If You Sping A Splog You Spam Ping Your Blog (Weblog)

One of the techniques that bloggers use to announce new content on their weblog is to ping it every time they create new content or a new blog entry. A ping is a signal which is sent to a ping server to let it know that a blog has been updated and which also allows blog search engines, like Technorati, to know that there is fresh new content on your blog. One of the most popular free ping providers is pingomatic.com.

This is important to do after each post because it updates search engine databases, which, in turn, can bring more visitors to your blog (assuming that one of your goals is to have more readers of your blog). This is so because a lot of the blog search engines rank freshest (or newest) results first.

Many blogs are monetized by Google AdSense or other PPC or CPM ads and it is, therefore, in many bloggers best interest to draw as many visitors as possible to their blogs in order to earn more advertising revenue. This has led to spinging splogs. A "splog" is a "spam blog," as coined by Mark Cuban. A "sping" is a "spam ping." A sping happens when someone sends a ping even though a new post has not been created. A sping is sent to dupe blog search engines into believing your weblog posts are new and fresh even though they actually are not.

Spinging a splog is in nobody's best interest except for the spinging spammer. The internet is littered with too much spam as it is and spinging does not help the cause.

About The Author:
Tino Buntic invites you to receive free sales leads and free advertising by creating a TradePals professional profile at http://www.trade-pals.com. TradePals provides qualified sales leads to business professionals across The United States and Canada.
Tino enjoys reading blogs and one of his favorites is Ads Of The World.
Article Submitted On: October 16, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

How Anti Spam Software Works

It was not too long ago that email mailboxes were so full of junk mail and spam that they threatened to render electronic communication useless. When you opened up your email you were bombarded with poorly written advertisements for $ex, V!agra, and tons of other intentionally misspelled products, designed to evade any spam blocking devices. Those interested in consumer protection knew the ultimate goal, to eliminate and block spam, but as soon as they created a product designed to do just that, the spammers evaded their efforts by getting more creative. That is, until modern anti spam software was developed. Antispam software comes in a variety of forms, with the obvious ultimate intent of stopping unwanted emails from reaching you.

Blacklist

One of the primary anti spam methods is known as blacklisting. This software identifies the IP address of the spam sender, and then communicates with the Internet Service Provider of the sender and instructs the ISP to block mail from that IP address to your email account. In theory this is a fool proof solution. The reality, however, is that there is a lot of money to be made in spamming, so forcing a spammer to switch his IP address frequently is not too high a price to pay to evade blocking. That said, this practice does, over time, start to close down doors to spammers and all but eliminates amateur spammers who do not have the capability to frequently switch IPs.

Spam Votes

Many individuals who frequently use their email accounts will be familiar with this device. Spam voting software works through the participation of users. When you receive email you have the option of classifying it as spam, usually by pushing a button which says, unsurprisingly, ‘spam’. Once enough people classify a piece of mail or an IP as spam it falls in trust until ultimately it becomes completely blocked from addresses.

Profiling

Profiling involves learning the common characteristics of spammers and spam mail. It is software that looks for things like bugs, invalid message ID’s and other traits and uses these characteristics to evaluate incoming pieces of mail. Each piece of mail is then given a score depending upon how it fares against these criteria. The user is then given the option of how high or how low to set the bar with regard to which emails are let in. This method has been shown to be immensely effective against amateur spammers and many professional spammers. However, it relies upon a ready team of professionals to identify new traits used by spammers and to incorporate those traits into the profiling algorithms.

Bayesian Filtering

The most promising spam blocking software follows no rules. Rather, it constantly learns new techniques to fight spam by scanning the mail you’ve read and comparing it to the mail that you have rejected. This highly sophisticated software uses the data that it gleans from thousands of users to identify which items are spam and which are not. It then has the capability to adjust its standards to your particular preferences. Over time, it becomes adept at sending you only the emails that you want, and blocking the emails that you do not.

About the Author:
Sara Anderwahl recommends that you visit http://www.barracudanetworks.com for more information on anti spam software.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Spam If You Want Jail Time

Spam is more than just an annoying, time-wasting nuisance that decreases business productivity, fills up server space and clogs bandwidth. It also includes attempted fraud on a grand scale via "phishing" emails, false requests purportedly from companies such as Ebay or Paypal, asking for credit card information.

Almost all email users worldwide receive spam, and despite all attempts to defeat it, this marketing method seems to be increasing. According to a study by IDC, in 2004 38% of the 31 billion emails sent every day in North America were spam, up from 24% in 2002. In August 2004, MessageLabs found that 84.2% of all emails scanned were spam. In a weeklong study conducted by the University of Texas, 56.2% of messages filtered through Brightmail were flagged as spam.

Because of the continual "arms race" between spammers and spam-blocker designers, no anti-spam software will catch every piece of junk email. Spammers continually discover new methods to evade anti-spam software, which often removes mail based on suggestive keywords. Emails are sent under official-sounding titles such as "server account information" which many internet users will open, only to be faced with lurid, deliberately misspelled advertisements offering miraculous remedies to enlarge one's private parts. To avoid giving away their physical location, spammers often hijack legitimate servers and use them to emit a barrage of junk email. Spammers also falsify sender and reply addresses as well as randomize the content of their email to increase uniqueness; approximately 85% of spam currently being received is unique.

Initially, internet users put up with the growing barrage of junk email, but finally legislation has been introduced to stop this waste of computer users' time.

In January 2004 Federal Can-Spam Act was passed for the purpose of “controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing” and the Wireless Telephone Spam Protection Act. The Can-Spam Act specifies that unsolicited commercial emails must be labeled and include opt-out instructions as well as the sender's physical address. It bans the use of deceptive subject lines and false headers. The Wireless Telephone Spam protection Act bans the use of wireless messaging systems to send unsolicited advertisements.

The nation's first anti-spam prosecution occurred in April 2004, when Daniel J. Lin made a plea bargain deal to serve a minimum of two years in prison. Lin was charged along with three others for illegally using well-known company and government computers, including those of Amoco, Ford Motors., Unisys, the U.S. Army Information Center and the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, to send junk e-mail that appeared to be legitimate. In March 2005, the FTC settled civil charges against Lin and the three accomplices, along with their company, Phoenix Avatar LLC. The defendants agreed to pay a $20,000 civil penalty.

Another notable prosecution under the Can-Spam Act occurred in November 2004 when a brother and sister who sent junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted. Jurors found Jeremy Jaynes, 30, and Jessica DeGroot, 28, guilty of three counts each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information. This team of rogue internet marketers peddled useless products such as a "FedEx refund processor", a work-at-home scheme hat supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour. In one month alone, they received 10,000 credit card orders for the processor, each for $39.95. They amassed a net wealth of $24 million peddling worthless products like the refund processor and other products like a "penny stock picker" and an Internet history eraser. The jury recommended a nine-year jail sentence for Jaynes and a $7,500 fine for DeGroot. This case is still under appeal.

