Mac Tip: Slam Spam
By Christopher Breen - Posted Mar 02, 2004
Filter yourself
Spammers commonly forge return addresses. One of their favorite tricks is to forge a return address with your own address. For example, joeblow@joeblow.org will receive a hunk of spam from joeblow@joeblow.org. Unless you have a habit of talking to yourself, create a rule that junks any messages sent from you to you.
Along these same lines, the subject line of spam often contains the first part of your email address -- "Hey, joeblow, fire your boss!!!" It's unlikely that any kosher correspondent is going to address you by your email handle. Junk these messages too.
From where!?
Spammers forge locations as well as names. One way to take some of the sting out of spam is to filter by country. For example, I get very little legitimate email from foreign lands. By filtering out domains that end in .de, .it, and .ru I move a heapin' helping of spam to my Suspected Crud folder.
Key words
Mail's junk feature should take care of messages that contain words and phrases that are commonly found in spam -- viagra, Paris Hilton, Business Proposal, Get Pills, Full Meds, and Enlarge Your Whatever, for example. But there will be times when new words crop up that Mail isn't yet aware of. For instance, when a new virus hits the Internet, its subject heading may contain something fairly innocuous -- My Great Movie, Your Request, or Test to name a few. When these things crop up, it's worth your while to create a new rule to deal with them.
Ancillary to that, viruses that forge spam can cause a load of messages to be bounced back to you. Such messages begin with the words "Returned Mail" or are sent by Postmaster or Mail Delivery System. Although you may very rarely get such a notice when a legitimate email message hasn't gone through, it's become far more likely that a forged bit of spam has been bounced to you, particularly when a virus is raging.
Unoriginal or no words
I've been getting an increasing amount of spam that contains no subject line or simple words such as Hi or Hello. Although it puts the onus on the sender to remember to place a subject line in their messages or offer a sentiment more interesting than Hi, I now filter any such messages I receive.
Remain vigilant
These rules won't keep all spam at bay, but they can help find a portion of the effluvia that Mail's Junk feature misses. To help keep your inbox clean, remember to update your rules as necessary and be sure to indicate to Mail when a piece of spam has made it past Mail's filters.
TechTV's "Mac Daddy" Chris Breen pens Macworld magazine's Mac 911 column; is author of the best-selling "Secrets of the iPod, Third Edition" (Peachpit Press, 2003); and writes, directs, and stars in Breen's Bungalow, a video tutorial that appears each month on the disc bundled with newsstand copies of Macworld.
For more Mac 911 goodness, check out my updated-when-I-have-something-useful-to-say weblog. Those interested in an RSS feed can use this address.
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