Category Archives: Spam filtering

Secure Yourself from Phishing Emails

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In this article we would like to highlight some key points regarding email security and phishing scams.

First of all, what is phishing? Email messages that are trying to get your personal information are called phishing scams. Usually this kind of messages lead you to the fraudulent websites using links included in the message. The website itself is intended to collect your username, email address, password, credit card detail etc.

According to Symantec threat report, the reported number of exposed identities jumped to 429 million in 2015. Since phishing is considered to be one the most devious form of identity theft, it is important for your to become familiar with the various types of phishing scams as well as to learn how to be protected from them. We gathered the most useful and powerful tips on how to beat phishing messages:

1. Do not click on the links, download files and attachments from unknown and suspicious senders. If you think the link is strange and doubtful, probably it is so. Never go to your bank’s website by clicking on links included in emails.
2. Do not reply to suspicious messages with providing your personal data (passwords, credit card details, etc.) to the sender. You never know who is behind the “sender” field. When you really need to share your information it is better to use secure website or just call the person than using an email to provide passwords.
3. Change your accounts’ passwords and check you bank account status regularly. Some companies have a policy rule to change account’s password regularly and use only hard to guess ones. Why don’t get such a rule for yourself?
4. One of the best options (that you are probably already using) is Spamdrain filter. Every week Spamster stops like 4-5 million spam messages with viruses, blank senders, etc. (and that’s even without newsletters). Our spam filters analyze every little detail from the sender field to the links in the message and our Spamster works hard to keep our customers satisfied. He is always on guard of your email address from phishing emails.

Well, it’s time to go and keep your Inbox free from phishing emails.
Thanks for reading!

SpamDrain for iOS 2.0 beta 1 released

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Today we have released the first beta of our new iOS app. It will be available to a selected number of beta testers registered at TestFlight. If you are intereseted in joining the beta programe, please see our earlier post.

New features introduced in SpamDrain 2.0:

  • Search in filtered messages.
  • Renamed Archive and Report to Blocked and Allowed.
  • iPad support
  • Report and release now has more choices.
  • Empty filtered message per filtered address.
  • View filtered messages per address and not always all filtered addresses.
  • Filter search result based on classification, Ok, Spam, Newsletter, Virus etc.
  • Delete individual messages.
  • Report and release directly from message lists.
  • See messages that has been reported and released.
  • Update account and user information such as name and report email interval.

You will see feedback buttons inside the app. Please use them to send us feedback about this beta. We welcome all comments – both complaints and compliments and will try to use them to improve SpamDrain.

First iOS beta soon to be released

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Today we did the one of the last updates to our servers to prepare for our new mobile apps. One more update is planned later today and some of the last bugs in the iOS app is also left to fix. After this we will finally release the first iOS beta to some of you who have registered your interest at TestFlight.

We also want to thank everyone who has signed up for the beta testing program. As for now we are very happy with the number of interested beta testers and we will soon start approve you in TestFlight.

Please make sure you have added a device in TestFlight since we won’t be able to send any releases to users without registered devices. So go into TestFlight on your iOS device and make sure to add it if you want to join the first beta release which we hope to send out tomorrow.

New version of SpamDrain for iOS now available in App Store

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We have now finished the job with version 1.7 of our SpamDrain app for iOS and got it approved by Apple. In this new version you will be able to update your filtering settings, add new addresses for filtering and see the status of the filtering. For example you may now see if SpamDrain is having trouble logging in or connecting to your provider’s servers. These features have been available for some time on our web site but we also thought we wanted to provide it in our mobile apps, starting with iOS.

Please rate us – again

We also want to thank you all for your great reviews we are receiving, both in App Store and in Android Market. This really motivate us to keep up the work to stop spam from reaching your iPhones, Androids or other phones and computers.

We would like to ask you to rate the new version in App Store – even if you already have done so. Since the rating to some extent are reset when you release a new version we really need your help to keep our great rating up. Thanks!

Multiple address filtering now available in regular SpamDrain – not only SpamDrain+

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A while ago we modified our regular SpamDrain subscription slightly. You may now filter up to five addresses in a SpamDrain account (for only €9.99 or $14.99 / year and address) compared to single address filtering as before. This simplifies for all of you beloved customers who want to filter a couple of extra addresses since you do not need to manage separate logins to different SpamDrain accounts but may instead handle all filtering with one login to our site and iPhone and Android apps.

As before you may also choose SpamDrain+. With SpamDrain+ you may add multiple users, filter domains and utilize our personal support. For more info please visit http://spamdrain.net/en/spamdrain-plus

By the way…talking about our apps – we will shortly update our iPhone app so you can view filtering status for all your addresses and update your filtering settings. Stay tuned.

Domain administration update – aliases can now be managed

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Today we have some good news for all our customers who filter their domain through SpamDrain. You will now be able to manage aliases to filtered addresses directly on the web. There is no extra cost for adding aliases but they must be mapped to one or several filtered addresses. You can also have aliases from one domain pointing to addresses in another one .

We have also improved domain handling so it should be easier to add and manage your domain filtering. You can now also search for both filtered addresses and aliases in the domains page. This feature is also available in the users page.

