Spamcop

Spamcop has been around for a while but I have only recently started using it myself and have been very impressed with its performance in ridding my mailbox of junk mail. I would strongly recommend everyone who suffers from junk mail, to use this service to filter their mail. Here's why:

Conventional mail filters
It seems that internet service providers' mail filtering effectiveness varies greatly from one to the next. And the amount of control the end user has over the filters is sometimes good, and other times very limited. Recently the biggest problem seems to be the amount of spam that comes via "bot nets" - networks of spammer-hijacked computers (see this BBC link for more details). Often the "spam score" of the content of these junk messages is low, so SpamAssassin and the other packages that ISPs use to filter it out, miss them. Filters need to be able to accurately identify bot nets, so spam is filtered based on the source or route taken to get to you.

Check out the Spamhaus list of top 10 dodgiest networks for spam - you'll see the same old ISPs on that list time after time. Filtering based purely on message content doesn't work so well as spammers are ever more inventive about disguising their wares in graphics, "captcha-style" writing, and by obfuscating the content with poetry and literary extracts. If your ISP isn't using an up-to-date list of bot nets (and many don't) then the back-stop fails and it all ends up in your mailbox.

How Spamcop differs
SpamCop streamlines the process of determining the origin of spam and reporting it to the ISP responsible for sending it, aiming to eliminate junk at source. The data it gathers also builds up the SpamCop Blocking List, which is one of the lists ISPs can use to filter customers' mail. But the best bit is that for an annual SpamCop fee of about £15, you can also have SpamCop handle all of your mail. You can still keep your existing email address(es) @yourdomainname or @yourisp. You just set your mail system to forward everything to your SpamCop mailbox, rather than collecting it from your normal POP3 servers. SpamCop will filter out all the junk to a "Held Mail" folder, which you can check via your browser.

Next to every message in here, is a check box to "report as spam". Using this, you can ask SpamCop to analyse the junk email and send a properly formatted response to the "abuse" address of the originating ISP. It's only through such reports being made that these ISPs in countries such as China and Korea can be made aware of the problem and can take action to close spammers' accounts. As you might expect from a filtering service based at "Spam Central", it is stunningly accurate - a few do still get through, but not many. Everything else is held in an inbox which you can either read in a browser, or you can set your Outlook or other mail reader to fetch your mail from there. This single collection point also makes it easier for you to collect spam-free mail on the move, via your laptop or PDA. Ask for more details about setting up your SpamCop account.