By Micky Sing

The most prolific and path breaking innovation of last century had been the developments in the communication field. It literally changed the business working, product marketing, support services and most importantly, the advertisement campaigns.

But just like all goods things comes with a price, so was the communication. It brought in the problems of Spam Emails. Automated mailers with mass mailing capabilities, growing marketing dependencies on this tool have seen the large losses in terms of time and money.

There have been many ways of targeting spam mails like blacklisted domains, banned IPs, words in subject and many more. The spammers have always found out a way to change their identity. But here is the catch. The spammers are being paid to send the message. They can change their Domains, IPs, subject lines, but how much they can play with the contents? And that’s where content based filtering comes into focus. Now we can understand that by targeting and focusing on message body, there is a better chance of filtering spam emails.

Apart from the usual spam emails, the new menace has been created by the “phishing emails” targeting primarily eBay and PayPal accounts. These emails come as a “Last Warning”, “Attention Required”, “Password Change Required” or “Your account is suspended” among many more. These mails appear to have come from eBay or PayPal and provide a link to their own page.

These pages are designed just like the original pages and the unsuspecting user ends up providing his/her sensitive information like username/password or Credit Card Information to these duplicate pages. Here I would like to add one piece of advice to all users that you should always see where the link is taking you by seeing the tool tip and then if sure, follow the link.

How Do Anti Spam Solutions Work? | We have all suffered from these annoying dangerous spam emails. Most of us still do. There are excellent anti spam solutions in the market, there is no reason to tolerate this no more…

The role of content in marking the mail spam or not spam has been achieved using the Bayesian filter. Together with the Black List of spammers and White list of trusted emails ids, is the best technique to counter the spam. The most interesting fact is that Spam Filter with Bayesian algorithm is a self learning filter.
The more you use, the more secure you shall be within a matter of few days.

The spam filter integrate easily with popular emails clients such MS outlook and Outlook Express. With due course, up to 98% of the spam mails can be stopped from entering your Inbox. The Spam Filter for Outlook Express and Spam Filter for Microsoft Outlook, with the features of White List/Black List and properly used Bayesian Algorithm will help prevent spam mails, phishing mails and fraud mails from bothering you further.

There has been a considerable increase in the spam mails containing Non English Characters also. The Bayesian Algorithm based Spam Filter also must have the capability to parse non English characters and mark as spam mail.

To get rid of continuous spam mails, phishing mails, fraud mails and Non-English mails, you might like to try Official Spam Filter for Outlook Express 1.2 and Official Spam Filter for Microsoft Outlook 1.2. Official Spam Filter has the capability to seamlessly integrate with MS Outlook and Outlook Express.

For more information, visit http://www.officialspamfilter.com/spam_filter_features.htm

Author is the Admin of Official Spam Filter where you can find software to fight Spam, integrating with MS Outlook and Outlook Express.

What is Spam? Well the general consensus is that “spam” is any unwanted email you receive. Companies get your email address through various methods and then send you an email advertising their product or service. When you look at the principle, what better form of advertising could there be. There is virtually no cost to you except maybe to purchase the list and then to generate the email. You just setup a group of email addresses and chose to send your email to everyone in that group and presto off it goes.

This is probably the cheapest form of advertising you can have. Many companies use it, and they should as a part of their total advertising budget. What has happened is that because it is so cheap every Tom, Dick and Harry use it. Much of the material you receive is unwanted and many times it is objectionable material to the receiver.

A question arises. We have the Constitutional right to advertise our business or service. I think that is called “Freedom of Speech”. My problem is that much of this material I receive I did not ask for or for that matter do not want. The come back is, so what, just delete it, you don’t have to read it. That may be true, but what if one of my children sees it first. Here in lies the problem.

This article will not solve this issue. The only choice you have at the present time is to use some sort of “Spam” blocker. Most of this software must be purchased by the consumer. I did not want it from the beginning, why do I have to buy something to stop something I didn’t want in the first place. A discussion for some other time.

Spam: Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

If you use Microsoft’s Outlook 2003 there is a spam filter built into the package. That makes it some what easier. There or other spam filters available on the market. You should look into them.