Please note that all changes made to the domain filtering will take up to five minutes before they propagate to all servers.

Help your friends get rid of spam and receive free SpamDrain months

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Today we have made it easier for you to share SpamDrain and for you to get something out of it. Well, you probably already know that if everyone was using a great spam filter, sending spam wouldn’t pay off and the internet would be a much better and happier place. Help us making the world spam free by inviting your friends and colleagues to join SpamDrain and we will reward you with free months.

We have added a new Sharing page Share SpamDrain where you can send invites or share SpamDrain in your social networks, blogs, web pages etc. Simply Log in to your SpamDrain account and hit the Share icon in the upper right corner.

For every paying new filtered address you generate, we will add extra months to your subscription – depending on how many addresses you currently filter. For example, if you filter one address today, you will receive three free months for every new paying filtered address you generate. If you filter two addresses you will receive 1.5 free months for every new filtered address.

The more addresses your friends filter the more free months you receive. Isn’t that great?

If you are generating great volumes you will have the opportunity to join our reseller program instead and start earning real money.

So, start sharing today and make the world a bit more spam free.

Other new features in this update

  • Messages that you have retrieved from the archive can now be displayed and re-delivered.
  • Clearer indication when a message is blocked due to blacklisted sender.
  • Remove entries from blacklist.
  • You may now extend your subscription even when there is more than a year left.

New filter blocks newsletters and marketing emails

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For some time we have working on a new type of filter which blocks newsletters and marketing emails. We have being testing it for a while we are really happy with the progress. So today we tell you a little bit more about how it works. Really soon we will enable new functionality in our iPhone, Android and web apps, enabling you to control this filter. (We actually updated our web site today already)

First, some background. As you know you can report spam that SpamDrain has failed to block. This is done in our mobile apps or by logging on to our web site. We have noticed that different users have different definitions of spam. The most obvious definition might be “spam is everything I don’t want in my inbox” (even messages you have accepted to receive but don’t take the time to unsubscribe to). However, there is a problem with this definition. Some people want coupon offers from their local store and some do not want them. With viagra mail it’s much simpler – nobody wants that crap.

We have therefore chosen to introduce this new filter which identifies newsletters and marketing emails and put them in your Archive marked as “Newsletters”. These emails are always listed in your daily/weekly/monthly SpamDrain report so you never have to worry about missing important offers. Of course, you will be able to retrieve/release these blocked message as usual. When retrieving blocked messages from the Archive, SpamDrain will learn not to block similar messages again. You can also turn this filter entirely off.

To train our filters to become even more efficient, we appreciate if you our users could give us a little help when retrieving a message: You will now be asked to classify the message. By helping us deciding why you are retrieving a specific message you will help improving the overall filtering accuracy. The choice you will be given is:

You will get the same question when retrieving a message in the mobile apps.

We hope you will like these improvements – and hey, if you don’t – you can always turn the newsletter filter off. We hope you will enjoy receiving even less spam in the future. Please let us know what you think about these updates.

Please let us know what you think about these updates.

More for more information about the newsletter filter and retrieval of messages from the Archive.

Updates – report/retrieve in lists and pausing filtering

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Yesterday we made some updates which hopefully will continue to improve the experience of SpamDrain. We added the possibility to report or retrieve directly in the message lists (Archive and Report), so you do not need to click the message in order to report it. The Report button appears once you hover over the row. Note that you will not need to confirm the reporting so before you click, be sure you really wish to report it as spam.


We also added the hover feature in other lists, so actions appears once you move your mouse over the row. In the filtered address lists, for example, you will now see the Delete icon and the new Pause icon when moving the mouse over the row. Pause filtering is a new feature we have added to give you more control over your SpamDrain account.

Clicking the Pause button will pause the filtering for this address. Once paused, SpamDrain will stop accessing your e-mail account. If you are using domain filtering, SpamDrain will simply let everything through for the paused address.

Once paused, a Play icon is displayed instead which once clicked will start the filtering again.

This pause feature is useful if you have problem with your e-mail access and want to see if SpamDrain is locking your mailbox or if you simply wish to go back to the good old times when tons of spam reached your inbox 😉

We have also made some minor improvements in the login and sign up user interface.

The next few weeks we will continue working with minor improvements and adding help documentation where needed.

Feel free to comment the changes we made recently. Your opinion is the most valuable we have!

Expert warns of insufficient virus protection

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There is an interesting article on viruses and filters in a Swedish newspaper today. Experts warn us that some filters are not efficient enough. They claim that some filters only catch 30% of the harmful e-mails. The reason for this being that the virus makers are quick at making new version and varieties of the code so it is hard to keep a traditional filter updated.
At SpamDrain we use artificial intelligence to continually refine the filtering process. This means that the filter can ‘learn’ what is spam and what is valid e-mail. The filter can therefore keep itself updated and quickly learn new tricks used by hackers to get their e-mails through spam filters.
This works quite nicely in Spamdrain when filtering spam and e-mail viruses. It would though be interesting to know if one could do something similar with desktop virus protection. I know that anti-virus companies have done some efforts in trying to “learn” the patterns of viruses and block viruses they don’t know about, but it’s unclear how well these techniques work.