How Spammers Fool Spam Blacklists - And How to Stop Them

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of spam tools coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just don’t work anymore. Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be. One method used to combat spam is blacklisting. The goal of blacklisting is to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to crack-down on customers who send spam. A blacklisted ISP is blocked from sending email to organizations. When an ISP is blacklisted, they are provided with a list of actions they must take in order to be removed from the blacklist. This controversial method blocks not just the spammers, but all of the ISP’s customers. Blacklisting is generally considered an unfriendly approach to stopping spam because the users most affected by the blacklist are email users who do not send spam. Many argue blacklisting actually damages the utility of email more than it helps stop spam since the potential for blocking legitimate email is so high. In addition to the ethical considerations, there are other problems with blacklists. Many blacklists are not updated frequently enough to maintain effectiveness. Some blacklist administrators are irresponsible in that they immediately block suspect servers without thoroughly investigating complaints or giving the ISP time to respond. Another downside is that blacklists are not accurate enough to catch all spam. Only about half of servers used by spammers, regardless of how diligent the blacklist administrator may be, are ever cataloged in a given blacklist. Blacklists are used because they can be partially effective against spammers who repeatedly use the same ISP or email account to send spam. However, because spammers often change ISPs, re-route email and hijack legitimate servers, the spammer is a moving target. Blacklist administrators are forced to constantly revise lists, and the lag-time between when a spammer begins using a given server and when the blacklist administrator is able to identify the new spam source and add it to the blacklist allows spammers to send hundreds of millions of emails. Spammers consider this constant state of flux a part of doing business and are constantly looking for new servers to send spam messages. When used individually, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Blacklists have some utility in stopping known spammers, but they may also block valid emails. Because of their limitations, blacklist data should only be used in conjunction with other sources to determine if a given message is spam. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same anti-spam method in order to be effective. The Solution Reputation systems offer a comprehensive anti spam solution by dynamically updating black and whitelists based on sender behavior. These systems also automatically update and score messages thereby removing the burden from administrators. Today’s spammers are more clever than ever, so today’s reputation systems must be equally sophisticated. An effective reputation system must be dynamic, comprehensive, precise, and based on actual enterprise mail traffic in order to keep the spammers from gaining any advantage. You can learn more about the fight against spam by visiting our website at www.ciphertrust.com and downloading our whitepapers.