Now the problem I have with spam blocking software is that I must configure it to filter out certain email types, categories and words. I happen to use Outlook 2003. The filter is nice, but I have found that there have been instances that email I wanted was put into the filtered email category. So I have too view each email separately even the ones put into the Spam category to make sure that I don’t miss any email. Using filters require you to periodically reconfigure the filters. Now I ask you, the time I spend first going through the spam filtered email and the configuration time, I have found that if I turn off the filters and just go through each and every email and delete the ones I don’t want takes far less time.

All of my email is opened by me only so any objectionable email I just delete. This may not be an option for everyone. So maybe the filters are better for you.

This is a problem that I suppose will never go away. With the ability to advertise so cheaply there will always be someone that will attempt to circumvent the filters and send the email. No form of legislation will completely solve this problem.

At the present time get out the check book and bite the bullet and buy some form of spam filtering software package. Look around there are many, many out there. Some are good and some are not so good. Ask your friends for recommendations, read a few magazine articles, what ever it takes. The employees at some of the retail stores have some knowledge in this area ask them.

This is one of several articles I have written in the Computer field. I have been in the computer industry for over 15 years. I love it and now I am branching out. Unwanted intrusions to computrs is an area of interest and concern to me. My name is Chuck Stephens and I can be reached at cstep@3rdm.net. No web site or anything to sell yet.

By Chuck Stevens

We have all suffered from these annoying dangerous spam emails. Most of us still do. There are excellent anti spam solutions in the market, there is no reason to tolerate this no more.

To understand the solution we must first understand the problem. So, what is this spam email? Spam is unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant or inappropriate email. Spam email is mostly used for commercial purposes. Spam emails are also known as “junk mails”.

So, why do people are constantly searching for the best spam blockers? Why do the market of anti spam solution rolls billions of dollars a year? Well, these spam emails are time consuming and are annoying. But, more than that, they cost a lot of money. Why? First, because time is money. But more than that, billions of spam emails are loading lots of unnecessary data over the servers.

Therefore, big software companies constantly develop anti spam solutions, spam blockers and email spam filters.

Is Your Website Blacklisted? | A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of people or companies who have met with the disapproval of others. In the online world a blacklist refers to those people who have been marked as responsible for generating spam in a very big way. Blacklists are also known as blocklists…

Anti spam solutions basically do one or more of the following things:

1. Anti spam solutions check the senders’ names and addresses and filter the spam emails according to a black list of spammers they own and update.

2. Anti spam solutions check the recipients’ names and addresses and according to certain parameters, they filter the emails. For example, if the mail is sent to a large group sorted alphabetically, the email is considered spam.

3. Anti spam solution scan the emails (Their subject and body) and search for certain words or phrases such as “Viagra” and filter the spam email accordingly.

There are many kinds of anti spam solutions such as anti spam lotus, anti spam exchange 5.5, anti spam for outlook express and others. Some work on the server layer and some on the client layer. But basically, they all do the same job - Make your life better.

Find the best spam blockers only on the Spam blockers top programs site . More valuable info on http://www.tigilet.com

In their residential laboratories they cook industrial amounts of spam following special spam recipes and use these dangerous weapons to waste your days and living powers!

Meet it face to face: spam - unsolicited, unwanted, mass broadcast of advertisements to newsgroups and email addresses. Often used by con artists, crooks and pornographers. Steals bandwidth and clogs email boxes… convincing enough.

Their army grows day by day and soon you can easily observe a continuously increasing amount of junk mail which shows up in your email box or on your favorite news group. They are specialists in cosmic intrusions and their single concern is to get your attention a-la Machiavelli: every way fits to serve the “glorious” purpose! They hunt your precious attention ignoring all ethical rules of advertising, abusing your email and clogging your channels of stellar communication.

This kind of war is apt to raise envy of the Star Trek producers as the number of victims is larger by far: the recipients and the entire Internet commerce are irreversibly affected.

