When it comes to spam, the bane of the Internet, how do you deal with it? Do you filter it or do you block it outright?
Over the last 12 years, I've tried a little of both. I found that while blocking will cut down on a lot of spam received, a lot of legitimate messages will get blocked as well. After numerous attempts at using various options, I've concluded that I prefer filtering. Prior to 2006, I ran my own mail server from home on a business cable connection. I had complete control over both inbound and outbound email.
What happens when you don't have complete control? As Andy Beard recently found out, even innocuous email can get blocked at the source. Fortunately for us bloggers, blocking or filtering comment spam is still under our control. We can choose to use the included plugins or we can add additional plugins. The keyword is choice.
Although the WordPress plugins I use are doing a good job of filtering (not blocking) comments with common spam words and phrases, one of them requires interaction from a commenter when a comment gets flagged. Some commenters won't continue with that extra step. For that reason alone, I just disabled that plugin.
Back to the subject of control over email you receive, I don't know what to do about it short of recommending something that most of you can't afford to do. I'm in the same boat as you are. When I don't receive responses to email messages that I've sent, I often wonder if the recipients even received them. How many messages have I not received due to aggressive behavior at the source? What choices do we have?
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