Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Ken, Massachusetts on September 7, 2009:

I use a similar combination of SpamCop, which filters my mail on the server, and SpamSieve, which filters it on my Mac. I hardly ever see spam on my inbox. However, I still go through my spam twice a week to flag any false positives. Plus, neither of these filters is free, and SpamCop's interface is somewhat archaic.

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Google does have for-pay e-mail solutions, but a free Gmail account is all an individual really needs, and is what I use. I've never been terribly impressed with SpamCop, but obviously some will find utility there. -rc

Posted by Paul in NJ on September 7, 2009:

That's just excellent. I wasn't aware that GMail offered that level of usefulness, though I am keenly aware of how effective their spam filters are. It's something to consider even for those of us who don't have access to our email server.

I wouldn't think that a GMail outage would result in any lost mail, since most email systems retry sending the messages for up to several days. It would, however, be a major PITA.

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I don't think Gmail would "lose" mail exactly -- and they didn't during the outage last week. However, you could lose access to Gmail (say, if you forget your password and don't have your alternate address set to a working address), and thus perhaps lose mail that way. -rc

Posted by Leo in Woodinville on September 7, 2009:

For the record: I followed Randy's lead and am now using this technique myself, and have for several months. It really works well, and has reduced spam from a problem down to a minor annoyance - even without SpamAssassin running interference.

It also had an unexpected benefit when the laptop containing my email died, I had immediate access to all my email - still using my normal email address - via GMail's web interface.

All of the free email services need to be used properly and with backup appropriate to your situation, but there's no arguing their utility.

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Leo Notenboom is the Leo behind Ask Leo! -- I linked to one of his articles in my essay. -rc/

Posted by Cory, Kansas on September 7, 2009:

This is a great essay for people who are looking to nix spam. I have tried several of these techniques too with great success.

Recently, though, I have moved to a solution called Spamsoap. This is an excellent solution for anybody who manages their own domain. The only trouble is cost. The only real reason why I moved to it is because a bunch of clients wanted to know more about the service. I'm very happy with it, and I'm inclined to keep it for all of my own domains. Just for reference though, it is $180/yr and is the ONLY commercial spam product that I recommend anymore.

Cheers to guys like you who are taking the time to help people battle spam with more cost effective solutions.

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If $180/year was the only way to deal with spam, it'd be worth it to me, even though most individuals would be hard pressed to justify such an expense. But the bottom line is, we don't have to pay that much. Still, that would be awfully cheap for a larger corporation; it'd pay for itself from increased productivity on the first day. -rc

Posted by Carol, Texas on September 7, 2009:

I heard of filtering through Gmail several weeks ago but haven't implemented it yet. So thank you for the tutorial. It's the push I need to get it done.

A few questions:

1. When you computer's mailer program gets mail from Gmail, will it still be sorted into folders using current rules? (i.e. Do the "to" or "from" change by rerouting?) I have several different email addresses to keep separate.

2. My host supports IMAP, so I would like to make both my computer and phone use that. Do you know if that will work with your system? I recall hearing that something needs to be POP to work with Gmail.

Thanks again.

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Good questions. 1. There's no change in the main headers, so all the filters and folders and such work fine on my desktop mailer. 2. As noted, my Blackberry uses IMAP, so yes: that works fine. -rc

Posted by Mike from Dallas on September 7, 2009:

Sounds good, but I'm still foggy on one little point. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't have to pay for it, and you don't have to suffer ads through all your email (incoming or outgoing), then what is the incentive for Google to offer this service? I've been burned too many times by not lawyering through the fine detail where toolbars are added to my browser which changes the settings for my programs and adds others I wasn't even aware of.

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I guess it's like the free version of TRUE: there are ads, but some never look at them, let alone click them. Some never upgrade or support it in any way. But as long as enough do, it can live. Likewise, I'm sure a lot of people use the web interface for Gmail -- I often do too. Enough see, and click on, the ads to presumably make it worthwhile for Google to continue to provide the service. -rc

Posted by Alan in Toronto on September 7, 2009:

Great advice, Randy. Now if someone would come up with something that works as well for telephone spam...

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I get very little. In the U.S., there is a federal "Do Not Call" law, and it is illegal to call such a number if it's added to the list, which can be done online. Apparently you don't have such a law in Canada. Pity! It works fairly well here, even though the politicians were slimy enough to include an exemption in the law for themselves! -rc

Posted by Jeannie in Poynette on September 7, 2009:

Mail on a Mac has an eminently trainable spam filter. Rarely screws up, and I value the hours not spent sorting it.

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That's nice, but I'd rather not see the spam on my Blackberry, and would rather not download it to be sorted on my desktop! -rc

Posted by Jonathan, Ohio on September 7, 2009:

I've been using Gmail myself since January, but mostly because I wanted to cancel the paid dial-up service I had been using since I got DSL, and I didn't like the new ISP's email interface (i.e. flashing ads). Ever since I first got my own email five years ago, I've been extremely careful about where I put it out; I always read privacy policies before submitting my email in an online form, and I never post my email anywhere where it can be read in plain text and picked up by Web crawlers. (By the way, this extremely non-technical person learned about that from your Spam Primer. ;) )

Thanks to being careful with my address, the only "spam" I've ever received is one newsletter from my local bowling alley on which the "unsubscribe" request wasn't honored -- even after talking to the owner of the alley, he looked in the database and said that my address wasn't in there, yet the e-mails kept coming, so I just marked one "spam" because that's what they had become. Now, Gmail tosses all of them in my spam folder. Also, I've only ever had one false positive with Gmail (though I only get about one to two e-mails per day on average).

I'm sure I'll start getting spam one day (probably from a dictionary attack), but I think this shows that if you're careful with your address from the day you get it, you can keep it spam-free, though probably not indefinitely.

Posted by YK, Maryland on September 7, 2009:

GMail recently started supporting sending mail with SMTP from its webmail interface, bypassing the Sender header. See Gmail support (focusing on "If you choose to send mail through another domain's SMTP servers:")