Spam, the scourge of inboxes everywhere. Until recently, I used SpamArrest — a server-side challenge/response system that worked quite well for the most part — to keep it out of my inbox. But I’m a cheapskate (no, seriously, I have a whole blog to prove it), so I decided to try some free alternatives.
First, I tried routing my mail through Gmail, which offers excellent spam filtering, but it just wasn’t a good arrangement. For starters, mixing Gmail IMAP with my existing Outlook Express setup was messy and complicated. Plus, it’s really hard to migrate to a label system when you’re steeped in folders.
Next, I checked with my domain host to see what anti-spam options they might offer. Turns out they support the popular open-source filter SpamAssassin, which they activated for me free of charge. But it caught only about 10 percent of the junk, and offers no easy method of whitelisting legitimate messages.
So I decided to switch from Outlook Express to Mozilla Thunderbird, which features a built-in spam filter. Suffice it to say, the transition has been slow and rocky, and I’m still having to deal with a lot of spam manually.
If you’re in a corporate environment, you probably have some robust anti-spam technology running behind the scenes. But if you’re the master of your domain, so to speak, how do you stop the junk? And if you use your cell/smartphone to fetch e-mail, how do you keep the spam out of your mobile inbox? Hit the Comments and share your spam-fighting secrets!
