Mail providers - any recommendations

Does anyone know of any paid mail account providers with pop3/imap access
who are reliable and have got very stringent spam measurers.

I have been looking at spam measures though a lot don't help with webmail
access / checking mail via imap4. Therefore I am looking at a paid for mail
account which can poll my spam infested main email address, filter the spam
and the allow me to download from them. If they were combined with cheap
domain hosting that would be advantageous as well.

Suggestions would be appreciated


Craig Henry

On Sat, 2 Aug 2003 19:29:45 +0100, "Craig Henry"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Does anyone know of any paid mail account providers with pop3/imap access
>who are reliable and have got very stringent spam measurers.
>
>I have been looking at spam measures though a lot don't help with webmail
>access / checking mail via imap4. Therefore I am looking at a paid for mail
>account which can poll my spam infested main email address, filter the spam
>and the allow me to download from them. If they were combined with cheap
>domain hosting that would be advantageous as well.
>
>Suggestions would be appreciated

Depends on if you want to roll your own? I'm with 34sp.com who host
my site for GBP15 pa. 34sp are very helpful and have put lines in my
qmail file to run perl scripts across each email. The scripts are
under my control so I can edit these as need be.

I have deliberately kept the script simple so as not to overload the
CPU. Reading the entire email I think would be a bit much so I just
go on the headers. What I have implemented is a whitelist system. A
valid to address (most to's end up in one box), or a valid from
address will get you through. Invalid ones are bounced with a message
giving instructions on how to get on the whitelist.

My theory is that spammers don't read replies (if the email address is
valid in the 1st place). And the few that do are on a different
planet if they think I will put them on the whitelist. This gets rid
of 99.9% of spam. The true emails they get bounced are given an
apology and instruction on how to get on the whitelist. Once on of
course the bouncing never happens again. I think this is better than
filtering since filtering can give false positives (I know I have had
some).

For a month or so I ran with the bounce being a real email box so I
could add all my current valid from addresses and check everything
worked.

You can contact me direct if you go this route and want a copy of my
scripts. BTW if you do go with 34sp the referrer is "fullcircuit",
less quotes, which earns me a few pence :-). But, these few pence are
not the reason for recommending 34sp. I have been with them for some
years and find them very helpful, very reliable, and very good value
for money.

....malcolm


--

....malcolm

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
((E-Mail Removed), (E-Mail Removed) or (E-Mail Removed)).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)

"Craig Henry" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:bggvuv$ndj5p$(E-Mail Removed):

> Does anyone know of any paid mail account providers with pop3/imap
> access who are reliable and have got very stringent spam measurers.
>
> I have been looking at spam measures though a lot don't help with
> webmail access / checking mail via imap4. Therefore I am looking at a
> paid for mail account which can poll my spam infested main email
> address, filter the spam and the allow me to download from them. If
> they were combined with cheap domain hosting that would be
> advantageous as well.
>
> Suggestions would be appreciated

I use spamcop.net - think it's $30 a year which gets you pop3/imap/web
access and filtering using a bunch of dns blocklists, plus spamassassin.

Nice thing is nothing gets deleted, it just gets moved to a "held mail"
folder from where you can review it, or hit a couple of buttons and
automagically report it to the ISP/hosts identified in the headers.

Don't believe they do anything to do with webhosting.

They have an nntp server at news.spamcop.net, it may be worth looking at
the groups on it for more info.

Also I have domain with gkg.net which I use to make one-off addresses when
registering at websites, I only use their mail forwarding, but they also
use spamassassin and are very cheap at $10 including the domain name
(com/net/org).

regards
Paul
--
paul <at> spamcop.net

I second the vote for FastMail.fm. Awesome service. Mailsnare.com is
decent too. If you're in the market for web hosting as well, you can
usually get IMAP/POP/Webmail included with your hosting package (ie,
strongwire.com), although it won't be as cheap as Fastmail. Depends
what you need/want.


"Craig Henry" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<bggvuv$ndj5p$(E-Mail Removed)>...
> Does anyone know of any paid mail account providers with pop3/imap access
> who are reliable and have got very stringent spam measurers.
>
> I have been looking at spam measures though a lot don't help with webmail
> access / checking mail via imap4. Therefore I am looking at a paid for mail
> account which can poll my spam infested main email address, filter the spam
> and the allow me to download from them. If they were combined with cheap
> domain hosting that would be advantageous as well.
>
> Suggestions would be appreciated
>
>
> Craig Henry

I have to Concur. Fastmail are the Dogs ....... :-)