Several weeks ago I did a first-look post on an application called SidewinderX.¬ SidewinderX is a SPAM tracing and reporting tool for Apple OS X from Hendrickson Software Components (hsc).¬ I reported in this past post that I was going to report SPAM email from a junk account for several weeks to see if I could discern any reduction or difference in the volume of SPAM it received. As a normal work practice I usually have one email account that I use for “junk”¬ and it was this account I used as a trial account.¬ I kept count of SPAM messages received and reported for a period of four weeks.
The data from my SidewinderX trial is represented in the bar chart below.¬ For the first couple of weeks I report any email that I considered unsolicited. There were a few newsletters and such that I knew I had subscribed to so I manually unsubscribed from these.¬ By the third week of using SidewinderX, I was reporting almost all remaining email as SPAM.¬
As you can see in the chart below, in three weeks of use I experienced about a 50% reduction in junk/SPAM email being sent to this email account. These results far exceeded my expectations. I didn’t expect to see any noticeable difference.
It’s not all free.¬ This is some time involved. I daily went through emails in my junk email folder and selected the messages I wanted to report. I then executed a SidewinderX applescript that processed these selected emails.¬ There’s also an applescript to process “all” emails in your Apple Mail junk folder but this method didn’t fit my normal email usage process.
During these three trial weeks I received a number of feedback reports from ISP’s that I’d reported spam abuse to.¬ In many cases they indicated that the offending spam accounts had been closed.¬ In other cases they indicated that they were taking the appropriated actions.
I’ve been impressed with my results from using SidewinderX.¬ I cannot guarantee that everyone will experience the same success but I do feel that the product is doing a decent job of tracing and reporting spam to the involved originators and ISP’s.¬ Just remember that you have to put in the effort to report the SPAM to see any results.¬ There have also been several updates to the product during my testing period that have improved the tools performance and operation.
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