It would be fair enough to surf safely the web and enjoy its usefulness. But unfortunately safety means caution, thus you cannot freely join Internet mailing lists or Usenet groups and sometimes you might consider surfing the web anonymously. Sounds more like hiding instead of fighting…

How Do Anti Spam Solutions Work? | We have all suffered from these annoying dangerous spam emails. Most of us still do. There are excellent anti spam solutions in the market, there is no reason to tolerate this no more…

Until you reach the information you need, you will be kindly informed about the last sensational pornographic achievement of the world known actress (really world known; as spam makes it possible), about the latest discovery in the household tools field and the lowest prices for airplane tickets of the magnificent South African airline company. This is how your life gets fulfilled with an endless flow of world events and your winter nights do not seems so empty anymore!

Whatsoever, those who not enjoy this certain kind of “entertainment” form coalitions and build a strong resistance against the impertinent intrusions of “the Others”. Not all of them are computer experts but everybody needs the Internet space and its unlimited resources. They are not powerless as long as they get help from the military center of software creators ready to serve peaceful folks in their needs for productive communication. Now serious! The simplest way to fight against the junk mail is applying for software specialized in filtering your mail and detecting the spam automatically. Such programs are able to make you partially or entirely free from “marvelous” but useless data by isolating junk mail sent to your mail box. Your freedom and productiveness depends on the powerfulness of the program you choose. So, stop victimizing and get equipped!

And if you aren’t really that good in the specific computer matters, you might try Spam Monitor 2.5, a program designed especially for you, dear non expert. Besides all, with it you’ve got the power!

Ted Peterson writes for Core Download, a software archive with over 30.000 software titles to download like Spam Monitor, PC Tools Antivirus and Spyware Doctor.

Spam, spam, spam. It’s terrible not only for those of us on the receiving end, but for those of us who SEND e-mail.

This deluge of irritating junk has unfortunately interfered with legitimate e-zine publishers, because we’re caught in the anti-spam crossfire. If you publish any type of e-mail publication, there’s a likely chance that your e-zine is NOT reaching a portion of your readers. Why? Their Internet service provider (ISP) or e-mail program uses a spam filter.

These software programs search for words and phrases that are typical of spam and assign each incoming e-mail a “score.” If your e-mail has too many of these words and phrases, you receive a high score, and you may be blocked.

TOP 20 “KILLER” WORDS/PHRASES YOU MAY BE USING

While there are other words that will cost you more “points” than these do (e.g. sexual phrases), here are the most common “trigger” words and phrases that you may be using in your e-zine:

1. amazing
2. cancel at any time
3. check or money order
4. click here
5. congratulations
6. dear friend
7. e-mail marketing
8. for only ($)
9. for free
10. great offer
11. guarantee
12. increase sales
13. order now
14. promise you
15. risk free
16. special promotion
17. this is not spam
18. to be removed
19. unsubscribe
20. winner

Is Your Website Blacklisted? | A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of people or companies who have met with the disapproval of others. In the online world a blacklist refers to those people who have been marked as responsible for generating spam in a very big way. Blacklists are also known as blocklists…

WHAT’S A PUBLISHER TO DO?

You have two choices when it comes to beating the filters. One is to avoid using these words and phrases altogether. I’ve found that hard to do. For example, in a recent issue, I discussed how to use your e-zine to increase business. Unfortunately the word “increase” cost me a fat 1.4 points in SpamAssassin, one of the most popular filter programs.

Your second choice is to disguise these words and phrases in clever ways by inserting keyboard symbols within them and/or replacing a letter in them with a symbol. The trick is not to make it too cryptic — you want your readers to be able to understand what you’re saying. For example, in my e-zine, I use “fr*ee” for free.

While some spam filters pick up on this trick and penalize you for doing it by adding onto your score, I’ve found that the points this tactic costs you penalize you much less than using the words and phrases themselves. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s working for now.

TEST BEFORE YOU SEND

It’s a great idea to test how YOUR e-zine stacks up before you send it out. The good news is you can do this for FREE.

Lyris’ Content Checker (http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker) tells you how your e-zine ranks in Spam Assassin. All you do is copy your e-zine text and paste it into the box on their site. They’ll run your free report and e-mail a copy to you. It usually arrives within minutes.

The report will tell you exactly which words are costing you points. Usually you should only be concerned if your score is over 5 points. If so, you can either delete those words or disguise them, as I mentioned above.

