98% of all my HTML email is Spam

[Brett_Tabke]

4000+ emails received over the last two weeks.
214 where html.
Of those 201 were pure spam.

Is that enough to devnull the 13 as clueless newbies deserving of the waste bin?

[kwasher]

I've never analyzed it, but well over 90% of my e-mail is spam.

I know exactly how much of my email is spam, 84%. I use choicemail.

I am amazed that you guys dont use an ISP that filters robot generated traffic.

NEVER let your ISP filter you email. You have no idea what they are doing to your mail! Its like letting your big brother 'hold' your money for you!

Best way to stop spam is to use a shared database of known offenders coupled with some intelligent rules

NO WAY! You have no idea as to the quality of these databases, and as you might have read in the news, they are a prime target of DDOS attacks and more, as spammers are hiring coders to target them!

Personally, I use software (I can sticky you a URL) that sits inbetween my email program (pegasus email) and server. I NEVER have to see ANY spam. The software is on MY computer, so its not on some site in BogoBogo, Nowhereland. And most important, it works. I get emails from mom, and I don't get email from spammers.

p.s. Side note: I'm one of those who HATE html emails. I never see those either as pegasus shows me only the text portions (since I selected that in preferences). Leave the HTML for the web, and if you must use it, why not send a text message with a link to your fancy html so your users/friends/relatives have a CHOICE? Nothing worse than stuffing a ton of unwanted graphics and links down someones throat. Save the bandwidth, and your loved-ones time, for important things.

[bill]

Firetrust, the guys who brought you MailWasher, have a product called Benign that filters your e-mail and selectively removes HTML, images, scripts and renames attachments. So instead of getting the HTML I can select to just get the text version. This means I get a lot of blank e-mail messages from the people sending image only e-mail, but I didn't want those to begin with...;) I am looking forward to the next version of Outlook which supposedly makes it a lot easier to eliminate HTML e-mail for the average user.

[Mardi_Gras]

I am looking forward to the next version of Outlook

I've been using it for a few months. You can turn off web images. It then shows you the formatted mail but without any images that link back to the web. If it then looks like something you are interested in, you can click to download the images.

Between Outlook 11's built in spam filter and In Boxer, I rarely have a spam message of any type appear in my inbox.

[dragonlady7]

I just got what I think is an HTML mail with images. Absolutely nothing displayed in the preview window. So I opened it. Absolutely nothing. I went to Apple Mail's "view" window and chose to view the source. It was an HTML email and had content in it.... but displayed as totally blank.
I dunno, effing stupid spammers. I'm not amused by the downward trend of my inbox and fear I will be joining you all in the spam-blocking crusade.
You know, I was having a discussion on another board with a bunch of copywriters, and the topic was generally whether you would or could write about a subject you knew nothing about. The consensus was yes, but not if they personally disapproved of the content of the message. Most said they wouldn't work for spammers.
See, I would, because at least the crap deluging the inboxes of millions would be WELL-WRITTEN! I think that's what gets me most about spam-- it's such an utter waste of bandwidth because it's so incredibly poorly put together that it doesn't even look reasonable! Arrrrrgghhhh.
*pant pant* I think I had something to say but I've forgotten it now.

[europeforvisitors]

Practically *all* of the e-mail that I get is spam. In a typical day, I might get 500 or more spam e-mails and 10-20 legitimate e-mails. And of those legitimate e-mails, most are in HTML format (probably because the senders' e-mail programs use HTML by default).

Fortunately, nearly all of the spam e-mails end up in my "Deleted Items" folder by the time they've been through my ISP's SpamAssassin, my local JunkSpy installation, and Outlook Rules. It's a nuisance to scan the deleted-item headers to rescue the false positives, but at least I don't have to delete a lot of items manually from my inbox.

The problem comes when I'm traveling. I was on a ship last week that charged 95 cents a minute for the use of its Internet terminals, and it was just too expensive to wade through my ISP's Webmail interface in search of legitimate e-mails amid the flood of spam. So, in the future, I'm going to create Outlook rules that forward e-mails from handpicked senders to a new, secret e-mail account that I'll access via Webmail. All other e-mails can gather dust until I get home or have time to scan message headers in a cheap Internet café.