Problem with mail spam

Only 10-20 a day? Must be a new email account!

Can't help much with default applications.

I use a server with good filtering (Rackspace), Postbox, and SpamSieve. Between the 3, I manage to see only a handful of the couple-hundred I get in a day.

Not sure if/how SpamSieve works with the default Apple Mail application.

 

SpamSieve does work with Mail.app. It walks you through the setup when you launch it for the first time or the instructions can be found in the help.

 

I get a ton of spam to my Gmail Address. Luckily it all gets filtered and put into the spam box so I never see it in the stock mail app. Weird thing is I've never actually used that Gmail address for anything... I set up a Gmail account and never ever ever used that e-mail.

My Apple e-mail accounts that I use constantly never get a single spam message ever...

 

To SantaRosa2.2:

Your Gmail spam is puzzling, and the only thing I can think of (besides Google's alleged shenanigans) is that your username has been guessed by a spammer's brute force dictionary attacking program.

Usernames like Larry007 and Mary2014 are as good as busted and the first line of defense in spam elimination is a scrambled username such as t9W?xr5nY@gmailcom.

Obviously, our personal contacts won't abide that; so, open an Outlook webmail account and create alias addresses for Contacts, merchants, online bill notifications, Facebook, etc., and never...repeat...never....use the primary, scrambled username of Outlook to send or receive mail. Use the aliases.

Your personal contacts will want to be able to recognize you, so when providing them with an alias, you put your name, a second word, and then the random string in the alias that you provide them. That second word is important.

For example: judyjefft9Wr?xhK@outlook.com . Should Judy ever decide she must change the address, she sends Jeff a replacement address such as judyjeffrey4sG7cmAe@outlook.com . Jeff is changed to jeffrey.

Jeff will see the difference between jeff and jeffrey and will save the new address to his Contacts without having to examine the random strings. He will never actually have to type Judy's address or the random string, thanks to the new second word. He copies and pastes the new address to Contacts, deletes the old address, and selects the new address from the dropdown menu during message composition.


As for the busted GMail account: to eliminate the spam, you'll have to create a new GMail account, transfer your emails from the old account to the new, and delete the old account. And never send or receive mail via the username of this new account. Use Outlook's aliases and "fetch' the mail from those aliases to GMail with their Mail Fetcher.

GMail's Mail Fetcher program in Settings will let you "fetch" mail from any of the alias addresses in Outlook and assign them to GMail's Inbox, or any GMail folder of your choice.

Outlook offers 10 free aliases in their free version.

GMX.com and mail.com each offer 10 free aliases, all deletable at the user's discretion. 30 free aliases should hold the fort, and you won't have to delete any more accounts. Simply delete the aliases if they get spam.

I strongly recommend that you manage the webmail account logins with a password manager. The manager will keep you off the keyboard and on the mouse by filling in login information for you and eliminating those red typing error messages.

LastPass has the edge, but there are other password managing programs available.

Good luck!


UPDATE:Regarding the third paragraph... I found out by accident that Outlook treats the primary address as just another alias, which means that you can actually delete the primary as long as you have at least one alias left. That yields a big edge over the spammer. Don't delete all aliases or you may be deleting the entire account.