marcella

I do not know what else I can do beyond these efforts to date:

• placed a wired MN-700 router with two critical ethernet desktops and 3 network printers behind a wireless WRT54GC NAT router for a notebook. Wireless uses WPA-PSK and MAC filtering. Gibson Shields Up sees no sign of my network, files or ports.
• using Zonealarm firewall to control outgoing communication. Windows firewall permanently disabled.
• unnecessary windows services also disabled or left on manual.
• running Micro Trend AV in active mode, auto-updated every 3 hours.
• running WinPatrol in active mode to block changes in startup, host file, etc.
• running MailWasher Pro to allow me to intercept spam on the ISP server before it gets to my machines.
• running Spy Sweeper, CounterSpy daily. Almost never find anything serious.
• using Firefox, and deleting private data (cache, history, all cookies other than exceptions, etc.) on every shutdown.
• Also using Cloudmark Desktop integrated with Outlook 2003 to filter out spam that gets through (it automatically goes to the deleted files folder where I have to check it before it automatically deletes on Outlook shutdown).
• keeping xp pro with sp2 up to date.

Non of these apps conflict (that took some time!) but some licenses expire soon. I 'm thinking about simplifying it with Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2006, with Zonealarm and Cloudmark. Drop the other spyware apps and run the free Ewido as a supplement for trojans. I hate buying all this recommended software at about $200/year and still having to deal with the new spam every hour or so. Other than an anonymous surfing add-on with SSL 128bit encryption on all data streams, I can't think of anything else to do.

Grove

Spam? Do you mean PopUps or Spam as in receiving a lot of Spam in your Email?

marcella

Sorry for being unclear. I mean junk email, including well known fraud, pay pal, ebay, fbi and cia - all the usual phony and dangerous emails. All my apps see it as spam and malware-laden email, and tag it as such, but do not actually stop the perps from knowing my email addresses. I do not use non-secure sites for online commerce, but I do register and logon to sites such as this forum, keeping my email addresses private.

Grove

Spam Email is usually received when you join "competions" and when you try to win items over the internet.

I am not 100% sure but I have not found a way to stop Spam 100%. I have got ways to reduce it. I suggest you look at this article:

http://www.scambusters.org/stopspam/

marcella

I've never done that on the internet. I think much of my spam may originate with careless or accidental website browsing that brought malware like keyloggers, etc. into my system. I'm wiser now, but the spammers already have my address.

Lerra

I've been looking for a decent antispam software for quite a while. I think I've tried most of them. My email address was widely published on web pages so I get a lot of spam. I average about 400 a day. As you can see, spam software is very important for me and must be effective. I decided to try Spam Bully and over the trial period I was very impressed. Of the 400 spams each day only one or two actually got through. Very impressive.

marcella

Lerra,

Thanks for the tip - I will look at it. I think I've settled on the following combination:

• death2spam which acts as a proxy pop3 server and uses Bayesian logic to decide for itself what is spam, good or unsure. It allows me to train it over time, getting the accuracy to well over 98%. Until it is fully trained (if ever), I set my preferences to have all spam delivered into my "deleted files" so I can check it.
• Cloudmarks/ Cloudbar for Outlook - my second line of defense that I need for spam coming in on other email accounts (death2 spam is $35 per account, and I only use it on my most widely-known address)
  CounterSpy for my third line of defense - running full scans on a daily basis. JUst don't use its other system tools as I have found they can really screw up networking and other setups by changing settings in local and global security. These are very hard to discover and the last place most people would ever look.

I was using MailWasher Pro, but found that the endless dealing with black and whitelist too time-consuming and ultimately useless since so many spammers change one digit in their names every hour of the day.

death2spam has made a huge difference in this regard as I now find very, very few mis-identified incoming emails.

One more thing - I'm using Anonymizer to hide my actual IP. It has user options for encryping all data sent, and warning of websites known to be dangerous. The latter is very informative - for example, it will warn me that a sidebar advertiser on the otherwise safe ESPN website is dangerous, allowing me to proceed with Anonymizer clearing out dangerous code, without cleaning, or of course not going there at all.

Well, one more thing again. Brian Livingston and others have recommendations for controlling spam, including using graphics to exhibit email addresses on your websites. The spammer's trolling weapons don't deal with graphics. You may have to change your address though before you start again with better defenses.