How I am dealing with spam
for reasons I am not quite sure I have started getting inundated with spam starting a couple years ago. prior to that I rarely got any. whatever the reason I have been trying to use cox's horrible spam filtering. currently this is my strategy: create a "white list" filter labeled "ignore spam filters" this is a list of from addresses/email domains with the action of keep and do not process subsequent rules. create filters for the from field, and other fields that contain words that I am certain no one I know, and no company I know will use, and/or contain words and phrases/misspellings mangled fonts etc that I am certain no one I know uses. this rule is set to REJECT with reason: "553: account doesn't exist" 553 is an actual error code for a mailbox that does not exist. my hope is spam and phishing software may receive this error and remove my email address. either way I won't get the email. create a filter for all other words and phrases that goes to a folder I created that is not the spam folder to see what filters are working, and what is being filtered by cox, also to catch any false positives to add to the white list.500Views1like13Comments
