E-Musings Mon Immorata

Can Spam Before The Holidays Neat anti-spam tips plus first-looks at Opera 7.6 Preview 4, Thunderbird 1, new 5.1 surround MP3 format Software-wise, this has been a pretty active week. With lots of software updates. Either developers are attempting to get new features into the market before the Christmas holidays. Or in some instance, would like to take advantage of user's leisure time to have beta software tested in depth. But before we delve into the hot new stuff. Allow me to offer some tips on spam control. Because I'm sure spam (or junk mail) is one problem that's not going to go away this Christmas time. It would be best if you used an intelligent email client like Mozilla Thunderbird or Opera's M2 client that includes some form of intelligent anti-spam detection. But if you are wedded to Microsoft Outlook Express. Or enslaved by a company that insists on (relatively) non-aware client interfaces like Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes. You sure need help. The easiest way to spam control is to change your email address. But this is not an easily available luxury. But you can still stop responding to the unsubscribe options included in spam mail received. These links are merely ways to make you validate that your mail ID actually exists. And you will receive even more spam after you attempt to disassociate yourself from another list. If you use a Hotmail account, use the built-in Junk Filters judiciously. Personally, I have unsubscribed from most mailing lists. Preferring to use RSS/XML feeds (pull) in place of email (push) technology. This way I can control the update frequency. As well as the article delivery format. Getting back to Hotmail Spam Control, the best setting is to only allow mail delivery for IDs that exist in your Contacts. All other mail, including mail from MSN Chat buddies is directed into the Junk Mail folder. Or deleted on receipt if you don't have Junk Mail configured correctly. Yahoo takes a somewhat different approach. By and large it manages to accurately mark spam. But the odd mail often gets by into your Inbox. However with both Hotmail and Yahoo, there is a limit to the number of email IDs you can blacklist. As far as I understand, once the limit is reached, new blacklists over-write existing ones. GMail is no more secure. My wife setup a new account, and just 10 days later she's already receiving junk mail! Spammers appear to be bulk mailing to the domain. But what I can't understand is how mail addressed to 'emmengl@gmail.com' is being delivered to her account which has a separate ID! Of course logically, messages sent that don't match any stored ID should be rejected outright instead of being accepted and delivered to what the service thinks is the most logical account. We've mailed GMail support about the problem, but I don't expect a logical reply any time soon. Their past service has been near hopeless and responses can take days to appear. Maybe they should also consider out sourcing GMail support to India along with Ad-Words. Getting back to managing spam received. The best plug-in is SpamPal that acts as a received mail proxy server. And sits between your real email ID and your local mail client. Mail headers are scanned to see if messages originate from a list of known spammer IPs. As well as from country domains like .cn (China) and .kr (Korea) that are commonly misused by spammers. You can also add plug-ins like the Bayesian filter that attempts pattern matching. And while this technology is constantly 'learning' with detection improving over time. It takes it at least a week to sort through messages received and classify them. You can also define black (blocked) and white (approved) address lists. Mail marked as spam has a tag phrase added to its subject line. This tag phrase (typically **SPAM**) is then used by your email client's rules engine to redirect such mail to the Deleted Item/Trash folder. Or to a Junk Mail folder. You can download SpamPal for free. More information about how SpamPal detects junk mail is given on the web site. There are also several plug-ins available. In new software this week, the two most significant releases, in terms of features and functionality are Opera 7.60 Preview 4 (Build 7364c). And Thunderbird 1.0. The Opera release is an interim bug-fix of a previous version to resolve skin-related issues (Build 7364b). As well as problems with a new installer. But from a user perspective I'm most satisfied with Build 7364b. Which a lot faster at rendering pages. Appears to experience fewer hiccups. And can now handle GMail without crashing. Opera will shortly be able to check for new releases, but when I tested it the link was broken. The online Help feature now supports local caching so that previously visited files are retained in the local cache. The Pop-up notification has been integrated with the Trash Folder. And now lists both tabs closed in the current session as well as blocked pop-ups. There's also a new Delete Private Data feature to remove passwords, user IDs, cookies and other personal content. Smooth scrolling is also enabled by default (Windows only). A more detailed list of what's new can be found in the Change Log. However the M2 Mail and News Client installs the wrong files. And you'll need to manually fix the problem. Of course, the Beta tester community is vibrant, and there's a quick-fix .ZIP file available. In Thunderbird 1.0 theme support has improved. As has migration from Outlook 2003, Eudora and the Mozilla Suite. The Saved Search feature too has been improved, along with message grouping and RSS feed management including support for http authentication. As well as managing multiple identities for a mail account. Mail filters have improved. In Junk Mail, marking an item as 'Junk' if configured to trash such messages actually deletes the message without requiring to manually remove them. The POP filters can now be applied to IMAP accounts. Make sure to upgrade (5.8 MB) your copy today. There's also a new 5.1 surround sound MP3 platform under development. With a public beta copy of the an encoder and decoder plus sample files. According to the developers at the Fraunhofer Institute in German files are half the size of existing formats yet remain backwards compatible with MP3. This is a limited period beta, so download a copy now. And finally, if you (somehow) missed out on the blogging revolution. Or find the offerings from Blogger a bit limited. Do checkout MSN Spaces (needs a .Net Passport ID). Where even I have posted a sample blog. Click Here to Email Me