By the beginning of 2006, than 30 cases had been brought under the CAN-SPAM act by state and federal law enforcement, along with 20 enforcement actions by the FTC.

In addition to the Can-Spam Act, the Computer Owners’ Bill of Rights is being proposed by the FTC, which would create a “do-not-email” registry of addresses, similar to the "do not call" list affecting telemarketers, of internet users not wishing to receive unsolicitated commercial email messages. Another proposal is to force advertisers add “ADV” in the title of any commercial email. Probably a better idea would be to fine the companies that employ spammers, as they are easily located by the content of the email. a practice already being used in Australia. ISPs could also start terminating accounts of websites that are advertised via spam.

About the Author:
J Schipper
J Schipper loves Spam Blockers Accounting Software Business Software Disk Recovery
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

What Is Anti-spam Filter?

Spam is unsolicited and unwanted email. Other common names of spam are spam mail, bulk email or just junk mail. Today, spam has reached such monumental proportions that almost every other message we receive is spam. Protecting the inbox with anti-spam filter has become one of the barest necessities for almost all PC users.

In a few words, anti-spam software helps detect spam. It is a program that detects unsolicited and unwanted e-mails, and doesn't let them slipping into your inbox. The anti-spam program is installed onto your computer and filters your inbound emails. The email filtering is carried out based on a number of criteria. These can be specific words in the subject line or in the body of the message, type of files attached to the message, images embedded into the message. You could set the filter to check the sender's email address out. If you have your own whitelist or address book with trusted email addresses, you could arrange the anti-spam filter to refer to that whitelist. It also can detect known spammers by checking a blacklist of habitual spam senders maintained by certain Internet Service Providers. If the email sender is on the blacklist, the message is rejected.

Anti-spam filters have adapted to the wiles of the spammers. They use techniques that do not trash legitimate emails by effectively analyzing the content of the email. Such software looks for keywords and tries to interpret their meanings in the sentences. Certain spam filters reject the messages if they come to you in the form of "Undisclosed Recipients", and accept the emails where your email address is in the "To" or "Cc" fields.

Anti-spam filter is an essential part of your computer's security tools if you want to ensure that you only receive the emails you want. Now you can select the right anti-spam software for your computer and start fighting spam.

About The Author:
Julia Gulevich
Author is a technical expert associated with development of computer software like Anti-Spam Software. More information can be found at Anti Spam Filter Resources
Posted: 19-10-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

What is Search Engine spamming - SEO Spam

SEO Spam Search Engine Spamming also known as Spamdexing (spamming and indexing) is the practice of deliberately manipulating web pages to obtain high search engine rankings. Spamdexing is used to mislead search engines indexing program and to gain ranking position which they do not deserve.

The spam tactics mentioned below could either block search engine robots form crawling your site properly or get your site penalized in certain search engines/directories. Make sure you are well aware of these tactics before designing or optimising your website.

10 Search Engine Spam tactics known –

Hidden Keywords

Hidden keyword also known as invisible text is the most common form of spam practised on websites. Hidden text or content will not be seen by human visitors and are only meant for the search engines spiders. The purpose of using hidden text is to increase the keyword density of the webpage and also to trick the search engines into indexing the text on the page. Hidden texts are used through HTML format and also using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Keyword Stuffing

Keyword Stuffing is implemented by adding block of keywords/keyphrases onto the webpage. Keyword stuffing is practised to increase the density of targeted keywords, thereby tricking the search engine robots into considering the page to be more relevant for the search phrase.

Use of Unrelated Keywords

Unrelated keywords is the practice of using keywords on the webpage which are not related to sites content. This method is followed to trick a few people searching for such words into clicking at their sites link.

Hidden Links Hidden links are used to increase the link popularity of the site. These links are hidden from the reach of visitors and are used to fool the search engines. They are usually in the form of small hyperlinked dots.

Redirects

Redirection is the process of taking the user to another page without his or her intervention by using META refresh tags, CGI scripts, Java, JavaScript, Server side redirects or server side techniques.

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are low quality web pages that contain very little content, stuffed with targeted keywords and keyphrases. Doorway pages are designed to rank highly within the search results. A doorway page will generally have "click here to enter" in the middle of it.

Unreadable Tiny Text

Tiny text spam consists of placing keywords and phrases in the tiniest text imaginable all over site/webpage. Most people can't see them, but spiders can and will ban such sites eventually.

Link Farms

Link farms are webpages created solely for search engine ranking purpose that consist of long list of unrelated weblinks on page.

These type of pages/sites are penalised by most search engines.

Cloaking

Cloaking is the practice of dynamically generating keyword rich content to the search engine robots, while providing different content to the actual visitors. By cloaking the user will not be able to see the code of the page shown to the search engines. Usually, the cloaking software creates hundreds of web pages that are optimized for a special search term so that search engine spiders get the impression that the website contains a lot of relevant information about a special topic.

Mirror Sites

Mirror sites are identical sites hosted on different domains/website address. By mirroring sites one can build hundreds of duplicate pages with entirely different urls. Intention of adopting mirror sites is to quickly populate your sites pages and also to increase inbound links. Most Search Engines do not appreciate duplication of sites, but some of them are vulnerable to such technique as yet.

About The Author:
Johnsmith
The author is a Writer working with A-1 internet design, which is a professional Search Engine Optimization Company providing effective Search Engine Optimization services, SEM services, and business to business email marketing, online marketing services to promote your business over the web. Get more valuable information at A-1 internetdesign
Submitted: 2006-10-07
Article Source: GoArticles

Better No Backlinks Than Spam Backlinks?

Search engines use many aspects to rank websites, but the most important ranking aspect is link popularity. Link popularity is determined by the number of links to your website and the link popularity of the websites containing the backlink.

Many webmasters try to add as many backlinks as possible hoping this will increase the link popularity of their website and search engine rankings. But you have to be careful. One of the biggest problems of search engines is spam. Search engines have developed intelligent software to remove spam. Spam is determined by checking the content of websites, but also by following links from spam websites. A website which is linked from a spam website is probably also a spam website and could be removed from search engines or could lead to lower rankings. This will be disastrous for your traffic.

Examples of spam websites are:
- Websites only containing keywords, but no grammatical correct sentences
- Websites mainly containing affiliate links or Google ads
- Websites containing illegal content
- Websites using techniques like cloaking to improve search engine rankings
- Web directories which accept all submitted web pages without quality checks

We recommend only adding backlinks to web pages having at least a page rank of 2 and containing content similar to your website. The best way to achieve quality backlinks is by improving the quality of your website. You can easily create many quality backlinks if your website contains unique content and useful services.