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

Spammer in the Slammer: Jeremy Jaynes Sentenced to Nine Years

Will other spammers take heed? Don’t count on it. Jeremy Jaynes was on top of the world. By age 28, he owned a million-dollar home, a high-class restaurant, a chain of gyms and countless other toys. Yet those were only the spoils of his main line of business, which was swindling innocent people out of their money through email scams. From an unassuming house serving as his company’s headquarters in Raleigh, NC, Jaynes sent an estimated ten million messages a day pitching products most recipients didn't want, amassing an estimated $24 million fortune in the process. Using aliases such as Jeremy James and Gaven Stubberfield, Jaynes spammed his way up to the 8 position on Spamhaus’ Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) and grossed as much as $750,000 a month, allowing him to live like a king. However, Jaynes ran head-on into an information superhighway road block when a Virginia judge sentenced him to nine years in prison for his November 2004 conviction on felony charges of using false IP addresses to send mass email advertisements (some just call it spamming). The conviction was a landmark decision, as Jaynes became the first person in the United States convicted of felony spam charges. Though his operation was based in North Carolina, Jaynes was tried in Virginia because it is home to a large number of the routers that control much of North America's Internet traffic (it’s also the home of AOL and a government building or two). He should’ve Used the Privacy Software During the trial, prosecutors focused on three of Jaynes’ most egregious scams: software that promised to protect users' private information; a service for choosing penny stocks to invest in; and a work-from-home "FedEx refund processor" opportunity that promised $75-an-hour work but did little more than give buyers access to a website of delinquent FedEx accounts. Sound familiar? Anyone with an e-mail address has received countless messages originating from Jaynes’ operation. (If you’re still waiting on your privacy software to show up, it’s probably safe to stop checking the mailbox.) Jaynes got lists of millions of email addresses through a stolen database of America Online customers. He also illegally obtained e-mail addresses of eBay users. While the prosecutors still don't know how Jaynes got access to the lists, the Associated Press reported that the AOL names matched a list of 92 million addresses that an AOL software engineer has been charged with stealing. When Jaynes’ operation was raided, investigators found that the house from which he ran his operation was wired with 16 T-1 lines (a large office building can get by on a single T-1 line for all its users). Investigators also entered into evidence to-do lists handwritten by Jaynes. Take a look at Jeremy Jayne's meticulously detailed lists at: * www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes1.JPG * www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes2.JPG * www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes3.JPG Good Work if You Can Get (Away With) It The economics of spamming makes Jaynes’ decision to build a career of it understandable, though not noble. Spammers work on the law of averages, which would seem like an odd strategy considering that the average response rate for a spam message is just one-tenth of one percent. However, once you do the math even this miniscule response rate can make one very wealthy very quickly. If a spammer sends one million messages pushing a product width a $40 profit, a response rate of 0.1 percent works out to 1000 customers, or $40,000 per million messages sent. Since each message costs only fractions of a penny to send, and Jaynes was sending literally billions of messages a year, it’s easy to see how he pulled in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead. Spammers have financial motivation to come up with innovative ways to avoid detection, and they have begun to join forces. But as spammers become savvier, the public is fighting back. Law enforcement has begun to crack down on internet criminals, like Jaynes, and corporations are taking measures to defend their inboxes using anti spam hardware. Law enforcement, coupled with the effectiveness of today's anti-spam systems, is introducing hesitation, uncertainty and fear for many would be spammers. As profitability decreases and risk of prosecution increases, many spammers will be forced to simply pack up and move on.

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

How Spammers Fool Whitelists - And How to Stop Them

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

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

One method used to combat spam is whitelisting. Whitelists are databases of trusted email sources. The list may contain specific email addresses, IP addresses or trusted domains. Emails received from a whitelisted source are allowed to pass through the system to the user’s email box. The list is built when users and email administrators manually add trusted sources to the whitelist. Once built, the catch-rate for spam can be close to 100%, however, whitelists produce an inordinate number of false positives.

It is virtually impossible to produce an exhaustive list of all possible legitimate email senders because legitimate email can come from any number of sources. To get around this difficulty, some organizations have instituted a challenge-response methodology. When an unknown sender sends an email to a user’s account, the system automatically sends a challenge back to the sender. Some challenge-response systems require the sender to read and decipher an image containing letters and numbers. The image is designed to be unreadable by a machine, but easily recognizable by a human. Spammers would not spend the time required to go through a large number of challenge-response emails, so they drop the address and move on to those users who don’t use such a system.

Whitelists are only partially successful and impractical for many users. For example, problems can arise when users register for online newsletters, order products online or register for online services. If the user does not remember to add the new email source to their whitelist, or if the domain or IP address is entered incorrectly, the communication will fail. Additionally, whitelists impose barriers to legitimate email communication and are viewed by some as just plain rude.

Whitelists are not widely used by email users and administrators as a primary tool to fight spam because of the high number of false positives, and the difficulties in creating a comprehensive list of email sources. Because whitelists are not widely used, spammers typically do not develop countermeasures. As with other spam fighting techniques, whitelists are most effective when used in conjunction with other anti-spam tools.

The Solution
When used individually, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same anti-spam method in order to be effective. You can learn more about the fight against spam by visiting our website at www.ciphertrust.com and downloading our whitepapers.

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

Bayesian Spam Filters Explained

In a word Bayesian spam filters are "intelligent". Bayesian spam filters are intelligent in so far as they're capable of comparing two sets of information and acting on the result. This is in direct contrast to the vast majority of other spam filters who use pre-built rules to decide which email is spam and which is not.

