How do you (try) to fight spams (emails)?

[Dimitri]

Some years ago, I had a nervous breakdown in front of all the spams (and phishing) I was receiving. So, I tried all kind of things to block, or at least limit this, worrying to accidentally block legitimate mails.

First of all, I had deployed SPF, DKIM, DMARC to be sure spamers and hackers couldn't put "my" email addresses, as the sender of their crap. Problem is that not all mail servers are minding this. But at least main services like Gmail, Yahoo, etc... do.

I think I also secured my mail server, by allowing only my IP address to use it.

Now as for reception:

- I set all the configuration options, I am aware about, to block malformed mail headers.

- I block sender IP with no reverse.

- I am blocking plenty of domain names, but of course, new are popping everyday.

- I am also blocking whole TLD, which surprisingly works well.

- I use two RBL

- I installed Spam Assassin

and on client side Thunderbird is also filtering out some.

Which measures are you taking to limit spams?

[jay5r]

SpamSieve is wonderful for filtering out spam (I've been using it for years). The only problem is that it's not supported by many mail clients.

[not2easy]

I have used an encrypted email javascript since over 20 years and do not receive spam. The original script was offered by Jim Tucek and updated in 2008 by Dan Appleman. It is free under a GNU General Public License from www.danappleman.com - it works but it won't undo the damage for email addresses that are already receiving spam.

[Dimitri]

Thanks, bu I didn't mean displaying my email online, and preventing it from being scrapped by spambots.

I just mean, when your email is in the wild, because of a site having sold your data, or data breach, or, one of your contact having been hacked, and all his address book stolen, etc...

i am upset, I had an email address I kept for very private use, close relatives, and one day, one of them sent an email in cc , like that everybody get the emails address of everybody, and someone in this list was hacked, and my email ended in "public" db ...

[engine]

I've had this mission to do the same for almost the same reasons. email spam reduces productivity, and devalues it as a method of communication.

At one stage I was on the receiving end of thousands of spam messages, and making sure that the one message i want was found became a real challenge. That was a long time back.

In addition to the ideas from the op.

someone in this list was hacked, and my email ended in "public" db ...

That seems to still be a problem.

For the back end, i've been blocking tlds as soon as an email spammer starts using it.

On the personal email front I use specific email addresses for specific businesses. If one of those emails becomes compromised I simply remove the specific mail address and I never see the emails. If I want to continue to do business with the company I give them a new email address, until it gets compromised.

Yes, it does take some management, but instead of it getting to me, it's now quite satisfying knowing i'm on top of it.

If some spam gets through, and it will at some point, on the front end, i've used MailWasher for many years, and it can be a great time-saver. It has regex filter capability, too, for full customisation.

[NickMNS]

I use specific email addresses for specific businesses.

I do the same. Cloudflare has new service in beta that allows you to do this with any of your domains, it then redirects the messages to any email account. So you can take [e-mail] and redirect it to [e-mail]. I don't use it, as I do the same with Mail-in-a-box, but it does offer a much simpler way of doing it than running your mail server.

[eriky]

I forward everything to gmail. Hardly anything comes through. Sometimes there's a false positive; that's ok with me. I check my spambox about once a week to find such false positives.

[tangor]

Heh ... I just use the delete key. :)

That's a lie, of course, but that still works!

Difficult to conceal/protect email addresses.

[koan]

I use a service like sneakemail when I need to provide email addresses to various web sites, it just forwards messages it to my main email that is kept secret. If a web site is hacked or if they sell their database to spammers, I just delete it, or generate a new one if I want to maintain the account. It has kept my long time email account sane. Otherwise just create an account with one of the big free email provider (google, yahoo, etc) specifically for public use.

[Dimitri]

Thank you for all the suggestions.

ps: I prefer to host my own mail server and I avoid relying on third party as much as possible, you never know what the future can be made of , ... who knows, Gmail might stop being free, or undergo all kind of changes.

[sky3918]

give up mail box