TOPIC:

Hi,

The club email address for our VPM (who is me) was released into the wild to publicise our speechcraft course.

It is getting absolutely swamped with an incredibly ridiculolus amount of spam.
Unfortunately, much of the spam that is coming through seems to come from addresses that don't follow the @address.com format.

This means that I can't add them to the Email black list.

Is there anything else I can do? I actually reduced our Spam Filter setting down to the minimum of 3, and I actually think it got worse after the fact.

Would appreciate any help on this. Thanks

Daisy Hill Toastmasters 346 District 69

Club Number & name please... Click on [CLICK HERE] in my signature...

Need some examples of the addresses you are getting spammed from.

If the spam threshold is at 3, you may end up blocking legitimate emails.

Examples:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

I would very happily increase the Spam setting if I had some other means of reducing the spam that I'm already receiving.

nabriton wrote:

Examples:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

I would very happily increase the Spam setting if I had some other means of reducing the spam that I'm already receiving.

Ok, you are right... those are strange email addresses. Technically, the part after the final period is supposed to be from 2-4 letters (per published standards), so This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. does actually work for the black list.

However, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. is non standard.

Do you have any other ones with the final part longer than 6 letters (the length of "review")? If not then, I will extend the range of the final part to 6 letters, even though it is non-standard.

Thanks Steve,
Just did a quick check and, no, nothing longer than 6 letters.

Much appreciated!

Ok, see if you can save those in the black list now. It should handle 6 characters in the final part.

I have to be careful about deviating too much from published standards... it sets us up for other future problems if I do that too much.

Yes, it works now, thank you!

Here is another thought that may be helpful to you in this case, also.

Part of the problem with the officer aliases and the contact email address is that they have been published and in the "public awareness" for a while now. It is pretty easy to determine those public addresses for any club.

However, what you can do as another approach is set yourself up in a custom group with only you as the group member, and make sure that the custom groups with only one member are publically accessible checkbox is checked in the Email Settings dialog.

Lets say you created a custom group called speechcraft and made yourself the only member of the speechcraft group. If you check the "one member public" checkbox, then This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. is a publically available address that is not so visible in the public awareness and should not get as much spam.

Get it? This is another reason I implemented custom groups. They actually can help with email security since they allow you to create and destroy email addresses.

I will definitely use that facility next time!