How oftern does Bluehost update their Spam filters

[nambi]

The spam I receive through Bluehost is worst than any other provider I've ever used. I am receiving as well as my co-workers about 20 - 25 spams a day clearly marked Viagra and other VERY common terms, I am considering switching providers but I would like to know if there is anything I can do or that can be done to prevent this (making rules daily is NOT an option and upgrading to Postini isn't either)


Thank You,

[Early Out]

Unless you've activated Spam Assassin or Postini, there are no spam filters on BH email, which is the way most of us want it. We prefer to have all email delivered to us without someone else deciding what is, and is not, legitimate. We can then apply whatever filtering we want.

And BH is not an ISP (like Comcast or Charter) - it's a web host.

[djmatt]

whenever I need to register online or give an unknown entity my email address, I give them one that is what I call a "throw away" address. Something like:
just4u@mysite.com
then, I set up a forwarding from just4u@ to my real address. When i start getting spam at that address, I just delete that forward.

Also, if you have a web site, don't put your email address in the code. I use javascript to hide it on some sites and on others, I force users to fill out a form.

Check your WHOIS info, that may have your email address shown, too.

Postini does work pretty well. i have it set as aggressive as it can be and maybe once a week it catches something that I really wanted.

[nambi]

Unless you've activated Spam Assassin or Postini, there are no spam filters on BH email, which is the way most of us want it. We prefer to have all email delivered to us without someone else deciding what is, and is not, legitimate. We can then apply whatever filtering we want.

And BH is not an ISP (like Comcast or Charter) - it's a web host.

My mistake Hosting provider not ISP

I have enable Spam Assassin, but shouldn't this filter out obvious SPAM. I know that it's impossible to every eliminate spam but I constantly receive E-mails with spam assassin turned on containing subjects such as "Karrma Sutra - Getting Ready For sex" and "RE: SALE 70% 0FF on Pfizer" coming into my outlook inbox. These are obviously spam wouldn't Spam Assassin catch these?

[Early Out]

I tried Spam Assassin for a while, and found it to be fairly ineffective. Admittedly, I didn't spend any time trying to get it to "learn" what was spam, and what wasn't. But I agree with you - in its default mode, you'd think it would recognize the most obvious garbage, but it doesn't appear to. The junk filter in my Thunderbird email client seems to be doing a better job, all by itself.

I've dropped back to the strategy laid out by djmatt. It's easy, and works quite well. To keep it simple, I just work my way through a series of email address, like addy001@example.com, addy002@example.com, and so on, dumping each one as it attracts too much spam. Thankfully, the handful of "primary" addresses that I want to hang onto haven't attracted much spam yet, since I've been fairly careful about where I use them. I know the spammers will find them eventually, alas.

In this context, by the way, the difference between an ISP and a host is an important one - most ISPs aggressively filter spam (some of them much too aggressively), but most web hosts do no filtering at all.