Spam (#6) Spam (#6)

I don't know if we will ever overcome the scourge of spam email. I get well over 100 spam emails a day, and by now throw almost all of them away w/o reading them.

Most of my email goes through bhayden@ieee.org that is forwarded to bhayden@peakpeak.com. The ieee.org forwarding does try to mark spam as it is forwarded, but doesn't delete any of it. Then, peakpeak.com moves what it thinks is spam into a separate folder for later deletion. I can use white lists and black lists to control that, and sometimes bother to do so.

The way I usually handle that account is to use the peakpeak.com web interface and move what I think is non-spam (from what peakpeak.com already considers non-spam) into a ToRead folder, and then delete what's left (about 75%). Thus, about 90% of the email is deleted w/o reading at this step. Then, I read and delete the non-HTML email, and download the rest using Thunderbird, which does a similar spam filtering into a spam folder.

Pure white and black lists don't work for me because I have too many legitimate emails coming in from new places to make the effort worthwhile. And the response type of email filtering doesn't work either, since how do you get eBay, etc. to respond?

The problem is that it creeps up on you. One year, I will be averaging 50 spam emails a day, the next year, 75, and the next 100. And part of my problem is that my bhayden@ieee.org email address has been out there in circulation for nearing twenty years now, and has likely found its way into most spam email lists by now.