specific relgious beliefs, people fast once in a while. More than the religious custom, fasting has a scientific reason behind it: It detoxifies whole internal system by a) giving the body some much-needed rest and b) by cleansing the traces of toxins (as there's no fresh inflow, the bodily processes work on the left-over inventory and makes sure that it is digested properly and taken care of to give a fresh start the day after the fast).

So, is De-Toxing (De-Spamming) the Inbox by fasting/starving! (shutting down the Mail Server) a good idea? Well its effetive for sure, but it has its costs. You lose the genuine mail traffic for the duration of shut-down. Hence, if you are in a desperate need of De-Spamming your Inbox, here's what you should do. Let's say you plan to shut your mail sever down on Date T and you plan to bring it back to life after Y days. The question is for how long do you shut down the mail server? Well, I think most mail programs try to re-send the mail for a maximum of 48 hours. If the message doesn't go through even in 48 hours, the mail program gives up and finally returns error to the sender. Hence, to be on the safer side I would say, shut the mail server down for at least 48 hours (2 day). So once you have decided on a shut-down date and duration, here's the how-to guide to shutdown survival and resurrection thereafter!
1) T-30 (days) : Include in your mail signature at the top the "Please Note" clause stating that during days X to Y, your email won't be available and hence on those days, they should communicate to you on an alternative email ID. This should be highlighted in Bold and in a different color if possible.
2) T-15 (days): Remove all possible traces of your email ID from the Internet, public egroups, discussion boards or any other public forum.
3) T-15 (days): If you have to keep your email ID on a particular webpage in the public domain, encrypt your email ID by using simple HTML Codes for characters.
4) T-2 (days): Send all the people in your contact/address list a "Please Note" notification that during days X to Y, your email won't be available and hence on those days, they should communicate to you on an alternative email ID.
5) T-0: Well, shut the damn thing down!
6) T to Y: a) If you have a girlfriend, take a vacation with her.
b) If you dont have a girlfri

I can do you one better

[Skim123]

In my case, a two-day shutdown resulted in 97.5% decrease in spam traffic!

Well, in my case, a complete shutdown resulted in 100% decrease in spam traffic!

Re:What about grey lists?

[SEWilco]

The Greylisting concept, as previously discussed on Slashdot | The Next Step in Fighting Spam: Greylisting

This method is for the mail server to refuse to accept mail for the first hour or so -- because then a spammer has to keep retrying and uses up more of several types of resources. When mail from a certain mail server, a certain sender, and a certain recipient, is attempted... a greylisting server will not even accept the mail until a minimum time has passed (might be an hour, might be longer). Standard mail servers will retry, and "recent" mail is remembered so frequent correspondents do not get the delay.

News for Nerds?

[EvilStein]

In other news, shutting off the mail server forever will reduce spam by %100! No false positives at all!

Not having sex will prevent unwanted pregnancies too!

I'd file this submission under the "no-shit-sherlock-dept"

This is quite possibly the most useless thing I've ever seen here - I can't wait for the dup. :P