There is nothing like checking your email only to find out that your inbox is swamped with unsolicited message from people you do not know. No you’re not interested to buy dog food, beauty products, slimming pills, plants, or software! But still, you get these irritating emails.
Spam, this tiny four letter word has annoyed millions of people around the world.
What is spam anyway? Spam also called unsolicited commercial email (UCE), unsolicited bulk email (UBE) or junk mail, is unwanted email sent to multiple people usually for the purpose of advertisement.
Spam has produced negative effects aside from annoying people. Apparently, it is a waste of time to sort through tons of email while trying to figure out which email is valid and which is spam. Oftentimes you missed out those important messages just because you thought they were spam. Spam has also the potential to spread virus, pornography, and scams.
It is not only individuals who are affected by spam. Large companies and other businesses are suffering as well.
Many companies have already filed lawsuits against spammers who send spam and claim that they are from those companies, when in fact they are not and were just sent to cause turmoil and ruin the companies’ reputation.
The NCSA and Bank of America released a study called “Online Fraud report” and it showed that 87 percent of its respondents were confident that they could distinguish real emails from fraudulent emails. It turned out that 60 percent failed to identify the legitimate emails. This only shows that the spam problem has become even worse. Most people could not even recognize legit emails from spam.
Receiving spam is indeed such a hassle for people and for businesses.
You may be wondering how these spammers found your email address. With the existing technology available today, you should not be surprised to find that spammers use a lot of techniques for them to obtain other people’s email addresses. They could get email addresses from DNS listings, Usenet postings, or web pages, they also could guess common names at popular domains, or use programs called web spiders to search for email addresses on the web.
So how do you get rid of spam? Unfortunately, there is no 100 percent solution to this problem. You may try anti spam software or spam filters but this will only reduce the number of spam that you receive but will not totally eliminate them.
Another thing that you can do is to click that unsubscribe link, usually found at the bottom of email spam.
As I told you earlier, some spammers acquire email addresses through guessing common names at popular domains so it would be wise to set up an email account that is hard to guess. Use a different email when signing up with forums, mailing lists, chat rooms, news groups, and registering with websites.
Aside from email spam, a new range of spam has recently emerged. Spammers have found new ways on how they could get those spams to people. The new target of spammers are news groups, forum groups, instant messaging, online game communities, blogs, and even guest books.
With spam rising progressively, it is really important that you understand its nature and protect yourself through learning more on how you can get rid of it. Spam can waste your time, energy, and money so it would really be wise that you know how to block those annoying messages.
Rabu, 02 Juli 2014
Email Anti Spam And Virus Protection For Businesses - There Is Hope
With anti spam vendors offering low cost licensing, businesses can now afford advanced email spam and virus protection with a simple to use interface at a much lower cost. The great thing about technology is that as it evolves it gets faster, additional features and economical. Over the past few years the same evolution has taken place with anti spam technology and services. In large part this can be attributed to the open source software community plus enterprising companies enhancing the capabilities of this software and packaging it into easy to use anti spam appliances.
It is not practical to have anti spam software running on desktops in a networked business environment. Managing all employee junk email software at the desktop is not realistic. It can be a nightmare and costly in terms time and licensing.
Spam appliances sit in front of your email server so that when email comes in it will first go to the spam appliance and the email will be scanned for spam as well as viruses. The filter will block the message if it identified as know spam. If the filter is not sure if the email is genuine it will quarantine and hold the email at the filter and it will be stored until the recipient deletes it, releases it to their email box, or they can white list a trusted correspondent so that future emails will not be held back. This will greatly reduce the load on your email server and reduce your bandwidth needs. We have seen anti spam systems block up to 83% of incoming messages. This could help extend the life of your email server and push back the need for upgraded capacity.
Most virus outbreaks occur via email and for little cost an appliance can block viruses before they reach your network and user’s inboxes. This provides an extra layer of defense in addition to your current anti virus solution.
Businesses have two options if they use an appliance based solution for their spam and virus control. They can purchase and administer their own filter. This is a good option if you have a large number of employee mailboxes to protect and the technical staff to administer the spam appliance. Businesses also have the option to outsource their spam control as a hosted service. This is a good choice for smaller companies and if information technology is not your specialty.
