My email address is out there in public and it's been taken and used by spambots like Ned Beatty was used in Deliverance. I get around seventy or eighty spam emails a day. Now this was something that I knew was going to happen so don't cry for me. It's actually not such a problem for me since I'm using a kick ass spam filter and I have it cranked up to eleven.

SpamBayes separates out all of the obvious crap into one folder and all of the questionable crap into another. I actually take the time to peruse the sender and subject of the items in the questionable category. Two reasons for that: first, they're questionable; second, that's how I train my vicious spam attack program. If I recognize the sender or the subject line appears suitably non-spammish I'll actually open the email and take a look. Of the 70 or 80 spam mails a day only a handful will be in the questionable folder. I'll take a cursory glance at the obvious crap too, but it's really not with any intent to rescue emails. I'm just scanning for unusually humorous subject lines at that point. This could be a problem for people trying to reach me though. If somebody happens to write their emails in a way that seems spamarific then SpamBayes is going to whack it. To prevent any such calamity and loss of precious words, allow me to give a couple pointers on how to avoid having your emails terminated prematurely.

1. SpamBayes doesn't like blank subject lines. Either does Jim. Before I had SpamBayes I was already a routine deleter of emails with blank subjects. Just put in a subject, okay? If you don't have a subject then why are you bothering to email? I mean, you're emailing about something aren't you? If you're not emailing about something then why are you emailing? If this rare case comes up where you are emailing about nothing, put "I am emailing about nothing" in the subject field. Problem solved.


2. Avoid ha3kir type or lots of basic sellping errors. SpamBayes figured out a long time ago that spammers like is to use misspellings and number/letter replacements to try to fool spam filters. SpamBayes isn't fooled. Bad spelling and numbers inside of words will get an email shitcanned faster than you can say "Christina Aguilera is a dirty ho". Much faster.


3. Don't include the name of an African country in your email. The word 'Nigeria', for example, has a spam index of 99.7. That means that if 'Nigeria' is in your email you are almost guaranteed to be a spammer. Now SpamBayes is still going to evaluate the rest of your letter but do you really want to take the chance that you'll get axed for this? Didn't think so.


4. Don't ask me for money. I've carefully trained SpamBayes to attack these emails with extreme prejudice as I believe in being prepared and my kids will be using computers soon. No "Dad can I have $5" mails waiting in my box, that's for damned sure. If you want money from me you have to grovel in front of me.


5. Don't try to sell me anything. I'm saving my money for the people willing to grovel in front of me so it's not like I'm going to buy anything from you anyway.

Posted by: Jim at 02:46 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 571 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Are you going to divorce me now because I always leave the subject line empty??????;-)

Posted by: LW at February 11, 2004 03:14 PM (saeHM)

2 Nah, you're exempt from all rules Love. SpamBayes knows that anything from you is all full of happy goodness.

Posted by: Jim at February 11, 2004 03:27 PM (IOwam)

3 What about that spam filter that makes people register when they email you.

Posted by: pylorns at February 11, 2004 04:23 PM (FTYER)

4 I have just been trying to filter my spam via server side.

Posted by: pylorns at February 11, 2004 04:26 PM (FTYER)

5 That's an effective system and I know a few people who use it but it personally annoys the crap out of me. I know it shouldn't - it's just a 'hit reply' and you're done with it thing - but it does. Feeling that way about it personally I couldn't implement it and force it on others.

Posted by: Jim at February 11, 2004 04:29 PM (IOwam)

6 I don't like Spambayes that much.I train and train it and it keeps putting the same emails that I told it NOT to,in the spam folder...or into the "possible spam" folder.

Posted by: LW at February 11, 2004 05:03 PM (saeHM)

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