Bayesian spam filters can take one group of legitimate email and another group of spam and compare the values and data of each. The definition of legitimate email that it creates at the end of this comparison session is what it uses going forward to scan your inbox for spam.

FYI Bayesian spam filters are named after Thomas Bayes an 18 century cleric who created something known as Bayes Theorem. In summary Bayes Theorem is as follows: .."in statistical inference to update estimates of the probability that different hypotheses are true, based on observations and a knowledge of how likely those observations are, given each hypothesis." In plain English it looks for obvious repeating patterns to form an "opinion" on something. In spam filter terms that "opinion" becomes a rule which keeps you spam free (or pretty close.)

The really neat thing about Bayesian filters is that they're capable of learning. For example if they decided to block an email because the filter perceived it as junk but the user marked it as valid mail the Bayesian filter then knows not to block that type of email in the future. So, in time, this type of spam filter learns enough to block spam far more effectively. AOL have embraced this type of spam filter with the launch of AOL 9.0 and AOL Communicator- if the big dog wants it then it must be worthwhile.

So what Bayesian spam filtering options are available to you? Well quite a few to be honest and you'll be pleasantly surprised by some of the names involved :-) The first one on the list is AOL with their AOL Communicator product. The spam filtering features in AOL Communicator and AOL 9 are, to be honest, impressive. Think what you will of the provider themselves AOL Communicator is an excellent product and is suitable for use by both PC and Mac OSX users.

Next up we have Eudora. The nice folks at Qualcomm have designed an excellent email client that also has built in Bayesian spam filtering. I've used Eudora in the past and it's a neat little package. Again the benefits here are advanced integrated spam filtering with your e-mail automatically. Mac OSX and OS9 users are in luck with Eudora providing support for both.

Bayesian spam filters are providing a more rounded defense for computer users of all levels in fighting spam. As an indication of the strength of Bayesian spam filters more and more companies are either:
a. Updating their spam filters to include bayesian technique as a plugin or;
b. Basing their new products on bayesian filtering principles from the ground up.

About the author:
Niall Roche
This article was provided courtesy of Spam-Site.com which reviews and tests spam blockers for the business and end user.
Circulated by Article Emporium

Are You A Spam Zombie?

Over the past few years you've all become familiar with the terms spam, spam filter, whitelists, blacklists and a whole myriad of other terminology associated with the problem of spam. You now have to add a new and extremely worrying phrase to that list - spam zombie.

With the net closing in around them spammers are looking for new and more inventive ways to send out their junk email. Spam filters and challenge response systems are becoming progressively more intelligent and blocking more spam each day. What was a spammer to do? The spammers took the next step - infiltrating your PC and using it as a spamming tool.

When most of you think of the word zombie you're reminded of old B movies with groaning zombies chasing the terrified actress through a castle, swamp or whatever low cost setting the movie revolved around. Spam zombies are, however, far more real and far more dangerous.

A spam zombie is when your computer is taken over by a type of virus called a Trojan. Once this Trojan virus is on your computer it sets up an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) application which allows it to begin sending email directly from your PC to tens of thousands of victims. This all happens invisibly in the background and can be difficult to detect for even the experienced computer user.

How do these Trojans get onto your computer? As in most cases they come from porn, warez or similar sites. One of the first spam zombie trojans to appear became available via a link on sites promising viewers free access to a porno webcam. One click later and the Trojan is installed on your computer ready to send out spam. Phatbot and Proxy-Guzu are two of the more common Trojans used for the purpose of turning your computer into a spam zombie.

How can you check if your computer has become a spam zombie? Make absolutely certain that both your anti-virus and firewall software have current detection signatures and have been completely patched and updated. Working online without taking these necessary security precautions is simply asking for trouble.

Internet Service Providers are under huge pressure to quarantine the IP address of any computer which has been turned into a spam zombie. This is done on the basis that the ISP risks their entire IP range being blacklisted or banned by some spam filtering services or companies.

