Spam: How To Fight It

Spam: How To Fight It

by: Max Maglias

Spam. How to fight it.

Internet is flooded today with undesirable advertising letters also known as spam. Both for an ordinary user connecting to Internet via dialup and for various companies paying for the dedicated line or using DSL spam equals wasted megabytes of information. The megabytes, which are paid for. And time, wasted on viewing advertising offers of unnecessary things or services.

Currently there are a lot of ways to guard your email box against unceasing attacks of ขViagraข, tourist reservations, commercial seminars and the best ขwindows and doorsข in the world, which can be bought cheaply and simply. One of the cures could be changing the email account. But this is by no means a panacea: in a while the new box will be displaying nonsense newsletters from all over the world. You can of course use the serverinbuilt filters or paid resources which try to minimize the spam flow, letting through just the letters from ขauthorized addressersข. But the server filters block just a small part of proposals to ขenlargeข or ขrelaxข. And the powerful ขauthorizationข protection is, first, expensive (plus a monthly fee), and second, is very inconvenient for people on the contactlist (they have to undergo a lengthy ขauthorizationข procedure).

Ideal filter

To clean the mail account from spam a universal antiadvertising shield is needed which will save the money otherwise wasted on downloading weighty letters traffic and the time otherwise lost on viewing and deleting them. Such a shield is the programs which remotely check the mail in the user box without uploading them and block unwanted letters immediately at the server. Such programs are many. They differ in interface and functionality, but have one thing in common: obligatory check of email at the server. Without this feature there would be no sense in the blockers at all. To upload messages and check them locally is not a big deal. The applications differ in their settings, spam filtering ways, speed of work and different features enabling maximum efficiency. The most widespread way of blocking spam is by letter headings and continuously updated list of ขillegitimateข addresses, which are known as harmful advertisements distributors.

What should an ideal spam blocking application be like? First, it should cope with its primary duties flawlessly. Second, it should have a nice interface, be simple to tune and work autonomously. Third, it shouldn’t prevent normal functioning of other programs, mail clients in particular. Let’s look into the interior side of a spamblocking application and decipher the underlying basics.

Spamblocking principles

Usually the application downloads message headers which undergo ขpartial enquiryข. Depending on the functionality of a certain ขtoolข, filtering is conducted by fields (header, sender, addressee etc.), black and white lists of electronic addresses in the database and a wider list of recognized spam generating servers. For checking lists are used, either created by developers or edited by users. Undoubtedly, the more thorough the homemade spamblocking provisions, the better, but ideal work cannot be achieved without proper tuning of blocking and filtering rules. Of course a user setting the most rigid rules risks losing with the blocked spam useful and harmless letters. But in any case, it’s a private decision.

Apart from preinstalled blocking rules, user can make his/her own corrections, such as widening the ขdangerous serverข lists, editing black and white lists and creating his/her own lists conforming to certain rules (for instance, taking into account letter size plus filtering from ขthat particular leftmost Korean server list). On installing the application and adjusting its settings (or you can leave everything as it is) and initial workability check, one can make a final decision concerning fitness of the filter for further use. It remains to decide which application to select.

SoftInform Spam Blocker

New spamblocking application by SoftInform company Spam Blocker – enables maximum efficiency by guarding the user computer (his/her mail box to be more specific) from spam flows, saving money and time on viewing useless messages and paying for the ขmail advertisementsข traffic. As a universal spam blocking tool Spam Blocker possesses indefeasible advantages compared to analogical applications. High quality (blocking 85 to 100% of spam), simple, exquisite and friendly interface, flexibility of settings make SoftInform newly released application the best in its class.

Are you not tired of endless spam? Have you lost track of newly registered (ขcleanข) accounts? Dozens of letters daily burn you and your company megabytes of far from free traffic? All you need to do is to install Spam Blocker, in such a way ridding your computer from persistent and useless email advertising.

