Junk mail

[Chippygeoff]

I have an apple i mac and like most people I get my fair share of junk mail. I have tried deleting, sending to trash etc with no joy. I can clear the junk mail in box and the following day it's all back again. Does anyone know how I can delete it on a permanent basis. Many thanks in advance.

 

[pebbles]

The only way I managed to limit it, was to set the junk mail filter to the strongest setting, and now happily only get a few a week which I 'block' instead of merely deleting - I guess it may also depend on the email system you use?

 

[wizard]

Hardly ever get any maybe i or 2 a year

 

[Zeddedhed]

Geoff, I'm presuming that you're using the default mail app. If this is the case go into the applications preferences and select the junk mail icon at the top of the window.
Enable Junk Mail filtering and select the option to Move it to the Junk Mailbox

Then click on the Accounts icon and select the mail account you are using and click on the Mailbox Behaviours button
Set your Junk mail settings as in the image and you should be good to go

Hope this helps.

Pete

 

[Chippygeoff]

Many thanks Pete, you are a star. Did all what you suggested and looks like we have a winner.

 

[RogerS]

It also depends on how good your email provider is. I use Demon who pass all my incoming email through their own spam filter and it works extremely well. I only get the odd one or two a day. When I had occasion to ask them to temporarily disable it.......boy, did the spam come flooding in!

 

[woodfarmer]

It also helps enormously to only allow cookies (including flash cookies) from selected sites. ie cookies disabled except for hand picked exceptions.

 

[RogerS]

It also helps enormously to only allow cookies (including flash cookies) from selected sites. ie cookies disabled except for hand picked exceptions.

Given the number of e-commerce sites and similar that I use on a daily basis that approach wouldn't get me very far !!

I don't really see either why cookies are going to make you get more spam...would be interested to learn why you think they will.

 

[woodfarmer]

It also helps enormously to only allow cookies (including flash cookies) from selected sites. ie cookies disabled except for hand picked exceptions.

Given the number of e-commerce sites and similar that I use on a daily basis that approach wouldn't get me very far !!

I don't really see either why cookies are going to make you get more spam...would be interested to learn why you think they will.

Many sites switch you temporarily to another , these secondary sites often insert cookies which then download information, usually for marketing purposes which gets sold on. you will notice adverts appearing on your screen when browsing, and sometimes will get email offers of goods/services targeting (loosely) on the products from other websites.

You really need to watch out for the newer flash cookies which are usually located in or down from the directory in which Flashplayer is installed. they can become very big with lots of data and are near trojan horses.

 

[RogerS]

Many thanks for that, woodfarmer. I am guessing that you are alluding to cross-site scripting and also tracking cookies. Are you saying that extensions such as CookieStumblr, DoNotTrackMe, Ghostery etc are no good? Or setting your browser to bock third-party cookies? With regard to ads popping up, well, AdBlock seems to do what it says on the tin.

That's where i got to in my thoughts late last night.

Then this morning I did a little more research and came across this link http://www.securify.nl/cve-2011-3426.html which is a test for vulnerability for certain cross-site scripting attacks. However, I'm not sure that only allowing cookies on named sites will prevent this sort of attack but would be interested to hear otherwise. I ran this URL against Chrome (it failed), Safari (it failed), Firefox was better as it prompted me if I wanted to save the file (but I am guessing that there might be a setting in FF preferences to automatically save...never a good idea), Camino (failed) - all on a Mac BUT caveat I'm not running the latest version of safari as that would require an upgrade to my OS..so maybe it's fixed in later releases.

As far as I can see there are no Flash cookies but, by God, Flash leaves a lot of detritus over the years. I'm really tempted to reformat and start again!

 

[woodfarmer]

As far as I can see there are no Flash cookies but, by God, Flash leaves a lot of detritus over the years. I'm really tempted to reformat and start again![/quote]

Flash cookies do not register as cookies (lso cookies) take a look through you flash directories and sub directories and check file update dates. I use "Better privacy" to track these and auto remove each time I exit firefox. It helps I am using linux and not mickeysoft craporation products.

 

[RogerS]

.....
.....not mickeysoft craporation products.

Neither am I ! I'll look out Better Privacy, thanks.