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Open thread: Favorite spam blocker service?

I've been relatively fortunate with filtering spam over the past couple years (knock on wood). But despite a kickass three-tiered system that includes the world-beating server-side Sieve, plus Mail.app's pretty good client filtering, it's inevitable that even my best-loved private email addresses would find their way into the wrong hands (it's why I recently created "ThanksNo.com" -- an experiment in social re-engineering that you are free to use as well).

So, now that the spelling-impaired Lords of The Dark Side have such renewed interest in my investment options and genital proportions, I'm considering joining a service like Spam Arrest or the apparently deceased Knowspam. I mostly plan to run this on the addresses I use for strictly personal stuff, so I'm satisfied I can start with a "whitelist" to ensure I don't generate loops or dead ends for the "good" senders. But, you tell me...

Apart from running smart filters on your server and in your mail client, what's the best way to protect a mydomain.com-type email address from becoming compromised and punked-out? What are the dangers and cons of using a challenge/response service like Spam Arrest? Apart from abandoning it wholesale, what's the most effective and non-annoying way to rehabilitate a compromised address?

TOPICS: Email, Vox Populi
nessa's picture

I loved Knowspam... until I...

I loved Knowspam... until I stopped using it. My beloved address was ruined forever due to Knowspam's auto-reply-challenge. Every Knowspam auto-reply that requested human input made my email address known as "active" to spammers. Now that address receives 600+ spam emails per day.

My solution was to switch to Gmail. They do a great job of blocking the spam for me. And I set up my formerly-trashed email address to forward to my Gmail account - so now I only get the emails that were actually meant for me.

 
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