No Mo' Spam!

[keyplyr]

Received an email from my Internet Provider, Cox Cable, saying they've put in place a new Spam filtering system that I could opt into if I wished. I just blew it off as wishful thinking since I've been around that block before and nothing ever seemed to work well enough to justify the effort - or - the worry that I'd be loosing valuable communications always haunted me.

A few days went by and I found myself at their website for some reason. I saw the opt-in utility for the Anti-Spam system, so I looked it over.

It has 3 settings:

Off

On - still receive all email, but identified Spam will be tagged.

On - identified Spam will not be DL'd from server.

I use a 'catch-all' email alias for my domain which is all forwarded to my IP email address, resulting in 200 to 300 Spam daily. Just to be safe, I've been using config #2, and so far this has been miraculous! Only 2 marketing ventures that I wanted to read were actually thrown into the Spam category, no doubt for a couple buzz-words, but hundreds and hundreds of Spam has been ID'd.

I just opt'd for config #3 - and I feel pretty confident that I won't miss anything. All my product orders write to a back-up txt file as an added precaution, so I plan on checking that more often - but what a relief that I now no longer need to wade through scores of BS emails on a daily basis.

Bravo Cox!

[jbinbpt]

Congrats.......
It is really too bad that all providers can't do something like this.

jb

[Strange]

I have cox and have been told on more than one occasion that they do not offer anything like that.. Where did you see that opt in link? I would be curious to know if it is available in my area.

[Strange]

Ahh.. I found it.. thanks for the heads up about this service keyplyr. Clearly their support technicians need a little bit of training on the products they offer.

[dwilson]

My provider, Worthwhile, offers a similar service.

I have my setting where they recommend it, but it has stricter options.

I have experienced NO false positives and it successfully stops about 99% of my spam.

Great solution for us end users. Doesn't solve a thing for the ISP's ... but for us it's great.

[Mark_A]

does not also solve if your domain is being abused as a from address in spam messages .. you need to know if it is .. imho .. as its damaging your repute and access to your sites and users ..

[TheDoctor]

I have experienced NO false positives

This is not true of all such services. Some of us have been hit by (non-spam) mail from our servers being blocked.

I have posted a notice to my subscribers saying that it's their responsibility when subscribing to make sure our posts can get through to them, and that, if posts get blocked, we have no alternative but to cancel the subscription.

I've also suggested, as a positive alternative, that they use spambayes or the like.

I'm not sure what else I can do, but any suggestions are welcome. Real spammers have the resources to combat spam blockers by continually moving base, but I don't.