If you purchase your own spam filter, a subscription to updates may also be required. Make sure you get upfront pricing for the add-ons that you will need. If you have more than 100 email users and the technical staff to maintain the spam appliance, buying your own filter may be your best option. Generally the basic model will work for most organizations. Large organizations with thousands of users will require a spam filter appliance with increases capacity and features. Spam appliances are designed to work with all mail systems but some do have specific enhancements for Exchange server Microsoft’s popular collaboration software and mail servers that support LDAP (light weight directory access protocol). Spam appliances use the LDAP protocol to verify recipients before delivering messages to your email server, this avoids consuming server resources.
If your business has five to one hundred employees, then an outsourced anti spam and virus filter service is going to be a good economical choice for your organization. Fees are based on the number of users and you only pay for what you use. You will not have hardware to buy, maintain, and upgrade. The upfront cost is minimal and most email filtering providers will let you try the service for free at first. Another added benefit to outsourcing your spam control is redundancy. It is important that you choose a provider that has their spam and virus filters collocated at secure internet data center facilities. Data centers provide redundant network connections and power, so if your email server or internet connection is down unexpectedly the spam appliance will hold your email until your email server becomes available, minus spam and viruses.
Anti spam technology is constantly improving and the costs are getting lower. With increased productivity and an added layer of defense against virus attacks, an anti spam appliance or service is something your business can not afford to be without.
It is not practical to have anti spam software running on desktops in a networked business environment. Managing all employee junk email software at the desktop is not realistic. It can be a nightmare and costly in terms time and licensing.
Spam appliances sit in front of your email server so that when email comes in it will first go to the spam appliance and the email will be scanned for spam as well as viruses. The filter will block the message if it identified as know spam. If the filter is not sure if the email is genuine it will quarantine and hold the email at the filter and it will be stored until the recipient deletes it, releases it to their email box, or they can white list a trusted correspondent so that future emails will not be held back. This will greatly reduce the load on your email server and reduce your bandwidth needs. We have seen anti spam systems block up to 83% of incoming messages. This could help extend the life of your email server and push back the need for upgraded capacity.
Most virus outbreaks occur via email and for little cost an appliance can block viruses before they reach your network and user’s inboxes. This provides an extra layer of defense in addition to your current anti virus solution.
Businesses have two options if they use an appliance based solution for their spam and virus control. They can purchase and administer their own filter. This is a good option if you have a large number of employee mailboxes to protect and the technical staff to administer the spam appliance. Businesses also have the option to outsource their spam control as a hosted service. This is a good choice for smaller companies and if information technology is not your specialty.
If you purchase your own spam filter, a subscription to updates may also be required. Make sure you get upfront pricing for the add-ons that you will need. If you have more than 100 email users and the technical staff to maintain the spam appliance, buying your own filter may be your best option. Generally the basic model will work for most organizations. Large organizations with thousands of users will require a spam filter appliance with increases capacity and features. Spam appliances are designed to work with all mail systems but some do have specific enhancements for Exchange server Microsoft’s popular collaboration software and mail servers that support LDAP (light weight directory access protocol). Spam appliances use the LDAP protocol to verify recipients before delivering messages to your email server, this avoids consuming server resources.
If your business has five to one hundred employees, then an outsourced anti spam and virus filter service is going to be a good economical choice for your organization. Fees are based on the number of users and you only pay for what you use. You will not have hardware to buy, maintain, and upgrade. The upfront cost is minimal and most email filtering providers will let you try the service for free at first. Another added benefit to outsourcing your spam control is redundancy. It is important that you choose a provider that has their spam and virus filters collocated at secure internet data center facilities. Data centers provide redundant network connections and power, so if your email server or internet connection is down unexpectedly the spam appliance will hold your email until your email server becomes available, minus spam and viruses.
Anti spam technology is constantly improving and the costs are getting lower. With increased productivity and an added layer of defense against virus attacks, an anti spam appliance or service is something your business can not afford to be without.
Digging into spam and filtering services
If you talk to anyone who uses email, spam is something that is frequently on there mind. How often is it that you open your inbox checking for an email from your mom, and you end up with emails with subjective titles involving animals, and foreign objects.