About The Author:
Appie Pieterse is a researcher of the Walhello Search Engine and has many years of experience developing search engine technology and ranking algorithms.
Article Submitted On: October 12, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

The Menace Of Spam Emails

Everyday it’s the same old story. Open your mail and find the line of spam mails in your inbox. Not only is this annoying but it is also dangerous. It causes great financial losses to the administration which deals with it and carries high potential to inflict great financial losses to the individuals who may fall in this spam trap that has been laid for them. Actually, spam e-mails are sent by fraudulent companies and individuals. These spam e-mails are usually loaded with viruses, spy programs and other unwelcome software’s. Despite new laws and ver4dicts, still the numbers of spam e-mails are rising day after day.

Protection of ones inbox or mail box from these spam e-mails is a growing concern for people nowadays. There are a lot of software’s that are being developed nowadays so as to block the flow of spam e-mails. But, there are some simple steps following which an individual can block the flow of spam e-mails in his mailbox.

One should always try to protect his or hers Email address. Care should be taken by individuals that they don’t display their email addresses at chat rooms or at any other rooms were they are taking online services. For example, if once an individual displays his email address at any directory room; any spammer who is in the lookout of email addresses may spot it and then send spasm at that email address. Individuals are also advised to sometimes create two or three email addresses. People are advised to do so, so that they can use there addresses for different and specialized use. Implying that an individual can use one of his email address for personal messages, one for service rooms, one for public chat etc. depending upon the needs of the individual.

Spammers have a unique style of working. Sometimes they just use dictionary attacks to sort out possible name combinations while sending spam. Thus users with a common name as an email address may often fall as a victim of the spam emails than an individual who has a unique email address. Thus it is usually advisable to have a unique email address, if the person really intends in keeping the spam emails against his mail box.

Moreover, most of the email accounts provide filter tools the user, just in case if the individual wants to keep the spam emails away from his email address.
The above said methods are very simple and any individual who follows these simple steps will come to know how simple yet so effective these steps are in keeping junk and spam emails away from their email addresses.

About The Author:
Ken Charnley is a personal finance enthusiast with http://www.online-loans-pro.com/ dedicated to quality information on online loans. For all your online loan needs visit and Apply For Loans Online
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Spam Is Now Dead Meat.

Other than the canned meat sold by Hormel, the term spam is used to describe unsolicited bulk email. It is rumored that the term Spam came from an old Monty Python comedy sketch about a restaurant where every item on the menu came with an order of Spam. Certainly this is an accurate comparison due to the ubiquitous nature of junk email, which first started to appear in bulk in the early 1990s. The usual definition of spam is email that is unsolicited, without prior permission or business relationship, transmitted in mass mailings and containing commercial content.

As the Internet became used increasingly in homes and businesses, marketers did their best to promote their wares through this new medium. Email, unlike postal mail that requires a separate postage charge, can be sent out in bulk just as cheaply as it can be sent to one person. Therefor, bulk email became an irresistible way to advertise for Internet-based marketers. Their only difficulty was to find valid email addresses for recipients.

Bulk marketers began to compile lists of known email addresses and sell them to other advertisers. Consumers often sign up on mailing lists to be notified of sales or product promotions, even from companies the openly pass their clients' email addresses on to other companies. Spammers get email addresses off publicly available web sites and user groups. Spammers have even been known to hack into businesses' customer databases to harvest even more addresses for their lists.

It did not matter if some of the addresses had expired; if an address is not valid, email is simply not delivered. Millions of simultaneous email messages could be sent out at little or no cost to the marketer, so customer targeting was no longer necessary. Spam was lucrative for marketers, as any response rate at all would bring in profit from this essentially free advertising.

Much of the spam advertised goods and services of dubious quality, such as pornography, get-rich-quick schemes, multilevel marketing, stock promotions, quack health remedies, and of course the services of internet marketers offering to send out even more spam on behalf of the email account holder.

Internet users, however, were less pleased with spam than were internet merchants. Many consumers resented receiving advertisements through what is to be considered a personal electronic mailbox. Finding legitimate emails became a time consuming process of sifting through hundreds of unwanted messages. Furthermore, some of the spam contained viruses. Constant flow of spam used up bandwidth and filled up server space. Parents objected to pornographic pictures being sent to family websites which were accessed by children.

Spam is costly to the business world. It takes up bandwidth and server storage space. Legitimate email may be lost, inboxes fill up and staff spend office time deleting unwanted email. A study published in May 2004 by Radicati Group shows that large businesses (with approximately 10,000 employees) which do not use spam filters lose $2,923.20 per user per year or a total of $30 million annually in terms of email productivity. As Bill Gates said, "The torrent of unwanted, unsolicited, often offensive and sometimes fraudulent email is eroding trust in technology, costing business billions of dollars a year, and decreasing our collective ability to realize technology’s full potential.”

Aside from being an annoying, time-wasting nuisance, spam also includes "phishing" emails, false requests purportedly from companies such as Ebay or Paypal, asking for credit card information.

The total savings for businesses which do install anti-spam filters is approximately $19.9 million per year. (Claburn, 2004). Filtering software looks for tell-tale signs such as an invalid or spoofed "From" address, invalid host name in the “From” or “To” address, similarity to previous emails, direct SMTP transmission from a host without a fixed IP address, receipt of the email from an unrestricted mail server, an IP address, netblock or domain matching that of a known spammer or “spamhaus”, and unique headers created by spamming software.

No matter what kind of anti-spam system you employ in your home or office, from the most basic to the most thorough, it's bound to save you time and money.

About the Author:
J Schipper loves Spam Blockers Accounting Software Business Software Disk Recovery
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Cost Of Spam And Why Use Anti-spam Filter

E-mail is now being abused. The flow of spam on the Internet is the proof. It is annoying to download hundreds of disgusting spam emails into the inbox looking for some legitimate messages. Not only you waste your valuable time to delete junk emails by hand, you also waste your money as each spam message in your inbox takes precious kilobytes of bandwidth you paid for. In addition, spam messages can contain viruses, which can infect your computer system, and hidden tracking codes, which work as soon as you click on the message and let the spammer know that your email address is valid. With all that said, it would be great to delete the messages that you don't want to receive beforehand and launch your email client to pull down only good emails. Anti-spam software can do this for you. It helps you fight against annoying spam.

There is a wide choice of anti-spam filters available on the Internet. The common services or features they offer are:

* Whitelist and Blacklist. The decision whether an email message is spam or good is taken based on the sender's email address. The whitelist contains "friendly" email addresses, and the blacklist contains potential spammers, or simply people you don't want to communicate with.

* Filtering based on the message subject or content. Some words or phrases are met in spam emails more often than others. These are usually vulgar or adult words (sometimes too offending). Thus, filtering based on a keyword is rather helpful.

* Virus scanning. There is possibility that spam email contains a virus in the attachment. Certain anti-spam programs allow you block emails with various suspicious attachments.

