Bloody, stinking, smegging, arseing, sporking, buggering SPAM!!!

[BigJim]

Well I asked the people themselves and they sent me a solution too complex for a thicko like me to comprehend. I told them I couldn't understand a fucking word they were saying, so they sent one simple, but too frigging vague as to lead anywhere. Right now I'm stuck and their fucking support is fucking shite and I'm fucking pissed off!!!

(I'm not afraid to swear either! You might have noticed?)


Right now I'm stuck with upwards of 90 SPAM e-mails a day dropping into my Inbox and there seems to be bugger all I can do about it.

 

[BigJim]

HDS, are you using a firewall at the same time as Spamnet?

 

[BOFH666]

If it's any help do you want to send me (either PM or e-mail [email protected]) the stuff they sent you and I'll run it through the decoder ring? I think my e-mail address is in me profile. Or just post it and I'll pick it up from here. No guarantees of course, but can't hurt to have a look.

(For the record, as someone who's spent time on a helldesk or two, any support team that can't manage to target their service at the audience should be given their very own private circle of hell IMHO. Good helldesk/support staff are worth their weight in gold, sadly they're few and far between and there's an oversupply of the other sort.)

 

[BigJim]

If it's any help do you want to send me (either PM or e-mail [email protected]) the stuff they sent you and I'll run it through the decoder ring? I think my e-mail address is in me profile. Or just post it and I'll pick it up from here. No guarantees of course, but can't hurt to have a look.

(For the record, as someone who's spent time on a helldesk or two, any support team that can't manage to target their service at the audience should be given their very own private circle of hell IMHO. Good helldesk/support staff are worth their weight in gold, sadly they're few and far between and there's an oversupply of the other sort.)

Bugger. Sadly the e-mail is now deleted. It had something to do with "enabling diagnostics and troubleshooting" if that's any help? Sorry I can't be more helpful.

 

[BOFH666]

*Pulls out Tech -> English dictionary*

Hmm, ah "Enable diagnostics / troubleshooting / error reporting" translates to:

"Bugger, we haven't got a clue what the problem is but hopefully we can blind this one with science and they'll go away".

Rough translation I know, but it's about right.

Sorry, that's not really very usefull is it? If I get a sec over the weekend I'll try and download it to have a look, but you may be better off having a look at one of the other programs out there. Just had a quick hunt round and there seems to be thousands of the darn things out there, but it might be worth having a look at either Norton or McAfee. You'll have to pay for 'em, but at least there should be a proper support team to help out and all the updates etc should happen in the background. Having a very quick look for reviews Norton Anti-spam 2004 seems to get good reviews and needs a minimum of setup & maintenance from the user. Comes with pop-up blocker too and supports Outlook Express. Ummm, looks to be £19.99 from PC World and, oddly, £22.99 from Amazon.

 

[BigJim]

I've already got Norton Personal Firewall 2004 and Norton Anti-Virus 2004, so that might be worth a look. Something like that will surely be compatible with the same organisation's prducts.

 

[BigJim]

Just bought Norton Anti-Spam 2004 from the PC World web-site. That'll sort the crap!

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Give 'em hell Jim!😀

 

[BigJim]

It should arrive in Tuesday. After that...


SPAM BEWARE!!!!!!😡

 

[BOFH666]

Do us a favour, let us know how it goes? After a few, I'll be polite and say "Issues", with Norton Antivirus 2002 I switched over to McAfee for the new machine and have been regretting it ever since. If the Anti-spam stuff works I may just bundle that in with the next AV purchase.

Though it hardly seems worth it for ~5 messages a day.

Oh, and good luck.

 

[BigJim]

Quite possibly it's not mate. I get anywhere between 60 and 100 a day, si'f definately be more my kind of thing.


Never had a problem with the 2004 versions of Norton Firewall and Virus, btw.

 

[BigJim]

Do us a favour, let us know how it goes?

After a delay of about a week, PC World finally sent the darn thing to me today. (27th of January 2004.) It's now installed and has all the updates downloaded and integrated. It appears to be whooping arse so far. Working perfectly in conjunction with Norton Firewall and Anti-Virus 2004 (of course), and is allowing Outlook Express to function normally. Not bad for twenty quid.

I'll give it a while then let you know what the statistics are for it's performance. 🙂

 

[BigJim]

In the 15 hours or so that it's been working...

Valid e-mail 110

Mail correctly identified 110

Spam 39

Spam correctly identified 34

That was with the security level set to medium. I just raised it to high, so I'm sure more genuine mail will get binned. It won't take me long to teach it the difference though.

 

[BOFH666]

*Grin* Don't you just love the customer service of the Dixons group?

Sounds like it works at least, was a tad worried about that, always hate suggesting something I haven't tried myself.

You hear about Billy G's pledge to rid the world of Spam in the next two years by the way? I think being Knighted has gone to his head..... no, wait, ah I see, they want to go the 'micro payment' route. Trust Microsoft to take a problem they're largely responsible for creating and charge money to solve it.