There are ways to fight back against Spam, and one of the most popular is through the use of a spam filtering service. There is all different types of spam, and surprisingly not all of them involve email. Most spamming involves the advertising or otherwise promotion of a product, however this is not true in some cases.
Most common types of spamming include: Email spam, Link spam and search engine spam.
Email Spam is the simple act of sending out massive amounts of 'junk email' to anyone and everyone, in order to promote a product. Often times spamming has been exploited by more 'undergorund' industries such as the adult industry, but it would be unfair to say that other industries haven't used it as well.
Link Spam is a form of spamming or spamdexing that recently became publicized most often when targeting the increasingly popular weblogs. Weblogs is one of the biggest problems, however link spam also affects guestbooks, and online discussion boards. The purpose behind spamming these various places, is to display hyperlinks to a various page or product, which helps both with user exposure and search engine popularity.
Search engine spam is usually closely related with the above "link spam", as it is the process of creating countless numbers of pages, that populate search engines. Often times these pages will be full of garbage text and have no real value on there own. When a user visits them, they will either be re-directed to a completely different page, often times on another domain, or show prominent advertising.
Everyone can take their part in removing spam. The easiest way for a general user to not encourage spam, is not to use it. Spammers only spam, because it must be effective, otherwise they would find something better to do with their time. It is also recommended to get various levels of personal spam protection, which is often times included with anti-virus software. 3rd party solutions such as Hotmail, have very good spam detection, however often times spam will leak in, and in that case you can help hotmail out by notifying them of the occurence, so that they can better help protect you next time.
There are ways to fight back against Spam, and one of the most popular is through the use of a spam filtering service. There is all different types of spam, and surprisingly not all of them involve email. Most spamming involves the advertising or otherwise promotion of a product, however this is not true in some cases.
Most common types of spamming include: Email spam, Link spam and search engine spam.
Email Spam is the simple act of sending out massive amounts of 'junk email' to anyone and everyone, in order to promote a product. Often times spamming has been exploited by more 'undergorund' industries such as the adult industry, but it would be unfair to say that other industries haven't used it as well.
Link Spam is a form of spamming or spamdexing that recently became publicized most often when targeting the increasingly popular weblogs. Weblogs is one of the biggest problems, however link spam also affects guestbooks, and online discussion boards. The purpose behind spamming these various places, is to display hyperlinks to a various page or product, which helps both with user exposure and search engine popularity.
Search engine spam is usually closely related with the above "link spam", as it is the process of creating countless numbers of pages, that populate search engines. Often times these pages will be full of garbage text and have no real value on there own. When a user visits them, they will either be re-directed to a completely different page, often times on another domain, or show prominent advertising.
Everyone can take their part in removing spam. The easiest way for a general user to not encourage spam, is not to use it. Spammers only spam, because it must be effective, otherwise they would find something better to do with their time. It is also recommended to get various levels of personal spam protection, which is often times included with anti-virus software. 3rd party solutions such as Hotmail, have very good spam detection, however often times spam will leak in, and in that case you can help hotmail out by notifying them of the occurence, so that they can better help protect you next time.
Computers and Consumers - Understanding & Avoid Identity Theft
The Internet has given over a billion people, worldwide, a way to instantly find information. The number of threats to a consumer’s security increases as the consumer connects with more computers, companies, and people online. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), the nation’s consumer protection agency, says that all Internet users should understand the importance of online security and should take measures to protect themselves.
Why the Need for Security & How to Protect Yourself
The Computer: Part of a computers sophistication lies in its ability to connect with other computers over the Internet in order to bring you information. When it is connected with other computers, it opens itself up for the transmission of information, which can create vulnerability for the computer. Hackers can connect to the computer, scan it for open ports, and gain access to unauthorized information about the computer user.
Most computers have an Intrusion Detection System (“IDS”) that monitors the computer for suspicious activity. When suspicious activity is detected, the IDS sends an alert that an intrusion has occurred.
An IDS alone will not protect your computer from incoming hackers and viruses. Computer users also need to protect themselves with firewalls, which create a barrier between hackers and the computer and help to prevent access to unauthorized information.
