[chie]

Trying not to stray too much from the original subject: the iPhone and Spam....
I must disagree with jedi228 and mike3k. The spam problem does not begin with iPhone nor Apple's implementation of software on the iPhone nor with Apple's position on what kind of applications can run on iPhone. The spam problem rests with the originators of the spam. No senders of spam means no spam. The next best alternative is to implement a postoffice protocol that tags each email message with the correct sender's IP (and MAC address) to allow identification of the spammers. A good supplement to this is to have postoffices refuse email where the sending domain does not match the email domain. Until this happens there will be spam. Filtering the spam does not end spam it merely hides it and continues to waste bandwidth, storage, etc. on the spam.
Spam filtering is not a solution it is merely a stop-gap measure. Where the logic of the proposed filtering solutions falls down is that they suggeest opening up the iPhone up to any application without proper security. Why do this? This is not how to end spam on the iPhome. Filtering merely hides the spam that exists. Following the suggested course compounds the problem to no purpose: we still have (hidden) spam and we are opening the iPhone to more attacks.
I realize I'm not suggesting any miracle cure for spam (other than the "blame the originators" solution) but it must be pointed out in all fairness that the iPhone and Apple's policies are not to blame for the spam you are receiving so looking for a solution in Apple's arena is effort misplaced. Give Apple the credit of realizing that spam exists. Also give Apple credit for not compromising security on the iPhone just because spam exists.
How to stop spam on the iPhone? Stop spam. That's the simplest solution.
If you believe that spam can never be stopped, at least give Apple its due for realizing that the iPhone shouldn't reduce it's "security sandbox" by making it more vulnerable to trojans, worms, etc. just to try to hide the spam you're already receiving.
Since I've gone this far, I guess I should point out one more thing. As has already been hinted:
.Mac > GMail > Yahoo > iPhone .......
...could this have been suggested by someone who sells hard drives. Why else would the solution require 4 copies of each and every email I receive...... including my spam?
Don't blame Apple or it's policies for spam - that's unwarranted. Don't reduce security for spam - that unwise. Don't purchase more hard drives for spam - that's a waste. Do work with efforts to stop spam and encourage your email providers to do the same. It takes just as much (or as little) effort and everyone would be happier..... except the small number of internet users known as spammers.

[joeyjoe9]

ghp2006 - I have been searching the Internet for a solution just like your's! I got it to work on the Mac and Gmail side, however when I reply on my iPhone, it still says "from blahblah@gmail.com" no matter what email address it was originally sent to. I'm replying to PIOP email forwarded to my gmail account - which is the only account I check on my iPhone. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Terrin]

The best way to solve spam is simply to have a designated email address to use for everything other then people you personally know. Using this method, I rarely get spam on my primary email address. My designated junk address does get a lot of spam, however, Google does have very good spam protection. That combined with Apple's junk filter is a very good combination.

[chie]

As mentioned in my original post, the question was how to reduce spam on the iPhone. I suggest the most workable course is to reduce spam from the origin, and here's why.
Having a second account doesn't solve the spam question on the iPhone. It just puts the spam into a second account which must be still be, on the iPhone, edited out by a human. Better not to have the spam in the first place and no need to waste a second email account nor the time needed to process mail sent there.
In a similar fashion, Apple's OS X mail junk filter is good on a Macintosh not an iPhone.
Google's very good spam filter requires that I redirect my other email accounts to it so spam can be filtered out. This requires that all my email (including the spam) be sent three times over the Internet and stored three times on hard disk: once into my original account, once more to Google, and one final time to my iPhone. While this does hide the spam from the iPhone it does not really address the spam on an iPhone problem without needlessly wasting Internet resources.... Unless you own Internet backbones or sell hard drives this seems as wasteful of Internet resources as, say, driving an automobile that gets only 5 miles per gallon is of natural resources. There are better, less wasteful, and less costly ways of getting there.

[d00d]

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I feel obliged to say that a lot of people hate challenge/response.

