TCS - Spam

Spam

by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the July 2004 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

In April I described how Spam Inspector eliminated a LOT of the Spam I get every day.

My ISP (Cox Communications) now has a procedure for automatically getting rid of SPAM. If Cox is also your ISP, you can go to their Web Mail page (http://webmail.central.cox.net/)

and click on My Account in the black bar. This takes you to http://support.cox.net/coxms/jsp/Login.jsp

where you can logon to your account.

This takes you to:

where the fourth item is Spam Blocker

As the link [more about Spam Blocker] indicates, there is a small chance that the delete incoming junk email option may delete an item that you wish to keep (for example a newsletter you signed up for). To prevent this, you can select the "Label Junk Email as Spam" option when you activate your account. This will allow you to review emails that are labeled as 'Spam'.

Cox also provides instructions for Outlook Express users to create a Spam folder, and setup an Inbox rule to automatically forward all email identified as Spam to the new Spam folder, where you can make sure desired data is not accidently being declared as SPAM.

In the event you receive an email that Spam Blocker did not detect as spam, you can send it to Cox for review. We will then work with our partners to ensure that this type of unwanted email is added to the list to be blocked.

To submit an email as spam, send it to SpamReport@cox.net

Additionally, if Spam Blocker identifies an email as “Spam” but you believe it is not, you can submit this to Cox as well. We will then work with our vendors to ensure that this type of email is not flagged in the future. This is known as a “false positive”.

To submit a false positive, send it to ThisIsNotSpam@cox.net.

Note: All suspect and false positive emails must be forwarded as an attachment. Do not just forward the message. And Cox provides instructions how to do that.

I have activated my Cox's Spam Blocker, but I still have Spam Inspector installed, and I find that the combination is very useful, because although both identify most of my spam, there are some spam messages that Cox's Spam Blocker catches that get by Spam Inspector, and there are some spam messages that Spam Inspector catches, that get by Cox's Spam Blocker, and sometimes one does a better job than the other, but certainly the two together do better than either by itself:

Caught by both532324
Caught by SI but not Cox232
Caught by Cox but not SI837
Caught by neither64



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Tulsa Computer Society 7/01/2004
Don Singleton, President