Solutions to Email Spamming: Programs to Handle Junk Mail

by Howard Melamed

I received an advertisement last week indicating that I just won $500,000.  What was even more incredible is that I received several of these emails at the same time from different originating addresses saying the same thing.  IF this were really true, then I would have made millions of dollars last week.

Then there is this lost person from Nigeria who claims to have $35,000,000 that he has to get out of the country. All I have to do is give him my bank account number and he will transfer the entire amount to my account, then take it out and leave me with $3,500,000. What I think he will do is transfer out as much money from my account and leave me high and dry!

How about those Viagra ads? What about those ads saying how they can free me of the all the debt that I owe? Penis enlargement, Porno Sites, and Free groceries. You have to be a complete idiot to answer any of them.  I get hundreds of these type of emails everyday. Just to go through them and delete them is a chore in it self. There are 3 programs that I use to handle this stuff and I can recommend them all to you. Here they are:

SPAMNET

Here is a program that interacts with Microsoft Outlook 2000/2002/XP. It intercepts the downloading email and matches it with known spamming companies. When you become SpamNet spam fighter you help to block spam for you and the entire community. The program is easy to use and runs invisibly in the background of your email program. It only takes minutes to download and install. Best of all, it is completely free. Here is the link: http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/

SPAMBUTCHER

I often download emails using my portable laptop and a Verzion high speed air card. All to often I am downloading a 100 or so emails of junk and allowing Spamnet to remove the email. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a program that can remove the email from my email server before it even gets to me? There is. Spambutcher does just that. It contacts the pop server and checks the email before I download it. When it finds a piece of spam, it downloads it to the quarantine file. I have a choice to delete them or restore them. Eventually, you end up with an email list of Spammers that are refused entry to your mailbox. This product is a shareware, and must be purchased after a trial period of 1 month. IT costs only $29.95 to register the product. Spambutcher is good to use in conjunction with SPAMNET. Here is the link to get to the site to download the program:  http://www.spambutcher.com/

MailWasher

Here is a program that operates similarly to SpamButcher as it checks the email server for known spammers. It then presents you with a list of the email, complete with a status report of what it thinks each piece of email is, either a Virus, Known Spammer, or a normal file. It even gives you feedback if it thinks it is spam. You then have a choice to delete this email or not touch it to allow it to be downloaded normally. The other good thing about this program is that it ‘Bounces’ the unwanted spam mail back to the source! In effect, spamming the spammer! This program can handle multiple accounts and does work very quickly. You can use it in conjunction with SPAMFIGHTER to get you a 95% spam reduction.  It is Free of Charge! You can download it from the following link: http://www.mailwasher.net/

Aside from the above, Microsoft outlook comes with a Rules Wizard that establishes criteria to move around email. Unwanted email from certain people or with certain words can be deleted automatically. It is a good way of handling the increasing spam problem. However,  this feature comes with an increasing delay in the email downloading. 

So there you have it. 3 good programs that can help all of us combat the tiresome spam that we get day to day.  If you have any other programs that you can recommend, please email me and we’ll post them on this article.