283. That's how many spam emails I've just deleted from my mailbox, all coming in over the weekend. Now, I'm sure that's not a record, but it is an indication of the effect of spam on the email system. It seems to me that unless a cure is found, email will soon be moribund as an effective means of communication, which will be a great pity, as it can be so convenient, especially where speed or distance is a consideration.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Curse of Spam
283. That's how many spam emails I've just deleted from my mailbox, all coming in over the weekend. Now, I'm sure that's not a record, but it is an indication of the effect of spam on the email system. It seems to me that unless a cure is found, email will soon be moribund as an effective means of communication, which will be a great pity, as it can be so convenient, especially where speed or distance is a consideration.
8 comments:
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I suppose the obvious question is: do you have a spam filter?
ReplyDeleteMy email breaks down as follows:
Spam in personal account: 0
Spam in university account: 0
Spam in conflictoflaws.net account: 1100
The reason for the spam in the conflictoflaws.net account is that it is a publicly available email address, linked to on the web. Luckily, however, the account is hosted on Gmail, so the spam is all filtered into the spam folder. So there still isn't any need for me to do anything.
No filter on my work email, although I have recommended to the firm that we get one. Having said that, I have experimented with one or two filters, and it seems to me that none are perfect, so you still get the odd spam getting through and, more importantly, the odd 'real' email is filtered out, so you still have to check through the spam folder.
ReplyDeleteFalse positives are a potential worry, and it's one reason I don't use my university's spam system (which blocks spam at the server level, rather than user level, which means I would never see it.)
ReplyDeleteThat said, have you tried Gmail? I have yet to see one false positive on that (about once a month a "new" type of spam makes its way into my inbox, but never vice versa.)
Perhaps even better, you can easily set up familylore.co.uk to use Google Apps, including gmail, so you can have john@familymore.co.uk. Give me a shout if you want help setting that up - it's remarkably easy.
familymore.co.uk? Must be some sort of Freudian slip...
ReplyDeleteAnd what is so bad about spam?
ReplyDeleteMonty Pyton's take on spam
God damn! I wish I would not drop the aitch...
ReplyDeletePython that should read...
Martin: I may do as you suggest, although it won't help with work email, which comes in via Exchange Server. Familymore? I'll have to have a think about that... :-)
ReplyDeleteJailhouselawyer: Thanks for that - you can't have too much Python, even if you can have too much spam.
A classic Monty Python sketch one of my favourites along with the Dead Parrot sketch.
ReplyDelete