The Computer User: The computer user can also accidentally open doors that will lead to a security breach, such as when the user is using the Internet to make purchases. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. e-commerce sales for the year 2007 were $136.4 billion. Although the Internet has made shopping a whole lot easier, it has also increased the number of instances of identity theft. A study conducted by the US Department of Justice reports that 6.4 million households experienced some kind of identity theft in 2005. Consumers also open themselves up to increased junk e-mail called SPAM when shopping online. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize your risk when shopping online.
Be careful where you post your personal email address. Consumers using the Internet increase their chances of receiving SPAM e-mail each time they provide their e-mail address to make a purchase. As mentioned earlier, hackers can access consumer information by scanning ports that are not secure. Consumers can help protect themselves by only providing information that is necessary when making the purchase. There are companies designed to help protect consumers from e-commerce identity theft and SPAM.
When providing payment information, consumers should always make sure the site is secure. An easy way to determine whether a site is secure is to look at the web address bar at the top of the screen. The http, which precedes the address, should change to https when checking out on a shopping site. The ‘s’ indicates that the consumer is shopping from a secure page.
Finally, a consumer should avoid using ATM/debit cards to make purchases, as the breach of this information could lead to unauthorized access of the consumer’s bank account information. Use a credit card instead. Most credit card companies will work on behalf of their client, should a hacker steal their credit card information. In many cases, the consumer will only be responsible for $50 of the transactions.
When a consumer shops wisely on the Internet and acts in conjunction with private Internet security sites and the FTC they will decrease the chances of being one of the six million households affected by identity theft.
Why the Need for Security & How to Protect Yourself
The Computer: Part of a computers sophistication lies in its ability to connect with other computers over the Internet in order to bring you information. When it is connected with other computers, it opens itself up for the transmission of information, which can create vulnerability for the computer. Hackers can connect to the computer, scan it for open ports, and gain access to unauthorized information about the computer user.
Most computers have an Intrusion Detection System (“IDS”) that monitors the computer for suspicious activity. When suspicious activity is detected, the IDS sends an alert that an intrusion has occurred.
An IDS alone will not protect your computer from incoming hackers and viruses. Computer users also need to protect themselves with firewalls, which create a barrier between hackers and the computer and help to prevent access to unauthorized information.
The Computer User: The computer user can also accidentally open doors that will lead to a security breach, such as when the user is using the Internet to make purchases. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. e-commerce sales for the year 2007 were $136.4 billion. Although the Internet has made shopping a whole lot easier, it has also increased the number of instances of identity theft. A study conducted by the US Department of Justice reports that 6.4 million households experienced some kind of identity theft in 2005. Consumers also open themselves up to increased junk e-mail called SPAM when shopping online. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize your risk when shopping online.
Be careful where you post your personal email address. Consumers using the Internet increase their chances of receiving SPAM e-mail each time they provide their e-mail address to make a purchase. As mentioned earlier, hackers can access consumer information by scanning ports that are not secure. Consumers can help protect themselves by only providing information that is necessary when making the purchase. There are companies designed to help protect consumers from e-commerce identity theft and SPAM.
When providing payment information, consumers should always make sure the site is secure. An easy way to determine whether a site is secure is to look at the web address bar at the top of the screen. The http, which precedes the address, should change to https when checking out on a shopping site. The ‘s’ indicates that the consumer is shopping from a secure page.
Finally, a consumer should avoid using ATM/debit cards to make purchases, as the breach of this information could lead to unauthorized access of the consumer’s bank account information. Use a credit card instead. Most credit card companies will work on behalf of their client, should a hacker steal their credit card information. In many cases, the consumer will only be responsible for $50 of the transactions.
When a consumer shops wisely on the Internet and acts in conjunction with private Internet security sites and the FTC they will decrease the chances of being one of the six million households affected by identity theft.
Antispam - Aren't We All! Don't You Just Hate It?
You've got enough to do without having to sift through a bunch of worthless, or worse yet, offensive junk e-mails in your Inbox.
So what can be done about it? What antispam procedures and software really work?
Spam filtering software is the first stop in your antispam campaign, but in some ways it's the easiest to subvert.
What this antispam tool does is tell your e-mail system to look for designated clue words - sex, nude, porn, for example - and to eliminate the messages that contain these clue words. Of course, there are easy ways to get around these antispam tactics. Did you ever see a message that comes through with the word sex spelled s*e*x? Well, that asterisk method has circumvented your spam filter - or the spam filter of your Internet and e-mail provider.