* Automatic spam detection. Some anti-spam filters can check inbound email and delete the emails they consider as spam automatically at a regular basis.

* Email recovering. Some spam blockers provide you with the ability to move spam emails to a quarantine folder and keep them for a fixed number of days. In addition, there is the possibility to recover an email from the trash if you need it.

So, with the great features and benefits that antispam software offers, you can now easily block the majority of spam emails.

About The Author:
Julia Gulevich
Author is a technical expert associated with development of computer software like Spam Email Filter. More information can be found at Anti Spam Resources
Submitted: 2006-10-19
Article Source: GoArticles

Simple Steps To Defeating Spam

GMail SPAM filter is fighting a losing battle. I am doing some ANTI-SPAM testing. For the past 4 months I have been very public with my Gmail email address, signing up for newsletters, using it on forms, and sharing it publicly on forums, blogs, and discussion boards. I expected to get SPAMMED to death, that's exactly what's beginning to happen. Everyday, I receive about 20 junk emails. I know that is small, but for someone who is use to never seeing SPAM in their inbox, it's a quite bit.

I did this sort of testing, once before with Yahoo! Mail, and I took the time to get rid of all my SPAM (from coming into the inbox). I'll share my secret.

1. First, you should have 3 email addresses; (@.hotmail, @.yahoo, @.gmail). These 3 email addresses should represent your public (personal) email address, your business email address, and your spam catcher). Remember the less you publicly use your email address, the less SPAM you'll have.

2. If you wish to use your public or business email address, each site you travel to, (which you plan or must share your email address) you should check the site Privacy Policy. You don't have to study the policy, but finger through it and see what their policy is about sharing your information. If the policy doesn't have this clause or the site doesn't have a Privacy Policy (visibly linked) then be skeptical and assume this site plans to share your information. Many sites claim to be legit and have a privacy policy in place, but through the backdoor they sell your information, so never put all trust into the privacy policy, just make good judgment. The best thing about managing your SPAM is that you can speculate how someone got your email address, because your amount of SPAM is down to a minimum and you are securely managing your email address. Any place you need to enter your email address and you feel skeptical about using your public or business email address then you should enter your spam catcher email.

3. Your public (personal) email address should be used for public trusted sources, such as: on forums, discussion boards which you frequent. You should use this address only on sites which you trust and visit on a day-to-day or occasional basis. Your public email address should be used for sign-up forms (only sites you want information from). Your public email address should also be used to subscribe to newsletters which you initiate. Your public (personal) email address should be your most commonly used email address for basic day-to-day communication. This is the email address you should share with family, friends, and co-workers.

4. Your business email address should be used for business contacts. In fact, your business email should NOT be a free email address, it should be an email address with your company, your website, or your business name (example: @.yourcompanyname.com). If you don't have a company, business, or website then use a free email address and make this your email address for professional purposes, such as putting this email on your resume, etc. This should be for extremely trusted sources. You should only share your business email address with individuals you connect with one-on-one on a professional or business level. Example: You shouldn't share this email address with the customer service staff of a company, but you should share this email address with the CEO of the company. This is your exclusive email address. In some instances you may share your business email address with the customer service staff, but the source should be trusted and you should make good judgment. Example: If the company plans to send you sensitive information via email, like money market account information. Your business email can be used for signing up at sites which you will use your credit card and is a highly respectable and honest site, world renown. This email should only be used with those whom you trust with your information and trust will not share or send you advertisements. You should only use this email address to get company related information or information which directly affects you or your business on a consumer or business level. You should NEVER publish your business email address on any website, forum, discussion board, or any other publicly available media.

5. Your spam catcher email address is the email address you should use at any time you feel skeptical, when you don't trust a site, or when a site doesn’t provide you information that you wish to receive. Many sites have products, programs, or services which you want, but to register or to move forward you must enter an email address (and most of the time the email address must be valid and confirmed), therefore you should have a spam catcher email address, for non-trusted sources. Using your spam catcher email address you could easily register at any site while using a valid email address, which you can log into and confirm the authenticity of the email addresses.

6. Use the 'Report Spam' feature of your email client. Most online and now even software (local install) email clients have a 'Report Spam' feature which blocks the delivery of future mail from the sender. It is important to make good use of this feature, because it will help keep your inbox free of unwanted mail. The only email addresses you are worried about receiving spam from is your personal email address and business email address, the spam catcher email address should not be an account you log into daily, you should only log into your spam catcher email address to confirm an email. At this point you shouldn't receive any spam into your business email address account, if you followed the steps above, but if you do then make sure you use the 'Report Spam' feature so you can block future delivery. Use the 'Report Spam' feature immediately when you receive spam so there is no delay and to be sure you don't miss a spam message. In your personal email address account you will probably receive spam messages or unwanted mail, if you do then make sure you use the 'Report Spam' feature each time you receive a piece of unwanted mail, within a few months and good email address management (following the steps above) you should never or rarely see any spam coming into your inbox.

If you receive any mail into your inbox, then make sure you use the "Report Spam" feature within the email client. This should soon eliminate any mail you do not wish to have. Following the steps above is imperative to getting a good clean inbox. Managing your email address is ultimately your responsibility and you should know who you share your information with. Most people use only one email address for all their communication, this technique is not the best option. You should use at least 3 email addresses adhering to the steps above. You can simply log into one account, your personal email address or your business email address and just have the email from the other forwarded to the account you log into most. You can also send email from the account under either your personal or business email address. Setting up forwarders and multiple sender accounts is not a hard task in the 3 major online email clients. For some additional steps may need to be taken, like with Yahoo! you must have a paid account to forward your email, but from Gmail you can automatically forward your email where you like for FREE. So, if you forward your Gmail email to your Yahoo! account and setup multiple accounts within your Yahoo! Account then you are in good shape. Use the Hotmail account as your spam catcher. This is just a thought, but you can set it up any way you like, its your preference. Currently, I have a paid Yahoo! account and I use my Yahoo! account as my business email address. I use my Gmail account as my personal email, and I use my Hotmail account as my spam catcher. My Yahoo! mail is forwarded directly to my Gmail account, and I have a sender account setup in my Gmail account, which will send mail as my Yahoo! email address. I use Gmail Notify and know instantly whenever I receive new mail from either my public (personal) or business email address. I rarely log into my Hotmail account, only to confirm an email or just to login so my account doesn’t close. This proactive approach has kept my inbox clean for years and now I’m sure it will help you with your fight against SPAM!

