Hotmail & OE Spam

alanrowell

Getting a lot of spam e-mails (about 20 per day) for which the address and subject have similar - but not identical names (eg message 1 wll be from abcd, message 2 from abce, subject one will be cdefg, subject 2 will be cdefh).

Hotmail doesn't offer anything to filter these messages & OE only filters on specific addresses or words - can't use wildcards so I can't say delete all messages containing "cde*"

Any ideas

alanrowell

just as importantly how can I do in such a way that the spammer doesn't think they've found a live e-mail address

Wombat

I use Spamihilator:

http://www.spamihilator.com/

It can be set up to work with any email client, learns from the emails you receive and eliminates about 95%-99% spam from day 1.

I downloaded all the extra filters and it works very well. If you're no techie, you can instal it and forget it, although if you "instruct" it using the Learning Filter, more spam will be stopped.

Emails can be read before they're downloaded and marked as spam and deleted on the server. So I assume that the sender doesn't get feedback to say that the email address is live.

alanrowell

doesn't seem to recognise hotmail accounts which is where the problem is and it buggered up all my other email accounts in the process

Wombat

Sorry, you're right - Spamihilator doesn't handle Hotmail accounts.

Maybe this would be of help to you:

http://email.about.com/cs/hotmailantispam/

ManAtHome

Depends how many genuine hotmail contacts you have... I've only a couple so I added a 'stop processing more rules' for these addresses, then a 'move to folder' (created one named 'spamming b******s') for any hotmail.com. I still have to glance at the spam folder before deleting the messages but easier than picking though my inbox.

Other excellent sources of spam are verizon.net and yahoo.com/co.uk - giving these the same treatment trapped most of the 'regulars'.

grumbler

alanrowell wrote:

Any ideas

After changing my hotmail account about a year ago (after they introduced image recognition protection during registration process) I don't receive spam e-mails any more ...

shrek101

I have never got one single spam through hotmail in over 2 years that I can recall and none through gmail either. I do get them from my main email account but as I use mailwasher and gets rid of most of the junk via filters, I have about 93% success rate so far and improving as I tweak and block certain accounts all the time.

alanrowell

ManAtHome wrote:

Depends how many genuine hotmail contacts you have... I've only a couple so I added a 'stop processing more rules' for these addresses, then a 'move to folder' (created one named 'spamming b******s') for any hotmail.com. I still have to glance at the spam folder before deleting the messages but easier than picking though my inbox.

Other excellent sources of spam are verizon.net and yahoo.com/co.uk - giving these the same treatment trapped most of the 'regulars'.

Business contacts - I've had hotmail for a very long time and to change them all would be difficult if not impossible.

Until recently Microshaft's spam filter was working OK, but now I get all this !!!!e dumped in my junk mail folder, along with stuff I may want to read

Wombat

If you have all your business contacts in an address book, does Hotmail not allow you to set up a filter rule which basically says something like "If I receive an email from anyone in my address book then don't place it in the junk folder"?

That way you can carry on using the existing filtering method and any emails you know you're going to want to read won't be filtered out.

Maybe these would be of help:

http://email.about.com/cs/hotmailtips/qt/et062003.htm
http://email.about.com/cs/hotmailtips/qt/et031603.htm

alanrowell

I can do all that but I can't automatically delete !!!!e from the account even from the junk/bulk mail folder which is what I want to do.

There is some stuff that I do want that I automatically send to my inbox, some stuff that I might want to read that goes into the junk/bulk folder and the rest which I don't even want to have in any folder and would prefer it to be automatically deleted without informing the sender that it's a live account

Thus the need for a spam filter that works on part words and hotmail