Many of you will know that I use SpamArrest to handle my incoming email and process spam as well. I used to wake up in the morning and find 3-4 pages full of spam with the occasional unapproved email amongst it all. It is now less than a page that comes through overnight. What has made the difference?

I disabled the challenge message a month or so ago. Can’t remember why I did it - perhaps I read something somewhere or was thinking about it. At any rate I figured that spammers might not pursue my addresses (I have several listed at SpamArrest) if they didn’t get confirmation back that the address was live, i.e. the challenge message.

Whether or not, that’s the reason, only time will tell, but for now it seems to be working and I’m happy that I don’t have to wade through more than a dozen or so messages in the morning before getting on with my day.