'remaking' the email system is something that won't happen any time soon, thanks to the massive existing mail infrastructure and the unlikelyness of a global change-over to a new system.
So... we're stuck with what we have, imperfect as it might be.
Within the boundaries of the existing system, there is one thing that makes a huge difference when it comes to spam:
- Rule 1: Don't give out your email address
- Rule 2: See rule 1
It really is as simple as that. Use your 'real' email address for people you know and trust, and use an address you don't care about for all other mail services.
Possible have an in-between address for use on forums and such.
Case in point: After using it for 5 years, my private email address is still 100% spam free. I also have a hotmail address that I use when I need an address for registering on websites and such that gets a bazillion spam messages... Which I don't really care about, since I only look at it when I need something specific.
Now, if you are *already* the target of spam, there is nothing you can do to turn back the clock. All you can do is filter at that point, you're never ever going to get the junk fro flowing in.
In my experience, spambayes is the best product out there. It's free, open source, and available for pretty much any platform. On windows there's both an Outlook plugin, and a generic proxy-version which works with any email address. It's based on baysian filtering: You'll need to train it for a little, marking emails you receive as either spam or not spam. It very quickly learns your typical email patterns. The more you train it, the better it gets.
Main advantage is that it learns from YOUR email, and you don't get the cookie-cutter rules that are a lot less effective.
(Extreme example: forget about 99.9% of the spamfilter solutions out there if you happen to run a nigerian bank, or work for a company that sells viagra. spambayes would have no problem with that, since it learns what legitimate email for you looks like)
So... we're stuck with what we have, imperfect as it might be.
Within the boundaries of the existing system, there is one thing that makes a huge difference when it comes to spam:
- Rule 1: Don't give out your email address
- Rule 2: See rule 1
It really is as simple as that. Use your 'real' email address for people you know and trust, and use an address you don't care about for all other mail services.
Possible have an in-between address for use on forums and such.
Case in point: After using it for 5 years, my private email address is still 100% spam free. I also have a hotmail address that I use when I need an address for registering on websites and such that gets a bazillion spam messages... Which I don't really care about, since I only look at it when I need something specific.
Now, if you are *already* the target of spam, there is nothing you can do to turn back the clock. All you can do is filter at that point, you're never ever going to get the junk fro flowing in.
In my experience, spambayes is the best product out there. It's free, open source, and available for pretty much any platform. On windows there's both an Outlook plugin, and a generic proxy-version which works with any email address. It's based on baysian filtering: You'll need to train it for a little, marking emails you receive as either spam or not spam. It very quickly learns your typical email patterns. The more you train it, the better it gets.
Main advantage is that it learns from YOUR email, and you don't get the cookie-cutter rules that are a lot less effective.
(Extreme example: forget about 99.9% of the spamfilter solutions out there if you happen to run a nigerian bank, or work for a company that sells viagra. spambayes would have no problem with that, since it learns what legitimate email for you looks like)