About the Author:
Ant Onaf
This article is in association with Journal Home (http://www.journalhome.com) Ant Onaf is an accomplished webmaster, internet marketer, content writer, and IT consultant. Visit his blog Ant Onaf Internet & Technology Blog (http://www.antonaf.com).
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

What Is Anti-Spam Software

Before we learn about anti-spam software, we need to first know what is spam. To put it succinctly, spam is unsolicited and unwanted email. Other names for spam are Unsolicited Bulk Mail, Excessive Multi-Posting, and Unsolicited Commercial email, in addition to the more common - spam mail, bulk email or just junk mail. The advent of email brought in an era of instant communication, where information reaches our desktops, at negligible cost, and in no time at all, from across the globe.

Along with the benefits, came the negative aspects of email. For the multitudes of marketing hawks out there, this was an opportunity to send unsolicited promotions of their products, instantly, and at a very low cost. Today, spam has reached such monumental proportions that 10 out of every 13 emails (76.9%) we receive are spam, one way or the other. This is why anti-Spam filter has become a must have software for almost all PC users.

Stopping Spam

Simply put, anti-spam software helps detect spam. It is a software program that detects unsolicited and unwanted e-mail, and prevents them from reaching your inbox.

Anti-Spam software is also known by many different names, such as: Spam Filters, Email Spam Filtering, Spam Blocking Software, Anti-Spam Filter, Spam Filtering Software, Spam Blockers, Bayesian Filters, and Anti-Spam, among many others.

Anti-spam software is installed in your machine to divert the spam coming in. If installed in the mail server, you will never receive the spam, to begin with. The filtering is configured based on a number of criteria. These could be specific words in the subject line, in the body of the message, and the type of attachments accompanying the mail. You could arrange to filter out even the sender’s email address. Certain Internet Service Providers (ISPs) maintain a blacklist of habitual spam senders – known as spammers. Anti-spam software detects these blacklisted senders and rejects them per se.

Over time, anti-Spam software has become sophisticated to match with the wiles of the spammers. They use techniques that do not trash genuine emails by effectively analyzing the content of the email. Such software looks for keywords and tries to interpret their meanings in the sentences. Certain spam filters do not accept emails that come to you in the form of "Undisclosed Recipients." They accept emails where your email address is in the “to” or “cc” fields.

Anti-spam software has become an essential part of your computer’s security, to ensure that you only receive the emails you want, and not others. To help eliminate spam, look for anti-spam software that has the following features, among many others:

• Blocking emails using both lists and preset filters - blocks specific addresses, watches subject lines, and messages within

• Updating filters automatically

• Isolates spam outside of your inbox

• Puts acceptable emails automatically into your safe list

• Monitors and filters multiple email accounts

Now that you know the basics about the need and importance of anti-Spam filter, select the right one for your computer and get rid of the menace of Spam.

About The Author:
A Singh
Author is admin and technical expert associated with development of computer security and performance enhancing software like Registry Cleaner, Window Cleaner, Anti Spam Filter etc. More information can be found at www.pcmantra.com Related Information: www.pcmantra.com/SpamFilter.aspx?id=4 and www.pcmantra.com/resourcecenter.aspx
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Spam Filter - Bayesian Filter To Fight Back Spammers

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.

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 and provide following features:

•Bayesian Algorithm for Anti Spam Filtering

•Auto Learning Bayesian Filter to challenge Spam Emails

•White List of Trusted Email Address

•Custom Black List

•Individual Marking of Spam/Not Spam Emails

•Optional feature to block Non-English Emails

•Complete Mail Header Information

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

About the Author:
Micky Sing
Author is the Admin of Official Spam Filter where you can find software to fight Spam, integrating with MS Outlook and Outlook Express.
Article Source: NewFREEArticles.com

Get Rid Of Spam

Every day, both dmoestic and corporate users of the internet receive considerable amounts of spam e-mail. They are not only annoying, but sometimes you can miss an important e-mail or newsletter simply because you lose it among the great number of e-mails that flood out your Inbox. Often you'll find that important people neglect to read your e-mail, because busy people like them hardly have the time and patience to browse through the huge quantities of spam mail they receive.

One solution to this problem is a filter or a free spam blocker. Many companies have designed filters for their customers. Many e-mail servers, especially the renowned ones that have a reputation to protect, have their own free spam blocker. There are several types of programs that can help you stop spam, including:

- the ones that are offered when you create a new e-mail address. Every company that provides e-mail service has a spam filter, including those that offer free accounts like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail and so forth.

- there are also standalone programs that go through your mail folders regularly and do their best to separate valid e-mail from spam and unwanted mail. The main disadvantage with these free spam blockers is the fact that, when they do their checks, they use quite a large percentage of your computer's resources and sometimes also of your bandwidth. Before installing this kind of free spam blocker, you'll need to decide if this is okay with you.

- other types of free spam blockers are the ones that work as plug-ins to other programs like e-mail clients. The disadvantage with this kind of approach is that you need to download all your mail anyway, before the plug-in can do its stuff.

When you decide to use a filter, you must be sure that you update it or install new versions regularly, because marketing researchers working for spammres are continuously developing new ways of 'fooling' the filters. Filter makers must keep up by improving their software accordingly.

A free spam blocker works by looking for trigger words or phrases inside the text of the e-mails, and categorizing e-mails on that basis. Nowadays, there are special programs being created that are designed to pass spam through free spam blockers by re-arranging words or using a different language style in the e-mails. This is an unfair marketing strategy, of course, but if you want to be protected against it, you must always have an up-to-date version of your free spam blocker program.

Specialists recommend that you should review your needs and see what kind of filter suits you best. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. You must make up your mind whether you want to use the default filter on the e-mail server, or if you want to download all your mail before scanning them, or if you are willing to share your bandwidth with a standalone application. The best way is of course, if you can blend all the programs in one, but that's not always practicable. Still, it is advisable that you should not remain satisfied with the free spam blocker that your e-mail server provides, because you will probably continue to receive unwanted mail in spite of it. Using a plugin in addition to server-side filters is viewed by many experts as the most effective way of getting rid of spam, considering the trivial effort it takes to set up.

About the Author:
Matt Garrett www.Free-Spam-Blockers.Com www.Spam-Filters.net
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Reducing Spam Using The Spam Fighting Filters

Not only are anti spam filtering programs important to keep your computers safe from potential online hackers, viruses and bots, they are also an important time saving feature. For example, if you own or manage a small business, if each of your employees spent just several minutes per day reviewing and deleting spam emails, he or she would end up wasting over 20 billable hours annually. Multiplying twenty hours by the number of employees affected and you have just discovered a major time and money drain for your company. Investing in effective anti-spam practices makes sound financial sense in terms of productivity and computer IT savings.

As online spam continues to increase many people have turned to anti-spam programs. The spam peddlers and the software manufactures are engaged in a battle. As the spam proliferators continue to change up their antics the anti-spam programs themselves have had to upgrade their software, now it has reached the point where some of the software is so complicated, and requires so many time consuming updates, that it to is almost not worth it.

