Sincere opinion about the role of SpamSieve (and similar tools)

I was using the trial of SpamSieve for some time; I can say that it picked out more spam than Apple Mail did. But not significantly more. So, huh …

I think using a tool like SpamSieve is simply the wrong approach. It leads you to false behavior, concerning your mailboxes and your mail behavior in general. The only valuable approach (in my book) is to maintain a certain discipline: When subscribing to anything that is just one-off or suspicious just don’t use “your” mail address, instead use any of the available throw-away addresses like @mailinator, @googlemail, @gmail, @yahoo or something alike. Subscription to these services is free, you can open as many spam boxes as you like/need. This way all the spam will land in the gmail or yahoo mailbox and won’t bother you any more. So simple.

When your mail boxes are already flooded with spam, it’s (probably) too late. Tools like SpamSieve may help you temporarily, but, of course, they won’t help you at all to get rid of the BS.

Tom

Another Sincere Opinion about the Role of SpamSieve

I disagree. If the only spam you got were from some “suspicious” events, then it might–and I say, might–serve one’s purpose to use “throw-away addresses” for which you never check for any incoming mail; however, the added overhead, for me, is hardly worth it what with SpamSieve doing such a great job re-routing spam to a spam mailbox. And if your suspicion was unwarranted, you want to get the reply. As for any “one-off” actions that I take, I do want replies to come into my regular in-box as even, say, a one-time order will entail an exchange.

But more significant is the inference that your real mail address is only available to spammers from your actions in response to another e-mail. E-mail addresses can be routinely harvested from other, legitimate, traffic on the Web.

My Bottom Line: SpamSieve serves me well and, in my opinion, most likely will serve most others well, too.

David
(No connection with the developer; just a very-satisfied user of the product)

I agree with David

Spamsieve, for me, performs much better than the default Mail “Junk Mail” filter, but, that aside, even if I was scrupulous in using my personal email account (which, of course, few of us are), spammers have multiple strategies for sending email (because it’s so easy to send millions of emails) including the “scraping” that David mentioned, or dictionary attacks (taking a domain and sending email to millions of possible permutations of names before the @ composed of common names and common initials), buying legitimate lists and using them or subverting them.

I like Spamsieve, but please, at least do your research into what spam is, how it’s propagated, and what strategies are currently in use. You don’t have to use the product, but your logic isn’t much informed. Sorry to be so blunt.

by the way…

I forgot to mention that some folks might be insulted, or be at least a little annoyed, at you calling their gmail or yahoo addresses (or even aol or hotmail) “available throw-away addresses”. Many offer fairly robust spam detection, at least on the order of Mac Mail or iCloud.

I don’t agree either.

I have my own domain name, and the ISP that hosts it does prescribe to a spam filer. Otherwise I would be completely overwhelmed.

I know all the usual strategies for avoiding spam. They are not sufficient for my purposes. I can’t easily change my email address because I use it for business purposes – it’s on my business cards and yellow pages advertisement, etc… Spammers seem to harvest my email address from the list of registered owners of domain names.

About twenty spam messages sneak through my ISP’s spam filter every day. Apple Mail’s filter detects maybe half of them, but does not move them to my spam folder. I have to review them anyway because one in ten is not junk.

SpamSieve is amazingly accurate. Maybe once a year I find a good message in my spam folder. I don’t even worry about it. The time and headaches I avoid with SpamSieve are well worth the price.

MM