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I fit in this category as well. In fact, substitute hate with "hate with a passion".

[d00d]

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The spam problem rests with the originators of the spam. No senders of spam means no spam.

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Sure.

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The next best alternative is to implement a postoffice protocol that tags each email message with the correct sender's IP (and MAC address) to allow identification of the spammers.

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Give me a call when you get buy in from everyone for a new email protocol. That said, if you allow relays in this system, this still won't work. The sender would simply insert a series of fake IPs before its own including some legitimate email sending IPs (they already do this).

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A good supplement to this is to have postoffices refuse email where the sending domain does not match the email domain.

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Sounds good, but this isn't always possible. Here's why. DNS reverse lookup doesn't return all domains pointing at an IP. Additionally, some domains may need to use multiple servers to load balance (meaning you can't just lookup the IP). The solution is to use SPF. However, not everyone uses it (keep this in mind, I'll bring it up later) and it doesn't prevent users of those email services from abusing them.
I'm not saying it's impossible to engineer an email system that serious mitigates the problem. In fact, that's perfectly possible. The problem is getting everyone to buy into it. We can't get people to adopt OpenSPF which is trivial to implement. What makes you think we can get everyone to adopt an entirely new system?
The fact is spam is here and regardless of efforts to eliminate it, it's still here and this is a practical way to deal with the problem. It's not ideal, but it actually works. Apple needs to admit this is a real problem and implement real world measures to help users deal with it.

[Lectrick]

"d00d" is right on the money. Finally, someone who knows what they're talking about instead of all these "but but but can't this just be fixed?" comments.
Some very very smart people have gone over many possible ways to eliminate the spam issue from email as it exists today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InternetMail2000 is notable, personally), yet the problem continues to persist because of the following main reasons:
1) sending email costs nothing, so any infinitesimal success rate is profit
2) getting people to switch to an entirely new and more secure protocol takes a massive effort
3) adding any identifying data to the existing protocol can be easily spoofed by spammers
My 2 cents...

[Chris Breen]

And I'll add 4:
That which can be locked can be unlocked (by a 12-year-old boy)
If the evolving and devolving battle over DRM has taught us anything, it's that the most allegedly bulletproof schemes can be undone. Serious spammers (and the nefarious organizations behind some of them) have a consequential financial stake in this business and they're not about to let it be taken away from them. They'll find a way around whatever barriers are erected.

[chie]

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And I'll add 4:
That which can be locked can be unlocked (by a 12-year-old boy)
If the evolving and devolving battle over DRM has taught us anything, it's that the most allegedly bulletproof schemes can be undone. Serious spammers (and the nefarious organizations behind some of them) have a consequential financial stake in this business and they're not about to let it be taken away from them. They'll find a way around whatever barriers are erected.

