Isn't email great??

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navycop

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I was thinking while I was reading some of the post. Some one metioned they had a problem with such and such vendor. The group replies "email them and explain the problem". Back in the day we would have to write or call (maybe long distance) to get an answer. Now it only takes days (some cases).. My family and reletive all live in Ohio so email is another good way to stay in touch.. It also helped me with alot of my questions on here. You guys say email me or PM me..
 
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The upside of email is great ... the down side is a real pain in the toosh. I'm a nobody, unimportant, not a big spender, not rich, not a big investor and I get more than 100 emails most days -- I have companies that I have made one purchase from that send me an email every day -- every day. And of course, email along with the rest of this electronic life has made privacy a thing of the past. Too bad we're not smart enough to find a way to keep the good and eliminate the bad.
 
Hi Smitty,

I have devised a cure for just that problem.

Get yourself an old computer. Someone's castoff when they got a new one is just fine.

Wipe it out and reload a clean copy of the operating system. This would not cost a dime as long as you have the disk (or borrow one) and the serial number is on the case.

Now, since you have a business, I presume that you can create yourself another email address. Say 1smitty or something like that.

Load Thunderbird email client. It is free from mozilla. Load AVG or Avast antivirus. Both free.

Now set up thunderbird to download your normal email. Thunderbird, outlook and most all clients support filters.

You just set up filters to forward email from folks you want email from to the second address. The last filter, which gets processed says delete mail from server.

Voila!! For virtually no cost only the people that you want to hear from can email you.

Optional extra! You can load UBUNTU instead of windows, which is also free.
 
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One of the worst things we ever did was create an e-mail system that cost nothing to operate. If e-mails cost a dime to send, my junk mail would drop from 200 per day to none. I have been fighting one company called "Simply Ink" for days. I have tried every way I know to block them but I still get 5 - 10 emails from them every day.
 
One of the worst things we ever did was create an e-mail system that cost nothing to operate. If e-mails cost a dime to send, my junk mail would drop from 200 per day to none. I have been fighting one company called "Simply Ink" for days. I have tried every way I know to block them but I still get 5 - 10 emails from them every day.

I expect you are aware of this, but most companies will provide a unsubscribe link at the very bottom of the email.
 
"I expect you are aware of this, but most companies will provide a unsubscribe link at the very bottom of the email."

That probably works for reputable companies. They are not the real offenders.
 
One of the worst things we ever did was create an e-mail system that cost nothing to operate. If e-mails cost a dime to send, my junk mail would drop from 200 per day to none. I have been fighting one company called "Simply Ink" for days. I have tried every way I know to block them but I still get 5 - 10 emails from them every day.

I expect you are aware of this, but most companies will provide a unsubscribe link at the very bottom of the email.
Yes they do Mark, but they are not very religious about deleting folks who unsubscribe. Additionally, a lot of companies have their emails sent from a fictious address and if you unsubscribe the just sent from a different address. The same with blocks I block addresses but the emails keep coming.
 
It's just as easy (if not easier) to delete all the email spam as it is to throw away all the junk mail in the mailbox. Of course, more than once I've been known to throw out what I thought was junk mail only to find out later it was a bill or something of importance. :redface:
 
for those that have a gmail account... if you have an email address such as username@gmail.com and you would like to keep the same email for everything. You can create special email address with a + in the email address. The email is still sent to your username@gmail.com email account but it is now tagged with +whatever on the email address.

In the case of the Simply Ink you could have created an email address as username+SimplyInk@gmail.com Then in your gmail you can create a rule that anything to username+SimplyInk@gmail.com would move to a trash folder.

I have several of these types of accounts setup like this. I do not know if other email providers do this as well. This will also work if you are using gmail for your business domain email too.

Michael
 
Blocking emails is a pain
You have to look at the headers to see the real sending address. Then as someone said, they just use another.

Deleting is a pain as well.

You can sign up with a service like spamcop that will receive your email, filter out most of the spam and give you the rest. How right the filter is you control.

There is, of course, a charge for this.

It would be trivial for email hosts to block spam. Then they would not get paid be advertisers to pass it through, or in some cases, add it in.

The basic model of the internet is that end users want it for free. Somehow the folks in the middle gotta eat too.
 
