Unsolicited Bulk Email, pernicious blog comments, and solicitous private messages have been on the rise for a long, long, time, and a great many people have put a lot of thought and effort into creating effective countermeasures. These have had varying degrees of success on an individual basis, but when combined, it is possible to lead a reasonably spam-free life on the internet. Here are some of the countermeasures I personally use:

• SpamAssassin

  This is what amounts to an advanced procmail filter that tests all incoming mail against a known set of spam characteristics. All headers, as well as the body of the message itself, are considered in these tests. SpamAssassin has had a big hand in reducing the overall quantity of spam delivered to customer inboxes at my ISP.

• MTA Filtering

  Another server-side countermeasure used by my mail host, testing all inbound mail against a variety of blacklists keeps mail from known sources of spam from even being accepted in SMTP. These include the MAPS RBL, the SBL, and others.

• Thunderbird’s Junk Mail Controls

  Thunderbird, the stand-alone Mozilla mail client, has an excellent junk-mail system that is easily trained to scoot anything that slips past the server-side filters into a little junk bin.

• MT-Blacklist

  A handy plug-in for the Movable Type package that I use as my CMS on this and a couple other sites. MT-Blacklist scans through recent comment submissions and looks for addresses that are known to use comment spam to generate Google-juice. A lot of online poker sites have been polluting my comments lately, so I’ve introduced a little regular expression to kill any comments that look like a casino.

• Windows XP SP2 Firewall

  Not the be-all, end-all of computer security, but it keeps casual probes the heck away from my system. It is extremely easy to configure, and unlike some other software firewalls, it actually turns off when you tell it to. Microsoft has a lot of work ahead of itself to build any real public trust in regards to computer security, but this is a step in the right direction.

• Hiding behind NAT

  It’s a lot harder to catch you if they can’t find you. Various messenger programs are susceptible to random announcements from spammers. This way they’re sending the spam to a router, not my computer screen. It also helps me feel a little more comfortable with only the SP2 firewall as my software protection.

• Maintaining a spam-trap mailbox

  I don’t go out of my way to hide my real email address, but I certainly don’t need every webforum or internet vendor pummeling me with what they think are legitimate, opt-in advertisements. I check this mailbox when I’m expecting a receipt or registration confirmation.