About The Author

Max Maglias

[Phone] 2197964

[Email] [email protected]

[Website] http://spamblocker.adscleaner.com

This article was posted on August 17

by Max Maglias

Spam Filters Explained

Spam Filters Explained

by: Alan Hearnshaw

What do they do? How do they work? Which one is right for me?

Spam is a very real problem that many people have to deal with on a daily basis. For those that have decided to do something about it and start to investigate the options available in spam filtering, this article provides a brief introduction to your options and the types of spam filters available.

Despite the bewildering array of spam filters available today, all claiming to the best one ขof its kindข there are really just five filtering methodologies in general use today and all products rely on one, or a combination of these:

ContentBased Filters

ขIn the beginning, there were contentbased filters.ข

These filters scan the contents of the and look for telltale signs that the message is spam. In the early days of spamming it was quite simple to look out for ขKill Wordsข such as

ขLose Weightข and mark a message as spam if it was found.

Very soon though, spammers got wise to this and started resorting to all kinds of tricks to get their message past the filters. The days of ขobfuscationข had begun.

We started getting messages containing the phrase ขL0se Welghtข (Notice the zero for ขoข and ขlข for ขiข) and even more bizarre – and sometimes quite ingenious – variations.

This rendered basic contentbased filters somewhat ineffective, although there are one or two on the market now that are clever enough to ขsee throughข theses attempts and still provide good results.

Bayesian Based Filters

ขThe Reverend Bayes comes to the rescueข

Born in London 1702, the son of a minister, Thomas Bayes developed a formula which allowed him to determine the probability of an event occurring based on the probabilities of two or more independent evidentiary events.

Bayesian filters ขlearnข from studying known good and bad messages. Each message is split into single ขword bytesข, or tokens and these tokens are placed into a database along with how often they are found in each kind of message.

When a new message arrives to be tested by the filter, the new message is also split into tokens and each token is looked up in the database. Extrapolating results from the database and applying a form of the good reverend’s formula, know as the a ขNaive Bayesianข formula, the message is given a ขspamicityข rating and can be dealt with accordingly.

Bayesian filters typically are capable of achieving very good accuracy rates (>97% is not uncommon), and require very little ongoing maintenance.

Whitelist/Blacklist Filters

ขWho goes there, friend or foe?ข

This very basic form of filtering is seldom used on its own nowadays, but can be useful as part of a larger filtering strategy.

A ขwhitelistข is nothing more than a list of email addresses from which you wish to accept communications. A whitelist filter would only accept messages from these people and all others would be rejected

A ขblacklistข, conversely, is a list of email addresses and sometimes IP Addresses (computer identification addresses) from which communications will not be accepted.

While this may seem like a good idea from the outset, a whitelist methodology is too restrictive for most people and, as virtually all spam emails carry a forged ขfromข address, there is little point in collecting this address to ban it in future as it is very unlikely to be the same next time.

There are bodies on the internet that maintain a list of known ขbadข sources of email. Many filters today have the ability to query these servers to see if the message they are looking at comes from a source identified by this Internetbased blacklist, or RBL. While being quite effective, they do tend to suffer from ขfalse positivesข where good messages are incorrectly identified as spam. This happens often with newsletters.

Challenge/Response Filters

ขOpen sesame!ข

Challenge/Response filters are characterised by their ability to automatically send a response to a previously unknown sender asking them to take some further action before their message will be delivered. This is often referred to as a ‘turing Testก named after a test devised by British mathematician Alan Turing to determine if machines could ขthinkข.

Recent years have seen the appearance of some internet services which automatically perform this Challenge/Response function for the user and require the sender of an email to visit their web site to facilitate the receipt of their message.

Critics of this system claim it to be too drastic a measure and that it sends a message that กmy time is more important than yoursก to the people trying to communicate with you.

For some low traffic email users though, this system alone may be a perfectly acceptable method of completely eliminating spam from their inbox one step above the กWhitelistก system outlined above.

