Norton AntiSpam

[Bill Ridgeway]

In what file is the Norton AntiSpam Allowed List and Blocked List kept
please? I would like to make sure these are backed up so, if I need to
re-install, I don't have to build up the lists again.

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway

[VanguardLH]

"Bill Ridgeway" wrote ...
> In what file is the Norton AntiSpam Allowed List and Blocked List
> kept please? I would like to make sure these are backed up so, if I
> need to re-install, I don't have to build up the lists again.


You should only have a dozen, or much less, entries in your
allow/block lists. Blocking spammers based on their e-mail address is
stupid. Spammers don't use their real e-mail address. Spammers (and
their zombies) change their e-mail address everytime them spew. You
should already have a rule to accept e-mails from known senders (i.e.,
those in your contacts lists or address books depending on your
UNNAMED e-mail program). You might whitelist some newsletters in your
NAS allow list. But blacklisting spammers is only performed by those
ignorant to how spam gets sent. Thousands of e-mail address for
*past* spams is worthless against *new* spams.

I haven't used Norton products in a long time (many, many years).
When I did, they used registry entries but they were encrypted.
Copying and importing those encrypted registry entries under a
different instance of Windows won't work because the key used to do
the encrypting is different. So keep the list short so that it is
actually effective for the few number that are listed there and that
you'll remember (or can record for later manual reentry).

[Bill Ridgeway]

"VanguardLH" <VanguardLH@mail.invalid> wrote in message
news:uIudnZzLTewiu2vbnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
> "Bill Ridgeway" wrote ...
>> In what file is the Norton AntiSpam Allowed List and Blocked List kept
>> please? I would like to make sure these are backed up so, if I need to
>> re-install, I don't have to build up the lists again.
>
>
> You should only have a dozen, or much less, entries in your allow/block
> lists. Blocking spammers based on their e-mail address is stupid.
> Spammers don't use their real e-mail address. Spammers (and their
> zombies) change their e-mail address everytime them spew. You should
> already have a rule to accept e-mails from known senders (i.e., those in
> your contacts lists or address books depending on your UNNAMED e-mail
> program). You might whitelist some newsletters in your NAS allow list.
> But blacklisting spammers is only performed by those ignorant to how spam
> gets sent. Thousands of e-mail address for *past* spams is worthless
> against *new* spams.
>
> I haven't used Norton products in a long time (many, many years). When I
> did, they used registry entries but they were encrypted. Copying and
> importing those encrypted registry entries under a different instance of
> Windows won't work because the key used to do the encrypting is different.
> So keep the list short so that it is actually effective for the few number
> that are listed there and that you'll remember (or can record for later
> manual reentry).

Every day a couple of hundred or so emails are correctly recognised as spam
and sent to the Norton AntiSpam box leaving only a few emails which have to
sent there manually so Norton AntiSpam is relatively efficient. Given that
I have just over 1,000 (in over a year) entries in the Blocked List many of
them, at least, are used over again. This belies the assertions that <<You
should only have a dozen, or much less, entries in your allow/block lists>>
and <<Thousands of e-mail address for *past* spams is worthless against
*new* spams>>. All these entries have a use even though some may now be
redundant and not worth identifying as such.

I am still looking at identifying the source so I may copy back to the hard
drive if I should have to do a complete software re-install.

Bill Ridgeway

[VanguardLH]

"Bill Ridgeway" wrote ...
>
> "VanguardLH" wrote ...
>>
>> "Bill Ridgeway" wrote ...
>>>
>>> In what file is the Norton AntiSpam Allowed List and Blocked List
>>> kept please? I would like to make sure these are backed up so, if
>>> I need to re-install, I don't have to build up the lists again.
>>
>> You should only have a dozen, or much less, entries in your
>> allow/block lists. Blocking spammers based on their e-mail address
>> is stupid. Spammers don't use their real e-mail address. Spammers
>> (and their zombies) change their e-mail address everytime them
>> spew. You should already have a rule to accept e-mails from known
>> senders (i.e., those in your contacts lists or address books
>> depending on your UNNAMED e-mail program). You might whitelist
>> some newsletters in your NAS allow list. But blacklisting spammers
>> is only performed by those ignorant to how spam gets sent.
>> Thousands of e-mail address for *past* spams is worthless against
>> *new* spams.
>>
>> I haven't used Norton products in a long time (many, many years).
>> When I did, they used registry entries but they were encrypted.
>> Copying and importing those encrypted registry entries under a
>> different instance of Windows won't work because the key used to do
>> the encrypting is different. So keep the list short so that it is
>> actually effective for the few number that are listed there and
>> that you'll remember (or can record for later manual reentry).
>
> Every day a couple of hundred or so emails are correctly recognised
> as spam and sent to the Norton AntiSpam box leaving only a few
> emails which have to sent there manually so Norton AntiSpam is
> relatively efficient. Given that I have just over 1,000 (in over a
> year) entries in the Blocked List many of them, at least, are used
> over again. This belies the assertions that <<You should only have
> a dozen, or much less, entries in your allow/block lists>> and
> <<Thousands of e-mail address for *past* spams is worthless against
> *new* spams>>. All these entries have a use even though some may
> now be redundant and not worth identifying as such.
>
> I am still looking at identifying the source so I may copy back to
> the hard drive if I should have to do a complete software
> re-install.


And when those spam spewing zombies are running on hosts for users
that have your e-mail address and then use that user's e-mail address
or one of the others in their address book (which you may also know)
or even your own e-mail address then you end up adding lots of e-mail
addresses for spam but which use the e-mail addresses of otherwise
good senders. The e-mail address is irrelevant to who sent an e-mail
because it is specified by the sender, not by their mail host or any
party independent of the spammer, and since they can obviously change
that bogus e-mail address anytime they choose, and as you have pointed
out, you end up without thousands of worthless e-mail addresses in
your blocked list. I've seen users with over 3000 e-mail addresses in
their blocked list and not of of them match on the spam they ***** is
still getting into their Inbox. Since those bogus e-mail addresses
often do match on valid e-mail addresses, apparently you don't care
about also spam-tagging the e-mails sent by those legitimate users.
Be interesting to hear about your boss' reaction to you ignoring his
e-mails simply because a spam came in once long ago that used his
e-mail address.

You go ahead and continue waving your fly swatter at those thousands
of flies getting into your house because you refuse to use a
screendoor to keep them from getting inside in the first place. Have
fun rebuilding that list of bogus e-mail addresses. So what did
Symantec say when you contacted them using their contact web form?
That way, they can get over their snickering before replying to you.
If Norton AntiSpam cannot get rid of spam without having to use a
blacklist of bogus e-mail addresses then you need to consider using a
different and more effective anti-spam product. I remember trialing
their anti-spam product (before they renamed it) and found it was just
short of worthless. If I ordered their anti-spam product first and
then SpamPal, they caught extremely few spam mails but SpamPal got the
rest. If they were ordered with SpamPal first and their anti-spam
product second, they never detected any spam because it didn't get
past SpamPal. You sure Norton AntiSpam isn't a dead product?
Symantec doesn't list it anymore on their all-products listing page
(http://www.symantec.com/norton/products/index.jsp). Didn't see it
listed at the online store, either.

SpamPal
Free
http://www.spampal.org/
This is a personal solution.
You do not indicate if an enterprise solution is required.

Hopefully you already enabled the server-side or upstream spam filter
option on your e-mail account.

[Ckyp]

"VanguardLH" <VanguardLH@mail.invalid> wrote:
>

This freeware program is extremely popular:
http://sawin32.sourceforge.net/

--

Ckyp