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I'm starting with a quote from Mr. Breen but this is in reply to the postings of Mr. d00d and Mr. Lectrick as well.
Mr. d00d says, "The problem is getting everyone to buy into it."
Mr. Lektrick joins in with, "Some very very smart people have gone over many possible ways to eliminate the spam issue from email as it exists today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InternetMail2000 is notable, personally), yet the problem continues..."
I apologize first for not being a smart person let alone a very, very, smart person but regardless of my capabilities, as pointed out, "the problem continues..." In my own simple understanding, however, it seems inevitable that if we continue with business as usual regarding spam (i.e. filtering/hiding) the problem will continue to get worse eating up more and more Internet resources - which is simply not good for anyone who wants to use email and the Internet. To quote from, say, wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mailspam#Asapercentageofthetotalvolumeof_e-mail)
"MAAWG estimates that 80-85% of incoming mail is "abusive email", as of the last quarter of 2005. The sample size for the MAAWG's study was over 100 million mailboxes. According to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft founder Bill Gates receives four million e-mails per year, most of them being spam. (This was originally incorrectly reported as "per day".) At the same time Jef Poskanzer, owner of the domain name acme.com, was receiving over one million spam emails per day."
While not in the 80-85% range, a major organization with which I am associated sees a spam email rate of over 60%. Shouldn't something that wastes 80-85%, or even 60% of the Internet email resources be stopped? Completely? If not, at what point should something be done: 90%? 95%? 99%? 99.9%?
It would seem that what would prove useful at this point is the simple advice given by the doctor to the patient who complains that, "Doctor, when I move my arm like this, it hurts". The advice? "Don't move your arm like that."
Continuing to filter, hide, and ignore the spam problem would be like prescribing larger and larger doses of pain killer to that patient. At some point the medicine becomes worse than the disease and it becomes a simple truth that what is needed is to cure the disease rather than to ignore and mask it.
And if, as in at least 3 cases, you believe trying to stop the spam problem is not worth the effort, may we stay on topic, please which was "Spam on the iPhone: how to cope?" with some of the original answers being, "blame Apple" and "open up the iPhone to any and all applications". As I mentioned in my original posts, this is what I'm addressing with the statements: Don't blame Apple or it's policies for spam - that's unwarranted. Don't reduce security for spam - that unwise. Don't purchase more hard drives for spam - that's a waste."
If there must be another thread on "Can spam be stopped: the financial gains at stake for those sending spam and those selling anti-spam solutions?", by all means, let's start it up.

[Chris Breen]

I believe that the sentiment that we're responding to is that spam is the problem and it must be stopped.
I think it's a wonderful sentiment, but I also believe it would be great if it rained chocolate every so often. It's a wonderful goal, but that's not the world we live in. Spam is the reality and while I wouldn't give up on efforts to stop it, until the day comes when chocolate does rain from the sky, you must deal with reality. And that reality is that you must protect yourself.

[chie]

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I believe that the sentiment that we're responding to is that spam is the problem and it must be stopped.
I think it's a wonderful sentiment, but I also believe it would be great if it rained chocolate every so often. It's a wonderful goal, but that's not the world we live in. Spam is the reality and while I wouldn't give up on efforts to stop it, until the day comes when chocolate does rain from the sky, you must deal with reality. And that reality is that you must protect yourself.

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We are in agreement on the points that spam exists until it stops and protect yourself from any spam that still exists. While you're about it, don't make Apple into your scape goat for the spam problem - that's unwarranted - and don't demand a miracle cure for spam from Apple - as has been ably championed, that would be unfair. These were all I was advocating in this thread.

[Chris Breen]

I'm not expecting a miracle cure from Apple, but just as it's built a measure of spam filtering into its Mail application, so too could it have done that with the iPhone's Mail app.

[d00d]

Exactly. I don't expect Apple to fix the problem, but I do expect them to offer customers a way to deal with it in a practical way.

[jhansen369]

A couple of questions on this.
I am finding myself in a byzantine situation in trying to configure my wife's iphone and not be innundated with spam. It is causing me to migrate from Hotmail to Gmail and do the filtering discussed in this thread at the same time.
Here is what I am trying to do:
I am converting her from Hotmail to Gmail. To do this I am having a service izymail forward Hotmail to Gmail. I want responses to any Hotmail originated emails passed through Gmail to be addressed from the new Gmail account.
I have set up a separate Gmail account to handle our existing Comcast accounts a little differently, because I want to be able to respond to incoming messages so the recipient receives them as if they originated from Comcast.
Here is where I lose the thread. From your post it seems I will need to create a mail setting on the iphone for each of the Comcast addresses that are coming through Gmail so that I can respond in the manner that I would like. True? If so, I am not sure what syncing with my Mac has to do with getting this setting up and going.
Separately, and this may be part of my confusion, I don't understand the EDGE and WiFi issue you are noting. It seems that I will want both, as I understand EDGE to be somewhat slow, and I would like to take advantage of a home WiFi (and others).
The final thing is I don't understand the push/pull distinction. At the end to the day should I be pushing all of this through a Yahoo account, as some of the threads note.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.