Why a Blocked List of Email Addresses is Useless

By Maurice Clarke

Do you maintain a list of blocked email addresses in your email system?

This is one of the biggest waste of your time, effort and money in the fight against spam. Why? well look at the facts;

Most spam email comes FROM email addresses that do not exist, try and email them and they bounce back because either;

# the email does not exist

# the email account has been closed by the ISP for spamming

# the email account is offline due to being over quota and cannot accept any more incoming mail. Many mailings are UNIQUE in that the email used to send is NEVER repeated and applies to this one bulk mailing only.

# The senders email is real enough but stolen from other users, or your address book and only appears to come from that sender, you may block mail from a real user who wants to send you authentic, none spam email.

# Blocked lists are created by users based on emails received and you want to stop future emails from that sender, you can easily see that by and large this is a fruitless, pointless exercise yet software and users continue to create and grow banned lists.

After a while you may have hundreds, even thousands of blocked emails all of which have to be referenced again EACH item of mail you receive.

For a user with say 200 items of incoming email a day with 300 blocked emails addresses that's 60,000 checks which may stop just one or two spam mails - if you have a BIGGER blocked list and/or receive MORE EMAIL each day you can see how much resources you are taking up each time new email arrives

See the pointlessness of the action? and why Spam Solutions approach of getting at spam BEFORE it reaches you works.

So what alternatives are there?

# If you set spam-forwarding on we will forward spam mail to you, set up a RULE to MOVE email to a special folder immediately on arrival (Spam forwarding turns off after 30 days)

# Set up a safe senders list for known authentic senders to send you mail reliably

# Release your own real email address only to close friends, relatives and business contacts whom you trust 100%

# Check your Inbox for any spam that slips through our control systems and send them onto us for study.

Maurice Clarke is founding owner of Spam Solution http://www.spam-solution.net dedicated to expand its fight against spammers. Offering a wide range of guides on email control and spam issues have led us to become a major force in the fight against spam. If you found this article useful please tell a friend about it and us.