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I will usually answer technical questions submitted via email, although those requiring extensive analysis are subject to available time (which seems to be decreasing, because I only have so many hours in a day). I prefer to answer questions via the newsgroup microsoft.public.vc.mfc, where the answer can be shared with others.

I get far too much spam per day. Therefore, to reduce the useless mail I have a hefty set of mail filters installed. If you want to contact me with a problem, you can generally avoid having your mail discarded by my spam filters if you avoid keywords that will trigger a discard. Many of my spam filters are content-specific or site-specific, but even so I occasionally find that someone has a message discarded because of something that triggers an automatic discard.

Any mail that has a blank subject is automatically discarded. Any mail that contains executable script (JavaScript or VBScript) or an executable attachment is automatically forwarded to the security division of my ISP. I have never asked what they do, but it is probably unpleasant. I will under no circumstances permit JavaScript, VBScript, or ActiveX (known as JavaVirus, VBVirus, or ActiveVirus) to execute on my machine.

I do not accept executable files in any form. Under no circumstances will I execute a program which is sent to me in binary form. I also do not accept .doc, .xls, .ppt, or other files that can contain macro viruses. They are quarantined by my email system and I never, ever, bother to remove them from quarantine.

Perhaps the most significant error is putting multiple exclamation points in your subject line. My filters don't distinguish between "I need help!!!!" and "Save on Caribbean cruises!!!!" Since nearly all subject lines that contain more than two exclamation points in a row are spam, they are automatically discarded.

Do not include spamwords in your subject line or message body. While the list is ever-expanding, the words are thus far as shown below. You may even want to add these to your own filters. It is unlikely you will use one of these in a serious piece of mail to me, although I once had a message discarded that said "Memory won't free!" and "free!" discarded the message. Note that in some cases I filter message bodies for the more obnoxious phrases, such as anything dealing with investments, debt, or inkjet printer supplies. Since no technical communication will include these phrases, I feel free in purging them automatically. Words and phrases marked with a * will cause a discard if they appear in the body of the email. For example, discarding any message that contains "click here" in the body (emphasized in the list below) is an excellent way to eliminate most messages that are not worth reading. It is worth pointing out that some free email services put a banner at the bottom of an email that says "to learn more about <name of mail provider> click here". Sorry, I probably won't see your email.

Any mail which is marked as "high priority" is automatically deleted. While this sounds like an odd thing to do, in fact for all practical purposes, the only mail I ever receive that is marked "high priority" is spam. In four years I have received exactly six "valid" high-priority messages, and since they were high-priority only to the sender and not to me, they weren't seen for a week or more (when I went into my deleted box to forward the spam to my ISP's anti-spam group). Tough. If you are dumb enough to think that marking mail as "high priority" is going to get any more attention, you deserve whatever happens to you.

I did some statistical analysis last year. In 2002, I received 655 messages marked "high priority". This means I received a high priority message approximately every 13 hours and 25 minutes. Of these, exactly three were non-spam. Of those, two were requests for help. I happened to spot one of those two requests the same day it was received (I was doing my running totals of high-priority spam that day) so I delayed a week in answering it. One thing I can guarantee: if you send me high-priority email, it will be a minimum of a week before I reply, assuming I ever spot it. (By the way, the remaining one message that I received was followed up two days later by a phone call, since I apparently hadn't seen it [and I hadn't]. When I explained to the person that if the mail was important, the way to make sure it is seen is to not mark it important, because my spam filters removed it, she said "What's spam?". So I forwarded her the previous ten messages I had received over the last few days. And told her that if she was curious I had about 300 more just like it. There were two credit card offers, two breast enlargement offers, one mortgage offer, a viagra offer, an adult club offer, and a few more I no longer remember. My header said "See the company you keep when you send high-priority email").

Thus far, in 2003, the rate has greatly accelerated, and all of these are garbage. In fact, here's the monthly statistics:

In addition, as of 25-Jun-03, my Inbox has 1022 messages. My high priory email stash, which I never actually read the contents of any longer (just keep the count) is 922. Given I have filed a few messages from my Inbox, this says that somewhere between 40% and 50% of the total mail in my database, after spam filtering of other than high priority messages, is high priority spam. If you send me high-priority email, expect that I will never see it. I've stopped even the most superficial scans to see if anything is valuable. There are many adjectives that describe people who send non-spam high-priority email, and they include naive, stupid, inconsiderate, and  childish.

