Do Macs get less spam?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
My wife's Hotmail account is deluged with spam, while my Mac account is virtually spam free. In fact, I don't recall ever receiving one email offering to enlarge my penis or enhance my breast size, although I've freely used my Mac email for more than 3 years. Does Apple do a spectacular job filtering this stuff out at HQ or am I just lucky?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    You are lucky.



    I don't ever get any enlargement or mortgage ads, but I get regularly 1-3 nigerian scams every single day, EACH of them gets always directly forwarded with gull headers to spam @ mac.com for analysis. The nigerian stuff makes me furious, especially as it's always the same people sending them. Grr.
  • Reply 2 of 13
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    It doesn't matter what platform you use, I have seen spam-free Outlook users and I have seen spam-ridden Mail.app users...So what does matter?



    1: the provider/host of your email

    do they run filters? do they manage and update the filters?

    Apple on the dotmac service has superb filtering from everything that I have read, they manage and update it, hell, they have a team that does nothing but analyze and track down spam that gets past them, all this while staying focused on avoiding the false positive. My mail provider, Gmail does the same thing, that is why I use them (and 1 gig free beats the hell outa 250m @ $99). Hotmail on the other hand doesn't give a rats ass about anything of the sort, even for their paying customers, that is why I left them in ~2000 and everyone I know left them by ~early 2003

    I recommend getting a Gmail account and migrating from hotmail, I have invites, just reply if you want one (or PM me your current email address)



    2: your filters

    Mail.app has a pretty good filter in it, I think it is based on spambays, that once trained is fairly accurate. For best training I recommend ~250 spams and 250 good messages and be sure to browse the rejects to avoid falls positives
  • Reply 3 of 13
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by a_greer

    My mail provider, Gmail does the same thing, that is why I use them (and 1 gig free beats the hell outa 250m @ $99).



    As a sidenote, GMail's capacity per account is over 2.3 GB right now (and counting...)
  • Reply 4 of 13
    drumsticksdrumsticks Posts: 315member
    Technically, spam is independent of OS/provider. Reason why Hotmail gets so much spam is because lots of people use it. Randomly generate a username, and chances are, someones got an account with that name. That's one way spammers work (besides lots of many others)...
  • Reply 5 of 13
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by gobble gobble

    My wife's Hotmail account is deluged with spam, while my Mac account is virtually spam free. In fact, I don't recall ever receiving one email offering to enlarge my penis or enhance my breast size, although I've freely used my Mac email for more than 3 years. Does Apple do a spectacular job filtering this stuff out at HQ or am I just lucky?



    well i know sites can already detect quite a bit of info from your computer through cookies, but perhaps there are things in windows (such as less-secure password locations or browsing histories) that allow more info to be transmitted. i don't know, i'm not a doctor.
  • Reply 6 of 13
    :-):-) Posts: 110member
    I actually felt I was getting to much spam in my .mac account, so I installed JunkMatcher - it helped a lot.



    It can be found here along with some other mail-plugins (I originally got the link of another thread on these boards, but I don't remember where).
  • Reply 7 of 13
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by MCQ

    As a sidenote, GMail's capacity per account is over 2.3 GB right now (and counting...)



    oh, I forgot that, I have become so complacent with gmail that I never bother to look at capacity used/availible
  • Reply 8 of 13
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    well i know sites can already detect quite a bit of info from your computer through cookies, but perhaps there are things in windows (such as less-secure password locations or browsing histories) that allow more info to be transmitted. i don't know, i'm not a doctor.



    The biggest spam problem on windows is outlook express, ~85% of end users use it cause it is "just there" it can do anything that IE can do because it uses IE to ren\\der the email, then you add in spyware that sends email to everyone in your OLE contacts...and it becomes a nasty cicle really quick...If you have a bunch of OLE users that have you in their address book, you are gonna get spammed if they arent nuking spyware all the time, and lets face it, OLE users are fucking dumb asses for the most part.
  • Reply 9 of 13
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by a_greer

    The biggest spam problem on windows is outlook express, ~85% of end users use it cause it is "just there" it can do anything that IE can do because it uses IE to ren\\der the email, then you add in spyware that sends email to everyone in your OLE contacts...and it becomes a nasty cicle really quick...If you have a bunch of OLE users that have you in their address book, you are gonna get spammed if they arent nuking spyware all the time, and lets face it, OLE users are fucking dumb asses for the most part.



    for windows users, what is a better mail app solution?
  • Reply 10 of 13
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    for windows users, what is a better mail app solution?



    Thunderbird.



    http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
  • Reply 11 of 13
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    for windows users, what is a better mail app solution?



    If you need full exchange support, outlook 2003, otherwise there is Thunderbird (from the people who brought you Firefox) eudora, and some others that i cant think of right now
  • Reply 12 of 13
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by a_greer

    If you need full exchange support, outlook 2003, otherwise there is Thunderbird (from the people who brought you Firefox) eudora, and some others that i cant think of right now



    thanks.
  • Reply 13 of 13
    geekdreamsgeekdreams Posts: 280member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    well i know sites can already detect quite a bit of info from your computer through cookies



    The only information a site can read from a cookie is the information it has placed in the cookie. Cookies are only readable by the domain (site) that created them, and they do not inherently contain any information about you or your computer.



    Sites can, however, determine info about your system from browser headers, IP address, etc., and store that info in a cookie or database or whatever.
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