The very least you owe yourself is to run a full virus and spyware scan on your computer today. You might be unpleasantly surprised at what you'll find lurking there.

About the author:
Niall Roche
This article was provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews spam blocking software and other anti spam utilties.
Circulated by Article Emporium

Do You Get More Spam Than Real Email?

The unsolicited junk or bulk email that you receive is known as Spam. Spam is a very serious problem the people have to deal with daily. Sometimes the junk emails exceed the regular email messages that we receive in our email account. Spam filter can be a solution for you to get freedom from Spam mails. There are different types of software to keep out the Spam emails from your inbox. Spam filters can monitor the emails that come in your inbox and prevent any Spam mail from entering in to your inbox.

The Spam email that you receive is due to the inappropriate usage of mailing list. The mailing list consists of email ids of different people and all of them can be flooded with bulk or junk emails. Many companies send out the Spam email massages to a large number of people who do not ask for such massages. Spamming is considered to be very bad netiquette as it amounts in violating a person’s privacy. Netiquette demand that no email id can be used without the user’s permission.

Many Spam filters are designed to help people who are constantly bombarded with junk or bulk mails. Spam filters make use of filtering technology to filter the contents of the incoming emails. Spam filters can effectively help a person by sorting out these types of incoming emails.

Different types of Spam filters can be helpful for controlling spam. Content based Spam filter is one type that can be used by you. The filter scans the content of the email, and searches for tell tale signs for Spam in the message. Content based Spam filters have however not been very effective in controlling the bulk or the junk messages. The main reason for this being that the spammers had devised ways and means by which they can communicate their message despite the presence of such filters.

Spam filters that are prepared these days are designed to give advanced protection against unsolicited emails and spammers. Bayesian filter technology is another effective way of controlling these mails. Bayesian technology is not like other filtering methods that search for Spam identifying words in the header and the subject line. The Bayesian filter uses the entire perspective of an email when it looks for characters or words for identifying a Spam. Another feature of Bayesian Spam filter is that the more it analyzes the incoming mails, the more it learns to identify Spam mails.

Spam mails can sometimes bombard you in such a manner that you may end up receiving more Spam than the regular emails. Most email service providers have Spam filter software enabled in their sites. All you need to do is select the options of setting the Spam filter for your emails according to your liking. You can mark the sites from which you want to receive or not receive mails in your inbox. Setting the options for blocking the bulk or the junk mails is entirely your prerogative.

About the author:
Author – MattGarrett http://www.free-spam-blockers.com
Circulated by Article Emporium

BUSTED: Anti Spam Forces Bankrupt Super-Spammer Scott Richter

Microsoft scores one for the good guys Scott Richter, the self-proclaimed “Spam King,” just can’t seem to get enough attention. Admittedly responsible for sending literally billions of Unsolicited Commercial Email messages (UCE), Richter made headlines again recently when his spam-fed cash cow, OptInRealBig.com, filed for bankruptcy protection in U.S. federal court in his home state of Colorado. According to Richter’s father (who is also his attorney), “It’s the legal fees that are battering the company. OptIn is profitable but for these lawsuits.”

At the time of its bankruptcy filing, OptInRealBig.com claimed assets of less than $10 million and liabilities of over $50 million. Richter claimed his company made $15 million a year sending more than 15 million email messages per day. However, in 2003, OptInRealBig was dealt a powerful 1-2 punch from Microsoft and Eliot Spitzer, the Attorney General of New York; both sued Richter under local state anti spam laws. Although the New York case was settled out of court last year, Richter has had no such luck dealing with Microsoft, whose claims top $19 million.

A Case of Global Amnesia?
Richter's company and others like it market products ranging from diet pills to pornography. He’s also been accused of using spam to extract personal information from unsuspecting recipients. For instance, one alleged scheme hatched by Richter and his associates promised recipients a copy of a "Girls Gone Wild" DVD if the recipient registered on a website. The registration information was then used to bombard the recipient with more and more spam.

