User Comments

Spam Arrest sounds really cool, I gotta check that out. Great to hear that you got on top of your spam problem, it will be interesting to see if it continues to be a success. Perhaps you could post regular updates here, keeping us all informed of any spam that makes it through to your inbox?

Great article by the way, well-written, informative and very entertaining, “Bulk snail mail is usually personalised. Every day I give thanks to the God of the Digerati for the fact that spam isn’t.” - Very, very funny.

Thanks for the compliments Aaron. :-)

That’s a good idea - suggesting that I post updates regarding incoming spam. I’ll certainly post a message here if the system fails.

Still no sign of any spam yet which is, of course, absolutely fantastic.

It’s actually quite strange to have such a quiet inbox, I’d got used to hearing my new mail notification every few minutes - now I’m lucky if I hear it every few hours! It’s like being a net-virgin all over again.

I have just received my first spam email after more than two weeks of silence.

The email came from emedia.co.uk and it seems that someone there actually went through Spam Arrest’s challenge/response system to force their crap on me.

No problem - they’ll never get through again. I have added them to my blacklist.

Adiós emedia!

I never thought I’d say this but, in a way, I’m beginning to miss the spam. I never realised how little genuine email I received until I stopped the incursion of the unsolicited ones.

It’s quite disconcerting to have such a quiet inbox - I find myself frequently clicking “Send/Receive” just to verify that everything’s still working.

When I hear the new mail notification now, it really catches me by surprise.

I came into the office this morning after a weekend off. Ordinarily, I would find several hundred messages that would have accumulated over the previous 48-hours. This morning I found… just four!

I can’t praise Spam Arrest enough - it does its job perfectly. But I also condemn it - for revealing the true depth of my unpopularity.

“I’m beginning to miss the spam.” —-you have got to be kidding here! I can appreciate what your saying though. I don’t get much spam so its not really a problem for me. I’m amazed that you were getting hundreds of emails every day, thats just too much.

I was kidding, sorta… and, yes, 200 emails a day is way too much.

I am happy to report that Spam Arrest continues to be hugely effective for me. Since subscribing to the service, I have only had a couple of spam emails get through - in all cases the sender has authorised himself by responding to the challenge/response mechanism. I have simply added these senders to my blacklist so that they are completely blocked when they come to send subsequent email to my account.

Furthermore, in the instances where the sender authorised himself, POPFile successfully dealt with the spam on every occasion.

To all intents and purposes, I’ve got my spam problem licked! :)

Found another anti-harvesting server: http://spampoison.com/

Just a tiny point: in your example about using different email addresses for different organisations, you made an example of Amazon and another address, and published them as mailto links! I hope you don’t blame Amazon if you get any spam that way!

Nice article, though.

Andy, those email addresses are undeliverable, so no spam can be sent there (well spotted though). :-)

Ahh OK :)