Today's best solution seems to lie in the hands of companies which allow you to run your emails through their servers and filters. These companies run all incoming emails through many tests and weed out the spam. This cuts spam off at the pass and your server will never have to encounter the spam emails. An added benefit to using these third party servers for sifting your email, is these spam messages will no longer take up room on your server.

As mentioned earlier the spam peddlers are upping their skill levels everyday. So, while using a third party server will greatly reduce your risk, relying on one method alone is not sound. As a backup measure it is a good idea to have your own anti spam software running. The best prevention is remember when in doubt throw it out. If you receive a message from an unknown sender, do not open it, click on it, or reply to it. Just like junk mail received in your home's mailbox simply throw the sucker out into your computer's recycle bin.

About The Author:
Jeff Clark is a staff writer at Technology Digest and is an occasional contributor to several other websites, including Games Enthusiast .
Submitted: 2006-10-09
Article Source: GoArticles

Paid Surveys and SPAM

Before I get started, I want to point out that I am not the biggest fan of paid survey programs for one reason: they really don't pay enough money, in my opinion. If you are looking for an extra $50-$100 per week, then yes, this is a pretty simple way of doing it. I did this in the past, and I was not satisfied with this amount. That is what lead me into other programs like affiliate marketing and wholesaling. Both of these require a much larger initial commitment and a bit of persistence to be successful, but if you can get to the top of the mountain, the stroll down the hill is rather nice and profitable.

But this is not about affiliate marketing or wholesaling. Paid surveys do work! If you want to spend the time to fill out surveys or mystery shop or read emails, you will get paid for it. But be prepared! The way paid surveys works is that you must sign up on a lot of sites to get the 5-10 surveys per week. Signing up on a lot of websites means one thing: You are exposing yourself to a lot of sites, some of which don't have great intentions! If you plan on doing this, protect yourself! Here are a few suggestions:

1) Use a new email address (like a hotmail or gmail account) to conduct all of your paid survey business on. Some of these sites WILL sell your email address or use it to try to sell you stuff (as spam). Mixing this with your personal email is a mistake!

2) You should still use your real name and address, since they may be sending checks or confirming a PayPal account.

3) You should not need to supply your social security number. You will not be making enough money. If they require it, look into the site a bit more and make sure it is legitimate (if it is something like "Yahoo", it is probably pretty safe...if it is something like "PaidSurveyBonanza", I would be a be skeptical!)

4) Only give your phone number if you are planning on taking part in phone surveys or focus panels.

5) Create usernames and passwords that will be specific to this paid survey venture.

Unfortunately with systems like paid surveys, you are required to expose yourself a bit. Be conscious of what information you are giving them. If you protect yourself with the data you give out, the worst that can happen is a bit of annoying spam organized in a way that will not interfere with your normal life.

About The Author:
Matthew Bredel is a 32 year old online entrepreneur and engineer currently living in San Diego, CA.
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
Article Submitted On: September 26, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Internet Basics: Spam Is Like A Mosquito In Your Bedroom At Night

Ever have a mosquito in your bedroom at night? Oh, man. There you are, nice and happy, about to fall asleep when, zzzzzzz, there’s this irritating buzzing in your ear. You whack at the source. The zzzzzzz stops. You got it. Good.

But wait a few minutes and, zzzzzzz, there it is again. You take another swipe, then another. Maybe you even jump out of bed and flick on the lights. But you can’t find that crazy mosquito. Or maybe you do find it, and gladly squish it.

Then you go back to bed and are almost asleep when, zzzzzzz. Yes, another mosquito. Who invited these things to the party? Didn’t you put screens on the windows to stop this very thing? Can’t the mayor do something about it?

That’s what SPAM is like.

SPAM is when someone sends one email to a whole bunch of people who were minding their own business and didn’t ask to receive the email. Suddenly it appears in your Inbox, uninvited and rather annoying.

So how do you stop it? Simple, delete the email. But then you get another one from the same spammer. You might try to tell them to take you off their list. And they might actually take you off their list (or not). You might try to block their emails so you just don’t get them in your Inbox. But even if that works, another spammer will find your email address somehow and start sending you other SPAM emails.

Tired of all the unsolicited emails, you might get serious and get anti-spam software (it might even come with your anti-virus software). And that might stop most of the SPAM. But why can’t SPAM be stopped all together?

Well, the mayor might not be able to do anything about stopping SPAM, but the US Government is taking it seriously. In 2004, their CAN-SPAM Act became law, dealing with email “whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service, including content on a Web site.”

--quoted from http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm

And that’s why SPAM is like a mosquito in your bedroom at night.

Copyright (c) Grant Pasay 2005. All rights reserved.

About the Author:
Grant Pasay is a writer, musician, moviemaker, and author of the new eBook, "The Internet Is Like A Refrigerator: And Other Weird Comparisons That Make it Easy to Understand Everything From AOL to Zip Files." Check out Grant's free/brandable ebook at: http://grantpasay.com/refrigerator/ Check out Grant at: http://grantpasay.com/
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Comment Spam: Allure for the Online Totem Pole

Unless your website is dead and six feet below the virtual ground, you are ever prone to the Internet evil commonly known as comment spam. Comment spam infiltrates every active online website which supports or accepts links from users or participants.

A comment spam is generally characterized with links and no sense, understandably so since its main concern is to be able to take advantage of the algorithm techniques of most search engines in making certain websites rank higher than the others.

Senseless as a comment spam may look at the outset, the makers of these said comment spam are extremely intelligent creatures that are properly harnessing the power of the Internet and its users to generate undeserved income.

Strangely enough, the object of affection of the makers behind every comment spam is not to gain popularity from the people and websites that they are spamming, but rather they use it to get an edge in the totem pole of user access which we know to be called search engines.

Comment spam in huge volumes actually allows the culprits to generate high ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. It helps them generate more revenue from receiving more clicks and having their links displayed all over the World Wide Web for all the people to see, regardless if these people care about what they're advertising or not.

The allure of resorting to generation of a battalion of comment spam actually emanates from the fact that it works. No matter how hated spammers get for being an online pest for websites, they get to earn a lot from it. Even when the growing number of efforts to reduce comment spam is alive and kicking, a lot of people are doing it since it is a very powerful marketing ploy.

While thoroughly extinguishing comment spam may seem to be an impossible feat, there have been various ways created to diminish, if not eliminate the influx of comment spam in various online systems. One way of eliminating comment spam involves completely blocking off all comments. However, this method is very self-limiting and deprives the user the freedom for healthy online interaction. Not all comments are comment spam, and anyone who deprives himself of getting authentic feedbacks for the sake of blocking a spam comment is at a losing edge.

Some companies have already launched their own versions of anti-spam techniques for the benefit and protection of their users. Still, even with the best of the best anti-spam method, a comment spam can still find its way even in the most protected pages. But it is better to have some level of protection than none, so every user must exercise his or her right to have spam-free interactions by selectively seeking the websites which are more protected and encouraging other websites which are not entirely comment spam-protected.

