Trying to use "unsubscribe" to get rid of spam

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pizzipie2
Posts: 1
Joined: December 26th, 2021, 7:18 pm

Trying to use "unsubscribe" to get rid of spam

Post by pizzipie2 »

I am using Ubuntu 20.04 and Thunderbird 78.14.0,

I am getting TONS of crap email. Like 700 or 800 junk emails every couple of days.

In trying to solve this I am trying to use a Filter on the 'body' of my Local Junk mail folder using the key words "unsubscribe" OR "Unsubscribe" OR "be removed from our list". While this works on a few cases 32 out of 635 the rest don't get found. I am using 'filtaquilla'.

Thanks in advance for help in solving this.

R
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tanstaafl
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Posts: 49647
Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Trying to use "unsubscribe" to get rid of spam

Post by tanstaafl »

In general, message filters are not a good way to deal with spam because you're essentially re-inventing the wheel using a poorer tool.

If your email provider runs something like SpamAssassin and adds custom headers that indicate the spam score such as X-Spam-score: 0.0 or where they truly came from such as X-Spam-source: IP='13.111.65.59', Host='mta4.exct.investorplace.com', Country='US', FromHeader='com', MailFrom='com' message filters are a good way to enhance the spam detection.

See the training and tweaking sections of http://kb.mozillazine.org/Junk_Mail_Con ... l_Controls . Set mail.adaptivefilters.junk_threshold to 30 and make certain you have at least 100 messages marked as spam AND at least 100 messages marked as not spam by the junk mail controls.

Does your email provider support plus addressing? That's where you use username+whateveryoulike@domain.tld rather than username@domain.tld. Its a handy way to create custom email addresses you can give out to companies/mailing lists and if they get abused, easily block (and know who was the culprit). You could try giving our plus addresses to everybody who has a legitimate reason to contact you, and block any messages sent to your plain email address (doesn't use plus addressing). Right now you're playing whack a mole.

Gmail is the gold standard for junk mail detection. Switching to an account with them is another possibility.
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