I test each issue of my e-zines in Content Checker before I publish them, and often I’m surprised (and relieved) that my score is low. That makes me a happy publisher. : )

(c) 1999-2002 Alexandria K. Brown

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexandria K. Brown, “The E-zine Queen,” is author of the award-winning manual, “Boost Business With Your Own E-zine.” To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/

If you are a business owner and you rely on email, spam is going to be a major concern. How you address it can make a big difference in employee efficiency. Email spam has been a nuisance and has gotten even worse over the last several years. Email spam slows down server performance and can eat away at storage. Cleaning all those bad messages out of your inbox is time consuming. The easiest way for viruses to spread is via email.

Having a strategy to deal with email spam and viruses threats is essential for any business to survive and be productive. You can limit the negative impact to your business by having policies and guidelines in place.

Tips to avoid getting email spam:

• If you have a company web site, use a contact form that the web site visitorcan fill out. Some spam mers use robots that crawl web pages looking for

  email addresses. Your web site designer should be able to help you with this.

• When signing up for forums, products and services use a free email or throwawayaccount like hotmail or Yahoo mail.
• When signing up for offers be careful what boxes you check although technicallynot spam you may get a lot of email offers you do not want.
• Never reply to an email spam message, this just lets them know that youraccount is active.
• You may want to use a throwaway email address if you post on newsgroupsor forums.

How Do Anti Spam Solutions Work? | We have all suffered from these annoying dangerous spam emails. Most of us still do. There are excellent anti spam solutions in the market, there is no reason to tolerate this no more…

These measures may help to reduce spam, but if you have an old email address you may want to change your email address or deploy a spam filter system. There are several choices for anti spam systems you could buy software that runs locally on your PC to filter the spam, but this can be expensive, does not prevent virus infection, and is not a good choice in a networked environment. Managing individual machine spam software is inefficient.

If you have limited technical resources you can outsource you email spam filtering to a hosted anti spam and virus solution provider. Spam filter service providers colocate their spam and virus filters in data centers with redundant power and network connections. You will need to change your mail exchanger on your dns servers to point to the service providers spam filters. Your service provider will then scrub your email for spam and viruses. They then forward your email to your mail server minus the spam and viruses. This gives you a few extra layers of protection. In the event of a network outage or server downtime your email is held and is delivered when the network or your server is available minus the virus and spam. Spam filter services also scan for viruses; this adds another layer of defense to the virus software already running on your network.

If you have an organization with more than one hundred email boxes investing in your own spam filter appliance is the most cost effective solution if you have the technical expertise to manage the system. A spam appliance sits in front of your email server and blocks spam and viruses. The price of the spam appliance will depend upon your number of users, amount of mail and storage requirements.

Fighting spam is no longer be a losing battle if you have a good strategy to deal with the threat.

John Tourloukis is the founder of Fast PC Networks Data Center Colocation, Disaster Recovery Services, and Spam Filter Service.

According to a recent study conducted by Ferris Research, a market and technology research firm specializing in messaging and collaboration, Spam will cost U.S. businesses over $10 billion in 2003.

Spam not only clogs our servers and in-boxes, but it also costs us hours and hours of lost time in productivity.

Although the estimated cost of Spam focuses mainly on lost productivity, this picture may be much broader than you realize.

Some of the more popular email providers, such as AOL (America Online), Yahoo! and Hotmail, are now utilizing filters to cut down on Spam. These filters are dumping Spam and/or bulk mailings into a separate location. Although this may cut down on Spam in your in-box, these filters are also dumping some legitimate email messages.

What’s more, some hosting services not only filter the email messages, but they’re also blocking entire hosting companies. For example, the blocking host may have gotten some Spam complaints about a few marketers that host with ABC hosting company. (Keep in mind, ABC hosting company may host thousands of sites.) Rather than block the offending marketers, the blocking host decides to blacklist the entire ABC host.

What this means is if you try to contact someone and their hosting company has blacklisted your host, your email will not go through — it will bounce right back to you.

If you suspect you may not be receiving all of your email, contact your host and ask them if they’re using Spam filters or have blocked entire hosting companies.

How Much Will Spam Cost Your Business?

How much time do you spend sorting through the Spam in your email each day? Add it up sometime — I’ll bet you’ll find you spend a lot more time than you even realized — time that could have been spent on your business.

