Managing Spammy Friends
Spam is usually a simple problem for me. Somebody sends me a spammy e-mail and they get the honor of a special rule in Mail.app that looks something like this.
Basically, anything from that person goes straight to trash. Problem solved. SpamSieve also helps.
However, I have unique problem with a few friends and relatives that think I actually give a damn about their newly found web collections of humorous kitten photos (“Oh, Shit”) or their hokey political rants. Unfortunately, these people sometimes also send me information that I actually need. In other words, I can’t simply give them my usual spammer=delete rule. So how do I get rid of their spam but still get their non-spam mail?
The solution lies in the fact that spammers - even friendly ones - are not capable of sending spammy type e-mail to just one person. These objectionable e-mails are always copied to my spam friends’ other contacts, usually several of which are complete strangers to me. This is the key to this hack.
I created a rule that looks for e-mail from my spammy friends with copies to a stranger that shows up in prior spam-type e-mails. The rule sends those to the trash. If my spammy friend then sends me an e-mail with actual substantive content (which wouldn’t be copied to the complete stranger), the rule doesn’t catch it. The rule looks like this.
I explained this rule and talked ad nauseum about e-mail in a recent MPU Episode.
Reader Comments (3)
So, that's how you prevent spam in your emails. But how about those emails that are worth reading? They also go straight from the trash I suppose.
In general, I in my opinion should be set on the server, not on one of many other clients. What did you think?
In all honesty, I got a good laugh from this managing spammy friends post. Not because it's not true, because it's so true. Dealing with certain people like that can be a headache.