The other problem with this filter is that you could miss legitimate messages. A friend, for instance, who might mail you that she was "sick of porn sites popping up" might have her message deleted because it contained the word porn.
Two upgraded versions of these antispam filtering products are Bayesian and heuristic filters, which try to identify offensive messages through recognition of phrases as objectionable. SpamAssassin by Apache is probably the best known example of heuristic filtering. What these filters are doing that the more basic ones aren't is looking at the message itself rather than the subject header. Both Bayesian and heuristic filters have an Achilles heel in that they depend for their filtering on frequency. Were a spammer to send a short message it would get past.
To further complicate things by punishing the "good guys," major Internet service providers started simply considering batch emailing as potential spam. What this did, however, was to disrupt opt-in products such as e-zines and newsletters. So that didn't work well. The spammers themselves found a way around it anyway. As they sent out their batch messages they inserted a program that produced a variant in each heading. Perhaps a word that didn't even make sense, but still individualized each message enough to have the batching not appear as batching.
Some non-profit Internet watchdog agencies started keeping lists of the IP addresses of spammers. When these addresses cropped up in mail they were blocked. The way around this for spammers was simple - they changed IP addresses. The result was even worse, in that those addresses then got handed out to completely innocent folks who now had problems sending e-mail. Then the spammers got really aggressive and started creating and distributing viruses allowing them to hijack IP addresses that weren't on the "spam" lists.
Where the answer seems to lie for many businesses and their sites is to bypass standard email communication altogether and resort to online feedback forms for electronic communication. Which of course doesn't resolve the antispam issue for private individuals who have no Web site of their own.
So what can be done about it? What antispam procedures and software really work?
Spam filtering software is the first stop in your antispam campaign, but in some ways it's the easiest to subvert.
What this antispam tool does is tell your e-mail system to look for designated clue words - sex, nude, porn, for example - and to eliminate the messages that contain these clue words. Of course, there are easy ways to get around these antispam tactics. Did you ever see a message that comes through with the word sex spelled s*e*x? Well, that asterisk method has circumvented your spam filter - or the spam filter of your Internet and e-mail provider.
The other problem with this filter is that you could miss legitimate messages. A friend, for instance, who might mail you that she was "sick of porn sites popping up" might have her message deleted because it contained the word porn.
Two upgraded versions of these antispam filtering products are Bayesian and heuristic filters, which try to identify offensive messages through recognition of phrases as objectionable. SpamAssassin by Apache is probably the best known example of heuristic filtering. What these filters are doing that the more basic ones aren't is looking at the message itself rather than the subject header. Both Bayesian and heuristic filters have an Achilles heel in that they depend for their filtering on frequency. Were a spammer to send a short message it would get past.
To further complicate things by punishing the "good guys," major Internet service providers started simply considering batch emailing as potential spam. What this did, however, was to disrupt opt-in products such as e-zines and newsletters. So that didn't work well. The spammers themselves found a way around it anyway. As they sent out their batch messages they inserted a program that produced a variant in each heading. Perhaps a word that didn't even make sense, but still individualized each message enough to have the batching not appear as batching.
Some non-profit Internet watchdog agencies started keeping lists of the IP addresses of spammers. When these addresses cropped up in mail they were blocked. The way around this for spammers was simple - they changed IP addresses. The result was even worse, in that those addresses then got handed out to completely innocent folks who now had problems sending e-mail. Then the spammers got really aggressive and started creating and distributing viruses allowing them to hijack IP addresses that weren't on the "spam" lists.
Where the answer seems to lie for many businesses and their sites is to bypass standard email communication altogether and resort to online feedback forms for electronic communication. Which of course doesn't resolve the antispam issue for private individuals who have no Web site of their own.
An Introduction To Spam Filters
Using spam filters is another very effective way of combating spam or junk mail. These programs use some keywords like ‘guaranteed’, ‘free’, etc and block any email with those words in them. But this has the disadvantage of sometimes blocking even important mails from your contacts and preventing those senders from sending mails to your address again. The way out is to use add-on spam filters which allow you to control the content that should be allowed into your inbox. This will save you a lot of time and energy as you no longer will have go through each and every email before identifying it as spam and eliminating it.