Richter contends that his methods are all legal, and that he’s just a regular guy trying to do right by the world; he’s even gone so far as to claim that he’s a “victim” of overzealous anti spam companies and prosecutors. “We don't spam,” explained Richter in an August 2004 PC World interview. “The biggest problem is when people get an email that they think they didn't sign up for or don't remember signing up for, and they call it spam.”

To hear Richter tell it, tens of millions of people simply forgot that they had previously asked to receive his messages. According to the state of New York, however, he falsified header information and used deceptive routing and domain purchase practices in order to get his messages through. The lawsuit also accused Richter of using a network of approximately 500 “zombie” computers to send his messages. When asked how so many users could have subscribed and not remember doing so, Richter claimed the signups must have been via anonymous "partners of our partners" web sites, the names of which slipped his mind.

Not Just an Online Threat
Evidently not satisfied with stealing bandwidth, Richter also shows a penchant for heavy equipment. In an unrelated 2003 case, he was put on probation after pleading guilty to a felony charge of receiving stolen items worth more than $10,000. According to court records, an informant's tip regarding a stolen Bobcat loader led undercover officers to Richter. Over the course of 13 months, the officers proceeded to strike deals with him for a Honda generator, hundreds of cases of cigarettes, three laptop computers and other items, all offered at suspiciously low prices and purchased in some of Denver’s seediest neighborhoods. In addition to probation, Richter was also ordered to pay $38,000 in restitution for the stolen goods.

Despite his guilty plea, Richter maintains his innocence, saying he pleaded guilty to the felony charges because it was "easier to be done with it," and he had "too much stuff going on in my life."

What’s Next for Scott Richter?
The 5-year-old OptInRealBig.com, which employed 25 people last year and had 350 clients, will continue to operate under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While the bankruptcy filing shows the power of legislation and legal action from parties with a vested interest in stopping spam, Richter is not likely to fade quietly into the sunset. Under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws, the company must follow a court-supervised “debt rehabilitation” plan to pay off creditors, but is not required to modify its business practices. None of OptInRealBig’s assets will be liquidated, meaning the company’s stable of spam cannons will remain active. The bottom line: Scott Richter will not be required to stop sending UCE in the immediate future, pending ongoing litigation intended to determine exactly what spam is in legal terms. In the meantime, the best defense against spam is a comprehensive gateway solution that will guard against all manner of email threats, especially spammers like Scott Richter.

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

Anti-Spam Case Study: Pacesetter Claims Service

When catastrophe strikes, many insurance companies tend to get flooded with new claims. These sudden surges in client demands can be overwhelming, and that's where Pacesetter Claims Service, an independent adjusting agency, comes in.

Founded in 1997, Pacesetter Claims Service is a well-established company with offices in five different states, as well as Puerto Rico. They are dedicated to providing the extra support companies such as American Family Mutual Insurance and Farmers Insurance Group need in the aftermath of a catastrophic event.

Having multiple offices spread across the country, and no way of predicting where or when the next disaster will strike, immediate, effective communication, such as email, is vital for Pacesetter's success. With the company dealing with upwards of 100 to 150 emails per day that are not only valid, but also possibly contain critical information from multiple sources, filtering out the junk email becomes essential.

According to Pacesetter IT Coordinator David Borg, more than 80% of their incoming email was a bombardment of spam. Pacesetter couldn't afford to have their employees wasting time sorting through these unwanted emails. They also didn't want to risk the possibility of inadvertently filtering out legitimate messages. They needed a highly effective, highly accurate anti-spam software solution to their spam problem.

Solution
Choosing Securence was an easy decision for Pacesetter Claims Service. Securence offered everything Pacesetter was looking for: accuracy, ease of use, great customer service and cost effectiveness.
"The reps stayed in touch real closely in the beginning to make sure things went smoothly," says Borg, who also likes the option that Securence is a service as opposed to just an application he has to install and maintain himself. Perhaps most importantly, Borg is impressed with the accuracy of Securence's email filtering software. "During our 30-day trial period," says Borg, "we didn't have any false positives, and the few junk e-mails that did slip through were because we couldn't completely secure things on our end. We're extremely satisfied."

