Can Outlook eliminate spam ??

[GaryDean]

Years ago I was an Earthlink customer. One of the things that Earthlink did
very well was handle spam - they effectively eliminated the problem.
Reading the docs on Outlook, it appears that Outlook only went a little way
toward eliminating the problem. I am wondering if there is a way to have it
go all the way.

Like Outlook, they allowed me to maintain a list of email addresses and
domains for which email would be accepted. For all other email, they
automatically rejected it and sent a return email to the sender that said
something like . . .

"Sorry, because I get so much spam your email has been rejected. However if
you would like me to approve you as a sender please hit the button below and
send me a short message telling me why I should put you on my acceptance
list"

I was able to write the return letter.

This completely eliminated the spam problem. I never had to comb through a
spam folder reviewing each spam.

Is there such a feature that can be implemented for outlook? If not, does
anyone know of an email client that does have this capability?

 

[Pat Willener]

This is not the way to fight spam. 99% of all spam comes with forged
'From' headers; sending auto replies to these fake addresses will just
shift the spam problem to the innocent recipient of these replies. I
personally treat such replies the same way as spam itself: report it as
spam.

There are many good spam filters available; I use Cloudmark Desktop,
which successfully filters more than 99% of all spam, and almost never
has any false positives. There are also a number of free spam filters
that are nearly as successful.

 

[GaryDean]

hmmm... I see you point. problem with "almost never" is that I still have
to comb through the spam filter.
Thanks for the reply

 

[N. Miller]

Like Outlook, they allowed me to maintain a list of email addresses and
domains for which email would be accepted. For all other email, they
automatically rejected it and sent a return email to the sender that said
something like . . .

"Sorry, because I get so much spam your email has been rejected. However if
you would like me to approve you as a sender please hit the button below and
send me a short message telling me why I should put you on my acceptance
list"

I was able to write the return letter.

This completely eliminated the spam problem.

No, it did not "eliminate" your spam problem, it just pushed it off onto the
unsuspecting users whose email addresses were forged by the spammers. It is
called, "Challenge/Respnonse" (C/R), or, more properly, "Backscatter". It
got Earthlink servers blocked on occasion; including by me. It is abusive in
its own right, and I report "challenges" as the spam that it is.

Fortunately, it isn't easy to do with clients like MS Outlook.

 

[Amedee Van Gasse]

I agree with the message above, I only would have formulated it less
harsh.
In general, people are not stupid or malign (except spammers) but just
uninformed.
A well informed user won't do backscatter.

That being said, I use SpamBayes.
It's free, and even better: it's Free!
Do *you* know the difference between free and Free? ;-)
Spambayes has an outlook plugin, but can also work as a proxy for
lookout express, eudora, thunderbird,...

Do you know why I think SpamBayes is so great? It gives every message
a score between 0% (good mail) and 100% (bad mail).
It automatically leaves every mail between 0% and 15% (configurable)
in the inbox. It moves every mail between 90% and 100% to a junk
folder. (SpamBayes never deletes!)
That means you only ever have to check the messages between 15% and
90% in the unsure folder. And because of the mathematics involved in
bayesian filters, over time there are fewer and fewer unsures.

Try it, it doesn't cost a penny.