Spamblocker

[Johnny L.A.]

I use Spamblocker on my e-mail. In order for a message to make it into my in-box, the sender has to be in my address book. If someone is not in my address book, then they are sent an automated response with instructions on how to be added. Otherwise, the mail is goes to my Suspect Email folder where it will be deleted in 14 days automatically, or where I can take action manually. It's a good system except that I do get legitimate e-mail from people who are not in my address book, because I run a public web page. Most of the time, they don't request to be added.

So although no spam makes it onto my hard drive in-box, I still have the chore of deleting most of the e-mail in my Suspect folder online. Here's how I would fix it:

• Verify that the sender's address is valid before the mail goes into the Suspect folder. If the address is not valid, then the mail is deleted.
• When mail is identified as spam but has a valid return address, an "Mail Undeliverable -- The recipient's address does not exist" e-mail will be returned to the spammer. I think this would cause the mail to be removed from the lists. If enough people use this "spoof the spammer" option, then spammers might be less inclined to buy e-mail lists.
• Allow an option to automatically delete messages with Cyrillic titles. It's easy for me to see that a title is in Russian, and I'm not going to open it. Better to have it automatically deleted.
• Allow the option of deleting mail with certain keywords in the title. My filter on my mailbox does this, but it never gets used because I catch the spam earlier with Spamblocker. It would be nice if it never made it to the Suspect folder at all.

Furthermore, we need to come up with some sort of legal penalty for spamming. (Obviously our laws would not apply in other countries) How about making it illegal to sell contact lists unless the victims specifically give their permission?

Lately I've been getting multiple, duplicate spam from the same sender using different return addresses. I really don't need 25 messages all advertising "Amateur female chicks getting suked off "!

[Johnny L.A.]

Re: Point 2. By "identified as spam", I mean that Spamblocker already knows many spam messages, and it should spoof the valid return addresses automatically. Additionally, any message identified by the user as spam should also have the box that he can mark that tells the program to "spoof the spam" with an "invalid address" message.