Friday, November 14, 2008

Spam, spam, spam

Interesting article over at BBC Technology today about the closure of a host provider which has reckoned to reduce the amount of spam (where?) by about 70% - though it's not all good news...they reckon it won't be long before the spammers just move elsewhere.

Interestingly the amount of spam I get has reduced remarkably recently. My braodband supplier is Pipex (I know, I know....) now owned by Tiscali, and since Tiscali took them over the service is much worse. I've been threatening to move for ages, but that's another story.

Anyway, some time ago - a year or so back, I emailed Pipex ranting about the lack of a spam filetr on their services, and they fobbed me off with the usual rubbish saying it was too many technical issues or they just couldn't be arsed. About 3 weeks ago I was browsing the forums at thinkbroadband sad git that I am, and I noticed that the Pipex Forum was referring to a "spam" filter. I duly logged on to Pipex, and lo and behold, there in my email configuration is a spam control checkbox. I checked it and saved - and got an error. Tried about 3 or 4 times andgot an error every time, cursed in frustration and logged out. But my spam count plummeted. I checked in a day or two later, and my spam control box was ticked (hooray) and was obviosuly working.

The amount of crap in my in-box - or rather on Pipex's servers before I check because for several years I've used the rather marvellous "Mailwasher Pro" as a client end spam checker, has reduced from anywhere upwards of 30-40 junk emails a day to no more than 1 or 2, and these are gnereally identified as spam anywayin Mailwasher, so easy to pick out.

I'm dead chuffed, and as spam feree as I've been since about 1998, but why didn't Pipex tell me this option was there?

No comments: