📬 Where did all the spam go? SpamSieve – Great Success

I’m not sure what’s happened, but the number of incoming spam message has dropped to almost nothing, and it has nothing to SpamSieve.

Once I got my original configuration snafu sorted out, with unnecessary rules deleted, SpamSieve was trashing 40+ spam messages a day. There were a couple of false positives, but that’s expected.

Then all of a sudden the spam messages stopped. Literally overnight it dropped to 6 messages a day. Do I still exist?

For spring cleaning, I removed myself from a slew of newsletters. There we large lists like Target and smaller ones like Udemy. If a message came in and had Unsubscribe, I clicked it. The only ones I’ve kept are Steam, Amazon, along with a very select few.

Was it that? Was it all the newsletters? Did I finally manage to get myself on the right list, or conversely off the wrong list? Did I make it into the Do Not Spam category?

Or were the spammers able to detect every message got trashed without being read? Did their little tracker beacons show “deleted without reading?”

It’s not that SpamSieve is quietly trashing them and I don’t see it, they simply aren’t coming in. SpamSieve puts them in the Junk folder for review, they don’t disappear until you empty that folder.

I’m suspicious. Is this merely a calm before the next assault? Are they trying to lull me into a false sense of security before they open the floodgates again? Or does it really help to go through and Unsubscribe from newsletters?

There is the “Do Not Call” registry, is there such a thing for email? Can you actually get on a list where relay agents trash the messages before sending them on? I’m sure that’s wishful thinking.

Whatever the reason, it’s pretty awesome. I never expected results like this. The amount of spam has changed from an avalanche to a trickle. I’m excited over SpamSieve working in the background to throw away junk, but this is better than I imagined.

I know it’s temporary, but it’s amazing. The calm you get from not being harassed by spam is pretty spectacular.