PDA/Smartphone Email SPAM Issues and my Solutions

[RonnieG]

My experience with Spam Assassin and several other 3rd party email filter programs that my email vendors used, or that I have tried myself over the years, both server and client based, has been less than satisfactory. So, while REW hosts my website, GoDaddy is still my primary email service provider, as well as my domain registrar, and MX records at REW route all incoming email for my domain to Godaddy's email servers. Don't ask me how that works, too technical even for me!

After a few weeks of "training", SPAM rarely gets through the GoDaddy filters. In addition to their own content-based filters, Godaddy also uses the spamhaus.org IP-based filter lists, so emails from most known high volume spam servers don't even make it to the spam folder, and are simply blocked, so I never see those at all. That has its own potential issues, but so far, I have not missed any personal emails from a consumer or other real estate agent that I am aware of. I do still have to go online to my webmail at Godaddy to review the spam folder at least daily to see what didn't get through that I wanted, and add a new sender to my approved list from time to time. Everything else that is spam, and not totally blocked by the spamhaus.org list based filter, gets tagged, moved to the webmail spam folder, and eventually reviewed and purged at the webmail stage, and never even gets through to Outlook or my PDA/phone.

Also: I do not advertise my email addresses in "clear text" on any page of my websites. Only in the banner graphic. I do not hotsync my Outlook email inbox directly to my PDA/phone. All email that passes Godaddy's filters goes through Outlook on my home office PC, which is always up & running. The only ones forwarded to my PDA/phone, as text messages, are new leads, showing appointment requests, more info requests and certain other high priority notifications. Those are intercepted, identified by their subject lines, and forwarded by rules in Outlook. The rules leave a copy of the email in Outlook, so I always have backups and permanent file copies there that I organize and file later. I could also forward them to a special private email address that would be for phone emails only, but chose not to, opting for simple text messaging instead. My philosophy is that any email that is not a direct consumer request can wait until I am back at my home office PC.

If your PDA/Phone is your primary email system, the Outlook based rules and forwarding technique I use may not work for you. But a strong and reliable email pre-filter, like Godaddy's, may still address most of your concerns. Godaddy also supports email forwarding, so you could have it forward the non-spam filtered emails directly to the phone's special email address from there. That also leaves a copy of the email on their webmail server, which you can pick up later with Outlook or webmail.

[GetSmart]

great post. did you set up this technie system yourself or did you have to hire someone?

[RonnieG]

Myself. A bit of trial & error on the outlook rules side, but everything else was a piece of cake.