Filters are also used by most systems to purge comment spam, but they need to be updated frequently since these notorious comment spam authors are extremely resourceful people with a knack for taking advantage of every online loophole they could find.

About The Author:
Kistina Robin
Get most updated information about Comment Spam: Allure For The Online Totem Pole
Posted: 02-11-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Save Time, Money and Hassle - Stop Spam

Spam can be an absolute nightmare, and one that seems to spiral out of control in some of my email accounts. If i've been away for a few days and haven't had a chance to check my emails, I dread having to open up my email client when I get back online in anticipation of hundreds or thousands of spam emails.

Although I simply delete these emails, for some, they seem legitimate messages that can often cause the recipient to become the subject of a fraudulent activity. An example of this that many people may have experienced are the emails that claim that you have won the lottery in some country that you probably haven't even visited, or emails that ask for you to help claim a substantial amount of money for someone who claims to be entitled to millions of dollars from a lost relative. These types of emails are laughable but for a lesser experienced internet user, they pose a great threat.

This was when I decided to use a spam blocker to prevent the hassle and time wasted deleting spam emails.

Spam has been around since the medium of email became popular. Even though there have been several laws passed that are trying to limit the amount of spamming activity, it still exists. A good way to stop the annoyance and the time wasted deleting spam emails is by using a spam blocker. They can also save you a lot of money in the scenario where you are unfortunate enough to receive a virus from a spam email. This has happened to me before, and I can honestly say I will now do everything possible to stop it from happening again because of the hassle and time it took to get my pc back to the way it was. In fact this took several weeks and numerous times formatting my hardware, which despite my best efforts resulted in quite a few programs and software being lost.

But why do people fall victim to spam emails? The truth is that the spammer is becoming cleverer in the way that they set up the scams. It was not so long ago that I received an email which was apparently from Paypal. The email was pretty well written and even the links seemed to point to the Paypal site. I felt it was not genuine though as it asked me to click a link to visit the "Paypal" site, whereas I had read some time ago never to click a link in an email to visit the site, but to type the address directly into your internet browser so that you can rest assured that the site is genuine. It is a distinct possibility that many internet users will have fallen for these types of emails.

Do not become a victim of the consequence of spam emails. A spam blocker is a simple solution that will prevent the emails from ever reaching your inbox. They can save you time, money, hassle, and any potential problems that spam emails possess.

About The Author:
Justin Brown
It is highly recommended that you visit www.spam-blocker-online.com to read up on how a spam blocker is essential online.
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Ways Of Deceiving Spam Filters

Spam filters or spam blockers or spam eliminators have one purpose and that is to block, ban, delete unwanted, unsolicited commercial email and prevent them from entering your inbox. Their intentions are good since email is intended for personal communication but often abused by internet marketers and opt-in newsletters. However, spam filters are misunderstood little tool for they are merely software that aids and not to demand from it's owner or never to dictate it's owner what is spam or not. Our fault is laziness in way that we have all delegated the task of choosing what and what not to read in our inbox to a software.

Spam filters work in various ways but one common principle is that they isolate spam from not by means of patterns or words or keywords found on your email messages. They do this very fast often lightning speed and we can say that they've already "read" our email messages first before we have ever read it. Some will go into extent that it actually scans the email message and reads it for some spam are mascarading as a personal email but are not. They're real intention is ot sell you out.

So this little so-called "intelligent software" will do their "thing" and put messages straight to your spam box/folder or even worst delete it before you can even set your eyes on it. One colleague of mine decided not to receive email from me because my email end up on the spam folder. How cruel? A friendship destroyed just because people prevented their brain to think and sided with the spam filter. Spam filters can't give you freebies because it hates the word.

A person or programmer feeds it's words like: free, money, cash, opportunity, friend, $, investment, and many more to be filtered or scored out. A certain score was assigned to a word mentioned above and the more the word are mentioned in an email message the more your email message is considered as a spam. So the highest scorer get straight to the trash.

No person or software can tell me what is spam or not for I have not prevented by the use of my brain. Remember the saying "Another man's trash is another man's treasure.", so it is with spam. "Another man's spam is another man's opportunity.

So how can you deceive this spam filters and get your message across to your intended recipient.

1. Limit or if possible don't use the words: "free, money, cash, opportunity, for a more listing of these scored out words, try sending a message to yourself using either yahoo or hotmail account once it get straight to the trash, chances are you have the banned word.

2. Speak in a foreign language, perhaps, your own native language will do. Majority of spam filters are programmed in English but watch out there are already multi-lingual spam filters out there.

3. Work on your wordings, make it short. Send a test email to your yahoo or hotmail account, if it gets to the inbox, then you can send that email, if not try rewording your message. try my spam tester here: http://www.nabaza.com/safelist.htm or here http://www.nabaza.com/autoresponders.htm

4. Insert symbol or extra letter in the filtered word, for example instead of saying "free" say it like: "freee", "f.r.e.e.", "F*r*e*e*". I think you get the point. Your message will appear coded bringing us back to the military age of the internet where only the militaries can use the internet.

5. Don't send an email at all, that way it won't be filtered. Try fax machines. Use forum, blogs, rss, i.m. (instant messenger) or desktop alerts.

6. Use randomly generated words so you're recipient will think you're crazy and so he/she will move your message to his/her trash.

7. Use a website and post your message there. Email the recipient just the url or web address and let him/her click on it, chances are he/she won't click thinking that the web address is a virus or a trojan.

8. Abbreviate your words like those sent on SMS (short messaging system) or in telegrams or just like in morse codes.

9. Turn your messages into a graphic either a .jpg or .gif will do. Write in a piece of paper and scan it or use a graphic editing software and write your entire message there and save it as .jpg or .gif and send it in an email as file attachments.

Ok, I'll stop there before I become a laughing stock. Now for a very effective way of communication, use desktop alerts, what are desktop alerts? Know them and download 1 or two of them here: http://www.Nabaza.biz

About the Author:
William Nabaza of www.Nabaza.com specializes in domains, webhosting, webmaster's tools, netpreneur's articles and resources. Stands out as a freebie provider, business opportunity provider and the like. Visit his site at www.nabaza.com or contact him directly at william@nabaza.com www.nabaza.com/resources.htm
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Free Spam Blockers Vs Paid Ones

Free spam blockers Vs, Paid ones are a topic that lurks at the back of your mind before opting for one. You may face the need of protecting your computer from the damages that spam can do to your computer. They not only occupy storage and memory space of the computer, but also spread viruses that can crash the whole system. It is best to avail the trial period to judge the type of spam blocker that suits your need.

