A Radical Spam Fix: Unplug Your Mail Server - 2,220 Views, 3 Comments
|
Previous Article « Windows Users and Administrators to Get 5 Security Updates on Tuesday
Read Next Article » Spyware: The Top Ten Most Prevalent and Insidious
Anurag Jain has a radical idea to clear your inbox of spam: unplug your mail server for several days. According to Jain’s blogspot blog, the institute of which he is part, the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, had to upgrade their Microsoft Exchange server. As a result, the mail server at which Jain received his email, the Institute’s server, was shut down - completely shut down - for approximately two days. When the server was brought back up, Jain found that his spam had been reduced to a trickle. Jain compares this process to detoxifying the body, and, while he admits that it’s a radical way to get rid of your spam, he says that it has worked for him. While Aunty doesn’t doubt Jain’s experience, it does fly in the face of conventional wisdom and shared experience. Jain’s hypothesis is that the spammers removed his email address from their lists after receiving continous bounces from the downed server. However it’s well known in anti-spam circles that spammers almost never bother to remove bouncing email addresses - what do they care? They aren’t receiving the bounce notices anyways, as they didn’t use their real return address in the first place Still, it makes an interesting read, and might, if you are in a position to do so, make for an interesting experiment. However, that said, Aunty wouldn’t recommend it, and can’t imagine that many would be able to replicate Jain’s positive outcome. You can read more about this on Anurag Jain’s Blog.
Follow Anne on
Twitter 
Friend Anne on Facebook
A Radical Spam Fix: Unplug Your Mail Server
Twitter Explained in Plain English
Previous Article « Windows Users and Administrators to Get 5 Security Updates on Tuesday
Read Next Article » Spyware: The Top Ten Most Prevalent and Insidious
Read more:
» How to Get Rid of Gmail’s Pesky “On Behalf of” When Sending from Gmail
» VaporStream - Recordless Email that Disappears on Purpose
» Gmail “Message left on server” Message - What it Means
For additional similar stories check out our archives on Everything Else
NOTE: We never, ever, ever will recommend any product or service on this site that we have not regularly used ourselves and do not wholeheartedly believe in. That said, in some cases after being very pleased with a product or service, we may enter into a relationship with the provider of that product or service such that if someone purchases that product or service based on our recommendation, we may get a small payment. Such payments go towards the upkeep of the Internet Patrol.
A Radical Spam Fix: Unplug Your Mail Server
Anurag Jain has a radical idea to clear your inbox of spam: unplug your mail server for several days. According to Jain’s blogspot blog, the institute of which he is part, the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, had to upgrade…
Trackback by Lockergnome's IT Professionals — 12/10/2004 @ 12:38 am
Wow, they really nailed him on the comments area!
Comment by Meka — 12/10/2004 @ 8:29 am
This sort of happened to me a couple of weeks ago - all of a sudden, almost all of my email bounced for two days when my mail server got sick. And, you know? It did work. For a couple of weeks. While the level of spam has not actually returned to pre-bounce levels, it is slowly increasing again. It was nice while it lasted.
Comment by Jodie — 12/11/2004 @ 1:40 pm