Note the occurrence of certain accented characters, and many Spanish words. I have found myself on an Argentinean spam list and get dozens of Spanish-language spams per day. This filters them out. While I can read German, I know virtually no Spanish. I am also on Russian-language spam lists, so mail that contains some selected Cyrillic-font characters will be automatically and permanently deleted. Likewise a number of Chinese glyphs in the subject are recognized and the messages are permanently deleted. 

Any email that contains garbage in the subject line (the latest spam technique) is deleted without examination. Any sequence of three or more letters with spaces between them is now considered spam. I keep adding new combinations as the spammers create new ones. 

I publish this list here so that you, too, may find a convenient place to find useful new spam-filter-words. This list is updated at irregular intervals, usually whenever I find a new subject line I have no interest in. I have in excess of 1,200delete rules. Some of these permanently delete the message so I will never, ever see it. Permanent deletes include known spamwords (such as the names of various Nigerians who need my assistance in retrieving their family fortune), anything which contains various sexual terms, and anything which contains the word "fucking" in the subject or body. Before I started doing permanent deletes of these, I was receiving in excess of 50 adult-material solicitations per day.

I automatically delete any mail from a site called coolmail.com, a major spam source. I apologize to those of you who are legitimate users of this service who are trying to contact me, but until I see a decrease of spam from that site (to zero), it remains on my spam list. My general approach is that the third time I receive spam from a site in a week, the site itself is blocked.  I also block arabia.com and china.com, two other prime spammers.

I seem to have gotten onto several international spam lists; therefore, any subject line in other than English will result in the message being discarded without my bothering to read the contents.

I have additional filtering which includes AdSubtract, which removes all active scripting from incoming Web sites, and ZoneAlert, which offers additional protection both incoming and outgoing, including nuking email attachments. I keep my browser security fairly high. I also have an assortment of virus scanners on both workstations and servers. Note that if you are running any important site and you have not done at least this well, you are vulnerable. A serious corporate site should be even more strongly defended (my view: describe what you want to learn from your competition, write a big enough check, and somebody will get it for you within a month by using some form of active scripting. Within a week if the check is large enough. If corporate security is high enough, it make take a bit longer. Perhaps two months). Here's a good working rule: if you allow ActiveX (or, as I call them, ActiveVirus) controls to download from the Web, assume that every file on your site is visible to someone external to your site. You can also assume that every file on your site is vulnerable to being changed or deleted by some unknown external user.

Yes, I know, if you do this, some sites will be inaccessible to you. These break down into two types of sites: those that have no intrinsic value to your business (that's most of them) and those that do. For the latter, send them email complaining about their use of ActiveVirus, inform them that you have problems doing business with them for this reason, and go find a competent competitor who is not sociopathic. I recently informed a site that I could not find out the price of their product because of the use of ActiveVirus. Four days later they replied by sending me an email with an Excel spreadsheet attached (see below; not only were they sociopathic, they were pathetically stupid). I sent back a note saying that under no circumstances would I open such an attachment, and would they please simply send me a price list, as a text file. It materialized three days later. At which point I told them that I had purchased a competing product--for $698--from their major competitor, whose Web site not only let me find out the price, but place an order, without using any ActiveVirus controls (the pathetically stupid vendor's price was $595, and I'm willing to pay an extra $100 for a company that is socially responsible). And, I actually ended up with what I think is a superior product.

If you are running a Web site, and your Web designer suggests any form of active client-side scripting, go out and hire a competent Web designer. Active client-side scripting is a nerd toy, and is used only by those who have no sense of responsibility to the customer.

I do not open unsolicited attachments, ever, and I never open any attachment that can be executed. This means that I do not open .exe files, any script, .doc, .xls, .ppt, or other files that can contain macros or VBA code. The Windows Scripting Host has been deleted from my email machine. If you want to send me files, send me .pdf, .txt, .rtf, .cpp, .h, or other purely textual (or image) files, or a .zip file containing same. No other attachments will be considered. Note that all incoming ActiveVirus controls in any context, including Web pages, will be discarded by my firewall and cannot pass. Furthermore, with very few exceptions, Java, JavaScript, and VBScript are discarded silently. Likewise, only three sites that critically depend upon cookies are permitted to store cookies on my machine; no other site is permitted to store a cookie on my machine.

Last modified: May 18, 2011