In the good ol’ days, spam was merely a time-wasting annoyance. With the rise of online fraud, however, it’s become a genuine threat, one that must be dealt with. The good news is that it’s possible to eliminate 99 percent of spam before it ever reaches your inbox. The bad news is that total eradication is impossible, and you’ll probably need a combination of methods and tools to achieve the best results. We’ve rounded up the nine best spam-fighting practices, software, and services, all field-tested with Apple Mail.
1. Never Try to Unsubscribe from Spam
Spammers want two things from you: a purchase from their product links, and, almost as good, confirmation that there’s a real-live person sitting on the other end of your email address. Clicking the unsubscribe link on a spam message simply encourages a spammer to send more messages by providing that confirmation. This only applies to unsolicited messages. If you tire of an electronic newsletter that you requested, by all means, follow the link to unsubscribe.
If a spammer were willing to let you opt out of his messages, he probably wouldn’t send them in the first place.
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Sadly, you needn’t click a link for a spammer to know that you opened his message. Many spammers now use embedded image links to track their campaigns. As soon as your mail client downloads the image from the spammer’s server, the spammer knows that his message was received, making your email address an even more attractive target.
To turn off these automatic downloads in Mail, click Mail > Preferences. Select the Viewing tab, and remove the check from the box next to Display Remote Images In HTML Messages.
Most people attach important images to email rather than embedding them, so you risk little by ignoring images hosted on remote servers.
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3. Assume That Links Are Fraudulent
Never follow a link in an email to an online account that’s protected by a password. Instead, use the link saved in your bookmarks. The danger here is phishing, a type of scam where criminals send messages that appear to be from PayPal or your credit card company but really aren’t. By including a fraudulent link in the message, the scammer can collect the usernames and passwords that safeguard your financial information. Phishers have become so sophisticated that even some experts can’t tell the difference between a fake link and an authentic one.
PayPal is a longstanding favorite for criminals who want to snag the username and password protecting your cash. This message looks legit, but the included link leads to a shady server.
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Because spam changes constantly, spam filters must change too. Bayesian filters (the type of filter used in Apple Mail) learn to identify spam by evaluating how often certain words occur in spam messages. For example, if you mark most messages that contain the word “mortgage” as spam, the filter learns that similar messages should go to the Junk folder.
Of course, this ability to learn is dependent on the user’s willingness to teach. Training mail filters by marking any unidentified spam is most critical during the first several weeks, but the process should never really end. Also important is to correct any false positives—those good messages that your filter mistakes for spam. If you’re using Mail’s built-in filter, press Command-Shift-J to mark or unmark the selected message as junk. When Mail is correctly identifying most junk messages, click Mail > Preferences, select the Junk Mail tab, and check the option to automatically move junk messages to the Junk mailbox.
Like young Jedis being trained in the ways of the Force, modern mail filters must be trained in the ways of blocking spam.
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5. Upgrade Mail’s Spam Filter
For heavy email users, Mail’s built-in spam filter may not be enough. Our favorite replacement is SpamSieve ($30). Like Apple Mail, SpamSieve employs a Bayesian filter that learns what you consider spam and adapts as new types of spam arrive. The difference is hardiness and aptitude - within two days SpamSieve was trapping spam that had eluded Mail for months. The program integrates nicely with Mail, adding its own group of menu items and keyboard shortcuts for marking messages as good or junk. A full-featured demo is available free for 30 days. After a week of training, the difference in our inbox was hard to believe.
SpamSieve records its successes and failures, making it easy for you to judge its effectiveness.
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The only thing more annoying than seeing junk messages in your inbox is losing genuine messages in your Junk folder. The easiest way to keep your business contacts and family members safe is to add their email addresses to the Address Book. Spam filters automatically treat your contacts as trusted senders. When viewing a message in Apple Mail, all it takes is a quick Command-Y to add the sender as a contact and spare him or her from your spam filter permanently.
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7. Switch to a Well-Filtered Provider
If training an adaptive mail filter seems like too much work, consider changing your email service. Gmail and Yahoo! Mail both offer aggressive spam filters that eliminate most junk mail before it ever reaches your inbox. Both services also offer free POP access, so you can continue to send and receive messages with Apple Mail.
If you receive email through your own domain name, you don’t even have to change your address to take advantage of these services. Google Apps will handle email for your domain for free. Yahoo! Business Mail will do the same for a single address for $34.95 per year.
If you’re too invested in an old email address to switch providers and completely abandon your current domain, consider auto-forwarding all of your mail through a Gmail or Yahoo account. Both services support POP access, so you can continue to check your messages through Mail. As long as you continue to send messages through your original account, your contacts will never know the difference.
Gmail’s spam filter spared our inbox from 4,165 junk messages in a single month.
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A well-built rule can catch persistent spam that Mail’s filter misses.
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9. Report Repeat Offenders
Believe it or not, spamming is illegal, at least in the United States. We’re not sure how much good it does, but we forward repeat offenders or obvious fraud attempts to the Federal Trade Commission. The address to remember is spam@uce.gov. We figure if it increases the chances that a spammer will be caught and shut down - even by a little bit - it’s worth the time it takes to report them.
Yahoo’s spam filter was even more aggressive than Gmail’s in our testing, trapping a higher number of good messages.
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After months of experimenting, we achieved the best results eradicating spam using a combination of Gmail and SpamSieve (see tips No. 7 and No. 5, respectively). Transferring the email from our primary domain to Google Apps filtered most of the junk before it ever reached our Mac. Then, a well-trained SpamSieve in Apple Mail easily mopped up the rest.
BONUS TIP: For the DIY Crowd
Server-savvy types who run email out of their own domains can mount a front-line defense with SpamAssassin, an open-source junk-mail filter that installs on mail servers. Installation and setup are not for the faint of heart, but many Web hosts offer it preinstalled in packages that run for less than $10 per month. Learn more at spamassassin.apache.org.
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Links:
[1] http://c-command.com/spamsieve
[2] http://www.google.com/mail
[3] http://mail.yahoo.com
[4] http://www.google.com/a
[5] http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email
[6] http://www.maclife.com/article/can_spam_for_good?page=0,3
[7] http://www.maclife.com/article/can_spam_for_good?page=0,2
[8] http://spamassassin.apache.org
[9] http://www.maclife.com/article/how_do_i_block_all_messages_from_a_specific_spammer_in_apples_mail_app
[10] http://www.maclife.com/article/spamsieve_2_6
[11] http://www.maclife.com/article/claim_victory_in_the_browser_war
[12] http://www.maclife.com/article/3_cures_for_bad_web_design
[13] http://www.maclife.com/article/get_your_bookmarks_in_a_row