Fighting Spam

[Brian_B]

Ok, so looking for some advice. I run my own linux email server for my main email and I have a few other email accounts around for various purposes. Probably 90% of my work I do via iPhone. I needed a solution to filter spam when I was working with email on my phone. My email gets a good deal of spam, it's been around for a while (and you've seen the ads I get on this site...).

I've been running a mail client on a Mac Mini just for the purpose of spam filtering - Spam Sieve is a wonderful spam filter. It may not be the most elegant solution, but it's worked pretty well for quite some time. Being IMAP it works with all my email accounts simultaneously, and I can put some other filtering rules that help keep my multiple Inboxes all working with the same set of folders on my main Linux account. Using the Mac Mini was... because it was what I had laying around years ago, and I just plug it in and leave it in the corner and forget about it most days.

I tried running server side filtering (SpamAssassin) years ago, but after a bit of effort couldn't get the same level of confidence as I had with Spam Sieve. Either it was too aggressive and I spent a lot of time going over the flagged junk to pull out false positives, or it wasn't restrictive enough and I still spent a lot of time filtering through spam. I couldn't find a goldilocks zone, but I'll admit I only spent a bit of time playing with it.

So, for years, it's been running an IMAP client on a mac mini. This Mac Mini is pretty old... 12 years or so? I don't know how much longer it'll be around, and since all it runs is an email client with a spam filter, I'm sure there's a better solution out there.

I'm asking what you guys do for spam, are there any recommendations? I'm thinking about migrating an IMAP based filter to my NAS (Synology) or PiHole Pi, so that I'm not running a dedicated hardware item.. My inclination is that running it as IMAP client based is still the way to go to be able to have it work across all my accounts, but I dunno - maybe something server side is warranted.

Thoughts?

 

[David_Schroth]

How many accounts are we talking? A couple or a raft full of them?

From what I've learned, running your own mail server stinks. That's why I'm shelling out the $5/user/month for Office365 both here and for my "day job" to handle that and the spam protection is actually quite good. It also beats making outbound email work and not get caught in other spam filters - just getting these forums to email outbound notices without getting thrown into exile (thanks, Amazon SES) took an act of Congress.

Beyond that, I'm out

 

[Brian_B]

How many accounts are we talking? A couple or a raft full of them?

From what I've learned, running your own mail server stinks. That's why I'm shelling out the $5/user/month for Office365 both here and for my "day job" to handle that and the spam protection is actually quite good. It also beats making outbound email work and not get caught in other spam filters - just getting these forums to email outbound notices without getting thrown into exile (thanks, Amazon SES) took an act of Congress.

Beyond that, I'm out

Agree with all of that. I do have to pay for an outbound relay so it doesn't get bounced, but that was set up back in '07 and we haven't had any issues with it since, so knock on wood...

I have... 5 email accounts? One of those is an O365 account, actually, but I never really paid attention to it's spam filtering, as it's a pretty low traffic account. Only two or three get any use though.

 

[David_Schroth]

Agree with all of that. I do have to pay for an outbound relay so it doesn't get bounced, but that was set up back in '07 and we haven't had any issues with it since, so knock on wood...

I have... 5 email accounts? One of those is an O365 account, actually, but I never really paid attention to it's spam filtering, as it's a pretty low traffic account. Only two or three get any use though.

To cut down on costs, if they're on the same domain then you can just run aliases/shared mailboxes for the addresses (maybe even for different domains)....

 

[Brian_B]

To cut down on costs, if they're on the same domain then you can just run aliases/shared mailboxes for the addresses (maybe even for different domains)....

Oh no, not the same domain at all. I have ... many many aliases. So I'm familiar with that These are all on different services and domains (Gmail, O365, etc...)

 

[Space_Ranger]

I have setup a spam filter solution for work called ASSP. It's rather effective in its trapping of spam, and best of all, it's Open Source.

I can point you in the right direction if you're interested in trying to setup your own solution.