[SC-Help] Re: spam for different email addresses

[Miss Betsy]

"Tanya" <tjtmdREMOVE_THIS at attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:414E1865.D87794BD at attglobal.net...
> hello,
> approximately 50% of my xs spam is addressed to email addresses
other
> than mine (nor is it cc'd to me)
> shouldn't this be caught by antiSpam software?
> my isp has filters but warns not to use the to: or the cc: -- i
cannot
> see why that is -- can't one assume that mail addressed to other
people
> is not for me?
> thank you

Filters are difficult to set up to cover all possibilities.  The
problem with setting up a filter that deletes (or sends to a
special folder) anything without your name in the to: field is that
it would also catch any legitimate email where you were copied.
You could warn all your correspondents not to copy you, but that's
asking a lot of people.

It is almost impossible to set a content filter to accurately get
all the spam without also catching some legitimate email.  If you
set the content filter lower so that it almost never catches
legitimate email, then you will get some spam that evades it.  I
once used spamassassin.  It worked pretty well - only letting about
6 spam through a day.  Except I did have to check all it filtered
out because every once in while it caught something I wanted.
That's why many of the filters ask you to whitelist your regular
correspondents so that they aren't filtered out.

IMHO, content filters are a big nuisance and put the burden of
controlling spam on the receiver.  OTOH, blocklists that reject at
the server, usually send an undeliverable message to the sender so
that instead of searching for possible false positives, the sender
knows it was filtered.  It is the *sending* end that can stop spam
from being sent and even if the sender is not sending spam, s/he is
the customer of the IP address and has more clout when s/he
complains that the email service is not reliable.

Miss Betsy