Community Filters

ขA united frontข

These types of filters work on the principal of กcommunal knowledgeก of spam. When a user receives a spam message, they simply mark it as such in their filter. This information is sent to a central server where a ขfingerprintข of the message is stored.

After enough people have ขvotedข this message to be spam, then it is stopped from reaching all the other people in the community.

This type of filtering can prove to be quite effective, although it stands to reason that it can never be 100% effective as a few people have to receive the spam for it to be ขflaggedข in the first place. Just like its similar cousin the Internet black list (RBL), this system also can suffer from ขfalse positivesข, or messages incorrectly identified as spam.

Hopefully you are now armed with a little more information to be able to make an informed decision on the best spam filter for you.

For further information, consider reading the reviews and articles found at http://www.whichspamfilter.com

About The Author

Alan Hearnshaw is the owner of http://www.whichspamfilter.com, a web site which conducts weekly indepth reviews of current spam filters, provides help and guidance in the fight against spam and provides a useful community forum.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 08, 2004

by Alan Hearnshaw

Avoid, Shun, Thwart, Prevent, and then Filter Spam

Avoid, Shun, Thwart, Prevent, and then Filter Spam

by: Nick Smith

Email is rapidly becoming the standard means of communication among businesses, associates, and even friends. While many people have now been using the internet and email for years, there are thousands of new users on the internet each day. With inexpensive web hosting, free email services, and the blog burst upon us, getting your own slice of the internet pie has never been easier.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional looking for a refresher course, or you’re new to the internet and email and want to start off right, here are some easy steps to follow to reduce the amount of spam you receive.

Don’t choose an obvious email address. Spammers will generate lists of email addresses based on common names. A common list would be something like: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. If you create an email account with less obvious combinations of your name plus some numbers, chances are better that you won’t find your way onto one of these lists.

Treat your personal email address with care. Only give out your personal email address to close friends and family who you trust. Give your direct business email only to clients and other contacts you trust to only use your address for legitimate business purposes.

Use different accounts for different functions. Create different aliases with your business’s domain name or create a few free accounts from free email servers like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Excite, etc. Use one account that you don’t care about for posting to forums or discussion groups. Use another to subscribe to newsletters and newsgroups. When any of these addresses starts to get spammed too heavily, simply delete the account and switch to a different one.

Remove your email address from your website. Between blogs and cheap web space, it seems everyone has their own piece of cyberspace. Before you put a link to your email address on your site, remember that spammers have bots that harvest these addresses. They will even find addresses printed in plain text. Consider using a webbased form for communication from you website, or place your address as a gif or jpeg.

Do NOT open, respond to, or purchase from spam. Interacting with spam in any of these ways indicates to the spammer that not only is your address valid, it’s also active. Do not respond with ขunsubscribeข in the subject line, or click on any links to remove your name out of the database, as both of these are common ploys to confirm your email address. Remember, because sending email is so inexpensive, spamming can be profitable even if only a small percentage of people purchase what they’re selling. Don’t support what you’re trying to stop.

Finally, Filter your incoming email using filtering software. Even if you guard your email address religiously, you’ll likely still receive spam. Filtering software is usually inexpensive and effective, but there are some important features to consider with any filtering package:

Make sure you can control what comes to your inbox and what gets deleted. The best programs create a spam folder for you to review before permanently deleting emails.

The software should block images from incoming emails. Many jpegs in spam actually hide code that notifies the spammer when the email is viewed. Blocking images will not only keep offensive content off your screen but will also help prevent more spam in the future.

Choose software that provides you with updates as new spamming techniques are created and proliferated, filtering software should keep up.

While eliminating spam from coming to your email address is nigh unto impossible, following these simple steps will mean you’ll have to spend less time deleting spam from your inbox, giving you more time for the important things of life – like reading this article.

About The Author

Nick Smith is a client account specialist with 10xMarketing.com More Visitors. More Buyers. More Revenue. Find more information about how to filter spam at http://www.contentwatch.com/features/filterspam.php.

This article was posted on December 15, 2004

by Nick Smith