Spam filters can be installed on any computer system and aim at filtering junk and getting only relevant information to the user.
Setting up a simple spam filter can be very easy. Identify the section ‘filters’ in your email program and create a new filter. Lay down the rules or filter conditions for the new folder. These can be the parameters under which an email would be marked as spam and deleted from your inbox. If you prefer to look at the filtered mail before deleting it, you can choose the option to move it to another folder once it is filtered. Once you save the changes you have made in the new filter, it will be active.
You have a new variety of spam filters in the market now which are called ‘smarter filters’. While these fight and prevent spam very effectively, setting it up is a very complex process and is recommended only for technical experts.
New generation spam filters are different from traditional ones in that they go in for statistical data rather features of spam. These filters decide on spam by analyzing the entire email and comparing it with other already identified spam mails. The error margin for these filters is almost zero as more than 99% of scams are identified and eliminated through this method.
Spam filters can be installed on any computer system and aim at filtering junk and getting only relevant information to the user.
Setting up a simple spam filter can be very easy. Identify the section ‘filters’ in your email program and create a new filter. Lay down the rules or filter conditions for the new folder. These can be the parameters under which an email would be marked as spam and deleted from your inbox. If you prefer to look at the filtered mail before deleting it, you can choose the option to move it to another folder once it is filtered. Once you save the changes you have made in the new filter, it will be active.
You have a new variety of spam filters in the market now which are called ‘smarter filters’. While these fight and prevent spam very effectively, setting it up is a very complex process and is recommended only for technical experts.
New generation spam filters are different from traditional ones in that they go in for statistical data rather features of spam. These filters decide on spam by analyzing the entire email and comparing it with other already identified spam mails. The error margin for these filters is almost zero as more than 99% of scams are identified and eliminated through this method.
A Quick Look At Email Spam Filters
You must be eagerly finding for a way out to stop receiving Spam mails in your inbox. Take a quick look at email spam filters to get some idea on how to check spam. There are a number of email spam filters that you can use in your computer. For official purposes, you have anti server software spam where the spam filter is located in the server level to trap all email spam. They prevent them from reaching your inbox. The email spasm not only slows down the performance of the server, but also occupies a lot of storage space. Emails are the easiest and the best way for these viruses to spread.
Working of Spam Filters
Anti spam software and anti spam solutions are essential to aid you in getting a clean inbox. The server spam filter or anti spam server is a software application that scans all the incoming email messages. With the help of their configuration, they identify Spam and prevent them from reaching your inbox. The spam mails not only eats away the storage space and make selecting your personal emails difficult, they also can contain viruses. Using anti spam filters is necessary as it saves both your time and money. But even when you are using anti spam filters, it is recommended to check the messages just to make sure that no personal message has been marked as spam. Even the server spam filters marks email as “false positive” to those that are identified as spam, but in reality they are valid messages. There are various anti spam programs that identifies Spam and sends it to the junk mail folder.
Not all spam filters work in the same way. Some of them are pre programmed where the know spammers are inserted. They accordingly block them. Some of the programs filter the emails based on the keywords used in the mails. Some of the email spam filters are configured and you can easily customize it or the network administrator can also customize it according to the requirement of the company.
Working of Spam Filters
Anti spam software and anti spam solutions are essential to aid you in getting a clean inbox. The server spam filter or anti spam server is a software application that scans all the incoming email messages. With the help of their configuration, they identify Spam and prevent them from reaching your inbox. The spam mails not only eats away the storage space and make selecting your personal emails difficult, they also can contain viruses. Using anti spam filters is necessary as it saves both your time and money. But even when you are using anti spam filters, it is recommended to check the messages just to make sure that no personal message has been marked as spam. Even the server spam filters marks email as “false positive” to those that are identified as spam, but in reality they are valid messages. There are various anti spam programs that identifies Spam and sends it to the junk mail folder.
Not all spam filters work in the same way. Some of them are pre programmed where the know spammers are inserted. They accordingly block them. Some of the programs filter the emails based on the keywords used in the mails. Some of the email spam filters are configured and you can easily customize it or the network administrator can also customize it according to the requirement of the company.
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