Free spam blockers Vs, Paid ones

It is becoming impossible to stop email spam for both internet users and online business owners. Spam not only eats away the storage and memory space of the computer, but also poses various other problems. They can force your ISP to disconnect your internet connection. The virus in the spam can slower down your machine and cause the whole system to crash. It can not only steal all your confidential information, but also delete completely from the computer all the files and documents that you have stored. Thus, the spam blockers play a very important role in protecting your computer from any such damages.

A Free Trial before Purchasing

You can either buy a spam blocker or freely download it. Even though both are designed to perform the same function, yet there are some unique features and guarantee period that distinguishes a paid spam blocker from a free one. Be it paid or free, these anti spam software make use of anti spam programs to track spam. They are beneficial in avoiding phishing. You get a variety of this software like Spam Bully, Spam Inspector, and Zaep. The best part of free spam blockers is that you can easily update the version and keep your system up-to-date by downloading the new version. With paid spam blockers, you will have to buy them every time some new version is available to install it.

The Norton Anti Spam 2005 is a paid one that operates on almost all the platforms like Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows Me. They filter email on multiple levels and operate on POP3. Even in the toolbars of Outlook, Eudora and more, they add anti spam filter options. They not only block spasm but also pop-up ads. Another paid version is the Spam Alarm that filters in only the good messages against a huge load of messages. Most of the times the free spam blockers are effective in only blocking spam. In doing so, they may sometimes even block useful messages that they detect as spam. The paid ones cater to this need carefully and are often provided with anti-virus scan. Whatever spam blocker you use, it is best to use the trial first before installing it on your computer.

About The Author:
Oliver Turner
We offer the best anti spam programs info website. Check it out on spam blockers research. All about spam blockers on http://www.leandernet.com/Spam_blocker/Spam_blockers.php
Article Submitted On: September 26, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Image Spam And How To Fight It

Spam attacks where the text is replaced with images aimed at lightly protected email systems are growing in popularity. With the variety of anti-spam filters that analyze the message content to weed out unsolicited emails, spammers continue to increasingly adopt image spam. Businesses, organizations and everyday computer users might have noted an increase of image-based spam, text e-mails that arrive in your in-box as image files. Image spam can contain a picture of words, a screenshot, a photographic image, or a combination of these. By sending emails that contain no text, only pictures, spammers found that they can fool even the most advanced anti-spam software like SpamAssassin, G-Lock SpamCombat.

Most anti-spam programs detect text-based spam very well, but they totally fail when a spam message has no text to analyze. Thus, the rapid rise of the image spams. These spam messages often include image files that have a screen shot offering the same types of information advertised in more traditional text spam. Image spam can also include unique trackers which work when a recipient opens the message and let the sender know it's a valid email address, ripe for future mailings. Image spam is probably the best technique that spammers have today to get past the anti-spam filters. Together with the image spam that uses one attached image to deliver its message, the spammers are known to send spam that contains multiple images that act like pieces in a puzzle. The recipient's email client then reassembles the pieces in the right order and displays them as one image again. In addition to the usual annoyance, image-based spam eats up more bandwidth than regular spam because each image spam message is more than seven times larger than regular spam email - what's costing users, especially business, money.

The majority of image spam is used in stock scam messages, in which the senders encourage the victims to buy a certain stock to raise its value, then quickly turn around and sell the stock themselves to make a profit.

Nevertheless, anti-spam software and service providers are able to cut down image spam, as well as HTML-based and text spam. The organizations and individual computer users having sophisticated anti-spam filters -- those that focus on both the content and origin of the messages -- have little to worry about, other than to make sure they're on the latest version of their vendor's products and receiving regular updates. They can then analyze and create rules in their software to block it. Many anti-spam software use combinations of techniques, including keywords, blacklists (of offending spam mailers), and something called "honey pots," in which they have traps set up on the Internet to collect spam messages. There are a number of approaches to protect against image spam. In current versions of Outlook, for example, images are not automatically downloaded into messages unless the user has specified that messages from the source can be trusted. G-Lock SpamCombat allows preview all the messages in a safe mode - no pictures or tracking codes are downloaded nor executed.

About The Author:
Julia Gulevich
Author is a technical expert associated with development of computer software like AATools, G-Lock EasyMail, AntiSpam stops image spam. More information can be found at Anti Spam Filter Resources
Submitted: 2006-10-23
Article Source: GoArticles

Email Laws That Could Bring You To Jail Even If You're Not Spamming

First things first, I'm not a legal expert and so this article DOES NOT represent any legal or professional information and nor can I guarantee its accuracy. I only wrote this article to introduce you to these email laws that might affect us, email marketers.

OK, so what're these email laws?

They're the Child Protection Registry laws that have been taken into effect in the State of Michigan and Utah.

These laws established "Do Not Email" registries into which individuals or institutions that primarily serve minors can enter minors' email addresses or any email address to which minors may have access. Institutions or entities that primarily serve minors can also register their entire domain names.

People are prohibited by these laws from sending email to the addresses that have been in the registries for 30 days or more if the email contains material or link to material that is illegal for minors. And it doesn't matter whether the email is solicited or unsolicited, you still can't send such email.

You might think that the materials must be something obvious such as pornography, gambling, alcohol, etc. Yes, but they're only part of the materials.

The other part consists of less obvious stuff, namely stuff that looks fine, but might be illegal for minors because minors are prohibited by law from viewing, receiving, participating, possessing, or purchasing this stuff. This includes automotive sales, etc.

And according to the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy, these laws apply to almost all people in the United States and even those outside the United States who have a physical presence in the United States. (see http://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries.php)

So, imagine you have some email addresses in your list that happen to be already in the "do not email" registry for 30 days, but you're not aware of them. And one day, you send an email that contains a link to a webpage that has some Adsense ads that advertise some automotive sales, guess what may happen to you?

Well, your action may be considered as a computer crime and you might face civil suit and fines or/and you might even face criminal suit and penalty.

So far, there are two things that you can do to prevent you from getting trouble with these laws.

First, make sure that you never send email that contains material or link to material which is illegal for minors. This is so obvious, right?

Second, if you think that you can't comply with the first option, then you can purge your list by matching it against the registries in a regular basis. But there are fees for this.

Don't panic about these laws. Instead, find more information about it. You can start learning more about these laws by visiting the references below:

- Michigan Children's Protection Registry site:
https://www.protectmichild.com

- Michigan Public Act No. 241:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2003-2004/publicact/htm/2004-PA-0241.htm

- Michigan Public Act No. 242:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2003-2004/publicact/htm/2004-PA-0242.htm

- Utah Code - Child Protection Registry:
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~code/TITLE13/13_26.htm

- Michigan government's press release:
http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-23442_21974-121645--,00.html

About the Author:
Mohamad Zaki Hussein invites you to learn about how to generate web traffic and convert that traffic into profits at www.webtrafficideas.com.
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