Is Your Website Blacklisted? | A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of people or companies who have met with the disapproval of others. In the online world a blacklist refers to those people who have been marked as responsible for generating spam in a very big way. Blacklists are also known as blocklists…

If you’re publishing an ezine or sending out any form of opt-in mailings, how many subscribers are actually receiving your mailings? Most-likely, not nearly as many subscribers as you may think. How many lost sales has this cost you?

How many messages, such as information requests, customer support requests, etc., have you not received due to filtering?

How many messages have you replied to that your customers or potential customers have never received due to filtering?

As customer service says a lot about your business practices, how many customers will you lose?

The list goes on and on. But the point is this, Spam is costing you dearly.

Protecting Your Email Address

So how can you defend yourself? Well, it depends on which side you’re on — how to protect yourself, and/or how to make sure your messages are getting through.

In order to protect yourself against Spam, you first need to understand how your email address is obtained.

There are many unethical businesses online that collect and sell email addresses. They use robots that travel from link to link in search of email addresses. Their customers are led to believe that these email addresses belong to individuals who want to receive mailings. However, much of the time, this isn’t the case.

Never purchase a list of email addresses from anyone other than a reputable company. The only company I can recommend is Post Master Direct. http://www.postmasterdirect.com

To protect your email address from these robots, instead of displaying your address on your site, use a feedback form. Not just any type of form, but a form that doesn’t display your email address within the hidden form fields. The only form I can recommend is Master Feedback. You can pick up a free copy here: http://willmaster.com/master/feedback/index.shtml

Anytime you’re filling out a form online and you’re asked to provide your email address, make sure you review the site’s “Privacy Policy” to ensure that your email address will not be sold or shared with a third party.

Protecting Your In-box

To protect your in-box, you can use a Spam filtering software program. Although there are several available online, the best one I’ve found is Mail Washer. This program will enable you to view all the email on your server without actually downloading it into your email program. Once you’ve reviewed your messages, you can create filters and bounce the Spam messages back to the sender. Although you can pick up the program free, consider supporting the developer and register the software for a small fee. http://www.mailwasher.net

Is Your Website Blacklisted? | A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of people or companies who have met with the disapproval of others. In the online world a blacklist refers to those people who have been marked as responsible for generating spam in a very big way. Blacklists are also known as blocklists…

Avoiding the Spam Filters

If you’re sending out a mailing to an opt-in list, there are a few steps you can take to make sure your message won’t trip the Spam filters:

1) Avoid using trigger words, such as Spam, fr*e, r*move, etc. Although the list is far too broad to list here, you can learn more by reading the following articles:

Spam Filters Run-Amuck by Timothy A. Gross http://www.iprofitsystems.com/articles/spamfilters.html

CLIP & SAVE guide to avoiding Spam filters by Debbie Weil http://www.imakenews.com/wordbiz/e_article000094161.cfm

2) Avoid using JavaScript within your messages.

3) Avoid using “bad” words.

If you’d like to ensure your messages are getting through, consider opening email accounts with the popular providers. You can send your mailings to these accounts and monitor their reception. If your mailings land in the dump, you can make some adjustments or even contact the company.

If you would like to test your outgoing email messages to ensure they won’t trigger a Spam filter, Ken Evoy offers a great service called SpamCheck. This free service will enable you to send a copy of your publication, or any email message, to a specific address and it will return a report of possible words that will trigger the Spam filters.

Send your publication including the subject and body to: mailto:spamcheck-websource@sitesell.net

Conclusion

The Spam problem continues to get progressively worse. Although there isn’t a simple solution to the problem, the information provided in this article should assist you in not only avoiding Spam, but also avoiding the filters for your legitimate mailings.

It’s really a shame we’re even in this position. However, we cannot allow Spam to continue to infiltrate our businesses. We must take the necessary steps to ensure our success.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, “Web Design Mastery” (www.webdesignmastery.com) and “eBook Starter - Give Your eBooks the look and feel of a REAL book” (www.ebookstarter.com)

Visit www.Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to eTips and receive a copy of Shelley’s acclaimed ebook, “Killer Internet Marketing Strategies.”