Additionally, a lot of companies have their emails sent from a fictious address ...

Depending on if your ISP is willing (I do it for my customers), the email server can do a call back to verify that the sending ("from") address is valid. Doesn't check that the email actually came from them, etc. just that it's a deliverable address. It's a 5 minute thing. Downside is that companies that use "from: no-reply@whatever.com" need to be whitelisted to get through.

I'm with Andrew - get with a email service that provides substantial spam filtering. I have about 6 accounts in use no including the office. All flow 2 the Gmail account. I get on average 500+ spam messages per day (on top of more than that that is filtered at my email servers through Bayesian logic, call back, etc.) that they catch that previous checks did not (they're the last step in the link). They use pooled resources to identify spam, so it's not just your emails that's helping their system to learn.

I deal with upwards of 3-400 non-spam emails per weekday (weekends are much slower thankfully)... without a consolidating mechanism that drastically helpd I wouldn't be able to. Also thankfully, much of it is notification type things that don't require me to reply.

Edit - just checked. Yesterday non-spam = 331 emails. Spam @ gmail = 221, Rejected by MY smtp server (all domains, all account, all attempts (some will try multiple times) = 42,444!!). To those who think spam can be blocked by the ISP easily but won't because of getting paid to pass it to users: 1) Please share how - spam's a major consumer of my resources, and 2) who do I contact to get my checks, mine is over a dozen years late. (Tahiti here I come!)
 
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One word of caution: Some people have a feature that requires you to approve mailers before you will accept their email.

If you do business with a company and their software automatically generates a confirmation and then, later, sends you tracking numbers----you will NOT receive them, unless you have an "open door" for those communications to come to you.

So, if you order, best to set your email to accept mail from that domain name.

FWIW
 
To those who think spam can be blocked by the ISP easily but won't because of getting paid to pass it to users: 1) Please share how - spam's a major consumer of my resources, and 2) who do I contact to get my checks, mine is over a dozen years late. (Tahiti here I come!)

Obviously, this seems to be an "I read it on the internet, therefire, it must be true."


No offense intended. I am sorry.
 
I have Ubuntu and is great for non virus issues(until someone decides to write one for Ubuntu). Less Email spam, I don't think. I still get them-or used to. I also added another email address. Buuut, they've started coming in again, after I bought something on ebay.
Russ

+ on Linux was just talking over some stuff with my brother

Levi Woodard
Sent from my DROID RAZR using Forum Runner
 
Obviously, this seems to be an "I read it on the internet, therefire, it must be true."


No offense intended. I am sorry.

It's no problem. I've been battling spam, and have participated in group efforts to do so, for years. It's actually a bigger problem for ISPs than the end user. We pay (sometimes dearly for quality routing) for internet bandwidth, spam can soak up a signification portion on that. Bandwidth we could otherwise put to better use actually serving our customers. Between dealing with spammers and attackers (often the same people) sometimes all night long, I've thought about getting out more than once.
 
Go back and check the list. Linux virus have been out since 1996. The reason Linux gets this myth about being secure from virus has as much or more to do with desktop market share (< 2%). Why write a virus that 98 out of 100 potential targets simply don't apply. Same with Mac (< 8%).

Before you think I'm trying to bash Linux (pun intended), I started with kernel 0.99 around patch level 10? or so... back when we had to compile our own kernels. Often overnight, only to find it failed in the morning.
 
Go back and check the list. Linux virus have been out since 1996. The reason Linux gets this myth about being secure from virus has as much or more to do with desktop market share (< 2%). Why write a virus that 98 out of 100 potential targets simply don't apply. Same with Mac (< 8%).

Before you think I'm trying to bash Linux (pun intended), I started with kernel 0.99 around patch level 10? or so... back when we had to compile our own kernels. Often overnight, only to find it failed in the morning.


I agree and thats why I had thought Linux was, while not safe from virus, at least low worries, because of what you just wrote. Why bother with Ubuntu? But I reckon some its a target anyway.

And I don't care whether or not you might be bashing Ubuntu or not, I don't have any connections with them. Just use the OS, since I had many viruses with my old PC.

But, again, thanks for the info, even though its low worries when placed alongside a PC. Actually, I'm about to buy a PC, given limitations on what I can run on Ubuntu.
 
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