Some useful Spam Filters

Some useful Spam Filters
Eudora Tip #133/15-May-2002

These days I receive about 30 or 40 messages per day which have viruses attached or are Spam.

What’s Spam? Well, apart from being a poor quality tinned meat product it refers to unwanted and uninvited emails which you receive as part of a broadcast.

You’ll know Spam messages by their subject lines or content. Here are a few from my current crop. The first two are in Korean, which my computer can’t display.

• ªÉµ? •Œ√Ç ^.^ Ω®¯à¯©~~•Œ√Çø?…… [±ß.∞Ã]
• [±ß∞Ã] ÉÉ?ì∏´∞-√µ¯Øø?∏» ø?±π Ê”µµ¡.
• Check This Out!!
• ADV: Is your family taken care of? 1658583
• (OTCBB:EGFG) Revolutionizes Money Transfer Market
• Would you like to lose weight while you sleep?8861
• Check out how to rid yourself to debt
• Record Low MORTGAGE rates! Act Fast
• Hey!
• Invest wisely in the “Yen Market”
• WARNING: Reading this could change your life!
• 2000 Year old bread recipe actually helps you lose weight!
• new domain extensions are now affordable
• Ultimate HGH: Natural human growth hormone – HGH – Rele
• ADV:WE CAN ONLY OFFER THIS TO A SELECT FEW 390653

I find this filter catches all of the Korean spam (see Tips 25 to 31 for details about making filters):

Body or any header contains charset=”ks

Note that these filters follow a number of filters which catch mailing list messages and messages from people I know, and I never receive legitimate email from Korea.

Now, the rest are a problem. They come from a wide range of addresses and the subjects are quite random. I have two filters though which are quite effective. My email address is miraz@firstbite.co.nz, so if I’ve filtered out messages from mailing lists and from people I know then anyone I don’t know who is legitimately emailing me should be addressing their messages to me. If they aren’t, then it’s probably just a bulk mailing which I don’t want. This filter catches a huge amount of spam and an occasional legitimate message:

Header To: does not contain miraz

Finally, many spam messages are created using HTML, and not just HTML but tables, so the next filter catches many of them:

Body contains <table

Give them a try and see if they work for you. Do make sure though not to filter to the Trash, as even the most carefully constructed filters can get it wrong sometimes.