Those of us plagued by the onslaught of tens if not hundreds of unwanted emails greeting us as we open up our email accounts have some hope for respite in the form of Bayesian spam filters. For years spammers have been able to remain one step ahead of spam blockers simply because of their creativity and ability to adjust and evade blocking each time a new spam filter was developed. As a result, antispam software developers were certain of the task before them; to develop software that could continually learn from the new and creative techniques of spammers and as a result never fall behind in the spam blocking game.

Only recently, has such a solution been developed in the form of Bayesian filters. The Bayesian statistical method, upon which the filters are based, works on the premise of dividing emails into categories. The software takes a log of the emails which you choose to open and those you simply delete. All the while, it monitors the characteristics of both those emails you opened and those you did not. Over time, it learns from these aggregate figures. It will recognize certain words that appear frequently in those emails which you constantly ignore. The software will then be more prone to categorizing emails with a high frequency of that particular word as spam.

Spam: Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

But lest you be concerned that not opening a few emails from your Aunt Sue will suddenly cause all emails with the word ‘Sue’ to be categorized as spam you should know that the Bayesian filters work in the aggregate. This means, that while your decisions on which emails to open and which to not will affect the algorithm, so will the activities of thousands if not tens of thousands of other users. Spread across such a wide body of users, and aggregating data over such a period, there is only a minimal danger of false labeling. Rather, what you get is a very accurate long term tool to block spam. Unfortunately, those same characteristics which prevent false blocking also limit the Bayesian spam filter from blocking the front wave of a new spamming technique. So, often the effect is a few days or weeks of a new technique in spamming sneaking through the cracks until it is worked out into the algorithm.

By the same token, however, one of the great benefits of Bayesian spam filters is that they can be individualized. If you receive a disproportionate amount of spam based upon your online interests, you can actually modify a Bayesian spam blocker to treat certain words that are particularly spammy to you as such. That is to say, that while unprompted a Bayesian filter will be cautious to avoid over-blocking, when prompted by the user, the software can be made to block any specific type of spam emails.

Only recently has the technology become commercially available. Currently it is offered in a limited number of anti spam software programs which can be purchased and which scans each piece of email before it is opened. The other form is that which is actually embedded into the mail server software itself, meaning that the customer’s emails are already scanned and classified even before he or she opens up their email provider.

Sara Anderwahl recommends that you visit http://www.barracudanetworks.com for more information on anti spam software.

Until recently, spam has been an annoyance, a definite load on your email system and network, a waste of productive time and money, but we are about to find that the cost could get much higher.

Spam blockers are now becoming a necessity rather than an optional email utility, the reason is that spam is becoming much more dangerous.

Now, just like you, I looked into spam blocker software mainly because I didn’t like being constantly bombarded with various anatomy enhancing messages or ironically, advertisements for spam blocker software itself.

A skeptical person may even wonder if this whole problem is not rooted in the business model of lesser than honest spam blocker software companies - but that’s another article.

Whatever the root cause, one fact is true, the spam problem is turning into a far more costly and dangerous issue that could effect you in profound ways.

The dangers are becoming so serious that we finally got serious about reviewing spam blocker software - the result you can find here: http://www.blockmorespam.com/spam_blocker_software.html

The evolution of spammers into 3 new and very dangerous areas had me scambling to get serious about finding spam blocker software and techniques that are more effective than what I’ve been using in the past.

The 3 new dangers that threaten you are:

1. Rise in hijacked and spoofed email addresses means that someone can make it look like their spamming campaign is coming from your computer. The impact is that you could have your internet connection terminated or put on hold by your ISP - all without your knowledge. This raises the issue that spam needs to be blocked, ideally, in both directions - to ensure you are not an unwilling accomplice to a malicious spam campaign.

Spam: Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.

2. Convergence of viruses and spam. You are no doubt aware of the nasty rise in viruses that end up impacting your PC in a number of harmful ways including slowing you system down, crashing your system, logging your keystrokes, stealing private information, redirecting you to porn sites, etc… Now, in the past the incidence of a virus travelling through email would be fairly predictable. That has changed with viruses working together with spam. An example is the SoBig virus whos purpose was to create a broad spamming infrastructure by planting code on unwilling participants PCs creating a mass threat to email security. This is just the tip of the iceburg, spam will increasingly be used to spread and activate very dangerous viruses - for this reason alone, you need to be looking at spam blocker software.