By selecting Securence, Pacesetter Claims Service was able to reduce their incoming junk email by more than 80% with nearly perfect accuracy.

About the author:
Joe Caldwell
Securence offers anti-spam software, antivirus software and internet filtering software for business and consumers. http://www.securence.com
Circulated by Article Emporium

Anti Spam at the Enterprise Level

Every one of us knows how spam impacts us. Every day we either get a ton of spam - or if we're fairly well protected by spam filters - only a few pieces.

Like a large number of people, I don't use any spam filters. Ah. You think I'm insane. But wait. My problem is that I get a lot of email from marketing types which I want to receive. And the spam filtering software is not very sensitive to my needs. Even white-listing doesn't always work. So, I prefer to get all that spam and just delete it.

Now this solution can work for me despite the time it takes to delete my daily overdose of spam. However, at the enterprise level, it's a whole different story. If you have a relatively large internal network with even a modest number of email users, you're looking at a major problem. And the more users you have, the worse the problem is.

Sure, you can put up software on the mail server. Works, kind of. But pretty soon you may find you need to upgrade the mail server. And that's after you already put it on a stand-alone machine.

Rather than continuing to buy ever more expensive software to run on a machine that keeps needing to be upgraded, you might want to think about a dedicated anti spam appliance.

To give you some idea of what's possible let's take a look at Barracuda Networks dedicated anti spam appliance. All you need to do is put this baby in front of your mail server. I say baby, advisedly because this one will learn by doing and by training provided by your users.

Dean Drako, CEO of Barracuda Networks said, "Bayesian filtering is still one of the most accurate defenses against spam. The new plug-ins allow users to directly train the Bayesian filter, making the Barracuda Spam Firewall even more accurate based on the users individual email preferences. Viruses and other threats can infect the network quickly if they are not stopped at the network edge. With Intent Analysis our customers have an advantage over these threats because the Barracuda Spam Firewall is able to block them real time. Consequently we have consistently been a first responder when some of the most malicious virus attacks have hit, saving our customers from potentially devastating damage to their networks."

This is one beautiful little machine. A Barracuda Spam Firewall can support from 1,000 to 30,000 active users. It can usually be installed in less than five minutes and receives automatic hourly updates for new forms of spam and viruses. It has a 10 layer defense system beyond the use of open source anti spam and anti virus solutions: denial of service and security protection, IP block list, rate control, virus check with archive decompression, proprietary virus check, user specified rules, spam fingerprint check, Intent Analysis, spam rule-based scoring, and Bayesian analysis. Plus it also does both inbound and outbound email filtering with the inclusion of sophisticated outbound email filtering techniques (just in case you've got a spam zombie on board or somebody's got an infected PC).

However, it isn't exactly cheap. Still, when you consider the time, bandwidth, user frustration and potential hardware upgrade costs, the price may look a lot more reasonable. You can check it out at http://www.barracudanetworks.com/

If you are in the market for an anti-spam appliance, the Barracuda Spam Firewall isn't your only choice. The impact of spam on internet businesses - even those who primarily use it for just email - is so great that a simple search for "anti spam appliance" will find you a number of alternatives to examine. Even McAfee is getting into the anti spam hardware game.

I'm hoping that it won't be too long before I can pick up a Bayesian multi-level anti spam, anti virus firewall appliance for my home PC that keeps me safe and cuts my need to delete without deep-sixing the email I want or costing me more than I can afford. I suspect it's on the way.

About the author:
Richard Keir writes in a variety of areas involving eBusiness and the internet. For more on spam visit http://anti-spam.werkz.org and for general eCommerce go to http://building-ecommerce-websites.com
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir
Circulated by Article Emporium