3. Mix of spam and phishing. If you haven’t heard of phishing before, it refers to the misleading emails you get dressing themselves up to look like legitimate emails to get confidential, often financial, information from you. Some common examples are the Paypal or Bank emails that claim you need to login with your private information to verify contact information or update account information. In reality, this is a malicious third party that steals your private information and can cause you MAJOR identity and financial problems.

So what can we do about this?

It’s time to get serious about spam blocker software - as a first line of defense. Regulation isn’t working, while it is getting tougher and tougher to quickly decide what is spam and what is not in your inbox and as we have seen, the stakes are getting higher.

There are hundreds of shareware, freeware and otherware solutions on the market, the time for experimentation is over. In my trials of over 12 different spam blocker solutions, we found incredible variance in the reliabiltiy, effectiveness leading to our finding that there were only a small handful of serious spam blocker solutions. For our findings, feel free to visit our review page over at: http://www.blockmorespam.com/spam_blocker_software.html.

Discover More About Stopping Dangerous Spam With Reviews, Spam Blocker Software, Anti-Spam Measures and More, Visit our Leading Resouce Site Here: http://www.blockmorespam.com

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of spam tools coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just don’t work anymore.

Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be.

One method used to combat spam is blacklisting. The goal of blacklisting is to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to crack-down on customers who send spam. A blacklisted ISP is blocked from sending email to organizations. When an ISP is blacklisted, they are provided with a list of actions they must take in order to be removed from the blacklist. This controversial method blocks not just the spammers, but all of the ISP’s customers. Blacklisting is generally considered an unfriendly approach to stopping spam because the users most affected by the blacklist are email users who do not send spam. Many argue blacklisting actually damages the utility of email more than it helps stop spam since the potential for blocking legitimate email is so high.

Block Spam With An Easy Behavioral Change | E-mails now have a connection back to their servers. I will leave the technical aspects out of this article. Instead, I will walk you through how information from your computer is getting back to them…

In addition to the ethical considerations, there are other problems with blacklists. Many blacklists are not updated frequently enough to maintain effectiveness. Some blacklist administrators are irresponsible in that they immediately block suspect servers without thoroughly investigating complaints or giving the ISP time to respond. Another downside is that blacklists are not accurate enough to catch all spam. Only about half of servers used by spammers, regardless of how diligent the blacklist administrator may be, are ever cataloged in a given blacklist.

Blacklists are used because they can be partially effective against spammers who repeatedly use the same ISP or email account to send spam. However, because spammers often change ISPs, re-route email and hijack legitimate servers, the spammer is a moving target. Blacklist administrators are forced to constantly revise lists, and the lag-time between when a spammer begins using a given server and when the blacklist administrator is able to identify the new spam source and add it to the blacklist allows spammers to send hundreds of millions of emails. Spammers consider this constant state of flux a part of doing business and are constantly looking for new servers to send spam messages.

Is Your Website Blacklisted? | A blacklist, as the name implies, is a list of people or companies who have met with the disapproval of others. In the online world a blacklist refers to those people who have been marked as responsible for generating spam in a very big way. Blacklists are also known as blocklists…

When used individually, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Blacklists have some utility in stopping known spammers, but they may also block valid emails. Because of their limitations, blacklist data should only be used in conjunction with other sources to determine if a given message is spam. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same anti-spam method in order to be effective.

The Solution

Reputation systems offer a comprehensive anti spam solution by dynamically updating black and whitelists based on sender behavior. These systems also automatically update and score messages thereby removing the burden from administrators. Today’s spammers are more clever than ever, so today’s reputation systems must be equally sophisticated. An effective reputation system must be dynamic, comprehensive, precise, and based on actual enterprise mail traffic in order to keep the spammers from gaining any advantage. You can learn more about the fight against spam by visiting our website at www.ciphertrust.com and downloading our whitepapers.

Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry’s largest provider of enterprise email security. The company’s flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting http://www.ciphertrust.com/products/spam_and_fraud_protection today.