MicroWorld releases new version of MailScan Ver. 4.5 - the antivirus and content security software for mail servers.

Michigan - May 20, 2005 - MicroWorld Technologies, Inc. the leading solutions provider in the area of Anti-virus and Content security, has announced the launch of its new version of MailScan Ver. 4.5, the antivirus and content security software for mail servers.

The new version of MailScan provides additional security features to allow users to monitor the TCP connections on their systems, and use enhanced Anti-SPAM control to fight SPAM.

The new security feature interface displays all the active TCP connections to your computer. It lists information about the processes, protocols, local addresses, remote addresses and Process Status on the computer. It allows you to identify any unauthorized access to your mail server and take effective counter measures to safeguard your system.

MailScan 4.5 provides the user with real time access to Relay Blackhole List at <Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. for IPs of known Spammers. The site maintains active real-time Blackhole list that you can use to verify if any IP that connects to your MailServer is listed as that of a known Spammer, and take appropriate action.

MailScan 4.5 is the next step in the continuing process to provide added security to mail servers against virus attacks, SPAM and other forms of security threats to networks via e-mail.

Mr Govind Rammurthy, CEO, MicroWorld Technologies, Inc. says "MicroWorld's MailScan 4.5 with its new features, is a step forward in strengthening our products to ensure that corporate gateways are well-protected from ever increasing and smart Internet intruders. Continuous development has made MailScan one of the most popular mail gateway security products available in the markets today."

About the Author:
Microworld Technologies Inc
Posted: 20-09-2005
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Choosing Anti-Spam Software That Is Right For You

It is believed that on an average, an email user receives more than 2000 Spam emails every year! By certain accounts, an email user receives more than 77 percent of the mail as spam – which is around 10 out of every 13 emails you receive! More than two-thirds of the email passing through the air waves are pure junk – unwanted and unsolicited. It, therefore, becomes imperative that you chose the right anti-spam software that meets with your requirements.

Spam happens to be one of the biggest disadvantages of using communication channels through the Internet. There is every need to find ways to separate the wanted emails from the unwanted and unsolicited ones. Choosing the correct anti-spam software or Spam filter is the right way to cut down on the spam you receive.

Handling Spam

The amount of spam you can detect and delete depends on the type of screening your emails go through. Many anti-spam software have a multi-level of email screening, which is worth the money you spend. You can even select a trail version or free anti Spam software to sample what it does and then you can opt for a full version with enhanced features and full functionality.

One of the best places to trap and eliminate spam is at the servers that receive, forward, and send the emails. You, of course, have no control over the type of anti-spam handling done by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). To handle spam, there are particular services available to filter them. For a nominal amount each month, a particular service inspects and cleans your inbox. Another service involves forwarding your complete inbox to their servers, where the clean up occurs as emails arrive.

As personal spam blockers, a number of anti-spam software are available from reputed anti-spam suppliers, such as Symantec, McAfee, eScan, PC Mantra etc to name a few. Such software capture and inspect all emails coming in before allowing the clean ones into your inbox.

The type of anti-spam software you select will depend on the volume of emails you handle. It will also depend on the budget you allot to the anti-spam program. The best anti-spam software for you should have the following features, among many others:

It should allow you to see who the sender of the email is, the subject, and the attachment. You can then decide whether to delete the email or accept it.

A chance to preview the message before downloading it. This will enable you to delete if you do not like the message.

The feature that allows you to bounce back the spam email is a great way to let the sender think that your email address is no longer valid. This would probably make them remove you from their mailing list!

There are a number of anti-spam software available with a number of online suppliers that you need to explore, to select the best that is suitable for your needs.

About the Author:
Arvind Singh 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 http://www.pcmantra.com. Related Information: http://www.pcmantra.com/SpamFilter.aspx?id=6
This article was posted on September 25, 2006
Article Source: articlecity

The Anti Spam Challenge – Minimizing False Positives

Email is the quintessential business communication tool, so when it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, business suffers. Anti spam software is designed to protect your inbox from unwanted messages, but unless your system is properly trained even the best software misses the mark and flags legitimate messages as spam. These messages are referred to as “false positives.”

While consumer and ISP anti spam products focus on blocking messages and even consider some false positives acceptable, businesses require anti spam solutions that treat their messages as very valuable. Failing to receive critical messages in a timely fashion can do irreparable damage to customer and partner relationships and cause important orders to be missed, so eliminating false positives while maintaining high anti spam accuracy is paramount to any enterprise anti spam solution.

What causes false positives?
Different anti spam solutions utilize different methods of detecting and blocking spam. Anti spam software typically uses content filtering or Bayesian Logic, an advanced content filtering method, to score each email, looking for certain tell-tale signs of spammer habits such as frequently used terms like “Viagra” or “click here.” Other anti spam solutions reference blacklists and whitelists to determine whether the sender has shown spammer tendencies in the past. A false positive can occur when a legitimate sender raises enough red flags, either by using too many “spam terms” or sending from an IP address that has been used by spammers in the past.

Minimizing False Positives
Although it takes a person only a moment to process a message and identify it as spam, it is difficult to automate that human process because no single message characteristic consistently identifies spam. In fact, there are hundreds of different message characteristics that may indicate an email is spam, and an effective anti spam solution must be capable of employing multiple spam detection techniques to effectively cover all bases.

A comprehensive anti spam approach involves examining both message content and sender history in tandem. By using a reputation system to evaluate senders based on their past behavior, a more accurate picture of their intentions and legitimacy can be discerned, and a solution’s false positive rate can be further lowered. Has the sender engaged in spamming, virus distribution or phishing attacks in the past? If not, the likelihood of their message getting past the email gateway just went up, and the chances of a false positive declined accordingly. If they have, an effective reputation system knows and flags the message.

Self-Optimization
In order to be most effective, anti spam solutions must learn based on a recipient’s preferences. While most of us prefer not to receive emails containing the term Viagra, some medical organizations might need to receive these emails in order to process patient data. In order to best learn your organizational preferences, anti spam solutions should put filtered emails into a quarantine that allows users to review and make decisions as to whether a particular message is spam. Making this quarantine available to the end-user lowers the administration costs and increases the accuracy of the anti spam system.

Each time a user makes a decision about whether a particular email is or is not spam, the system becomes more personalized and intelligent about filtering email for that individual in the future. Over time, users find that they rarely need to review their quarantines anymore because the system has learned how to identify messages that are important to that user.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater
In conclusion, it is imperative that false positives be kept to an absolute minimum for business users. Although consumers may have more patience with incorrectly blocked email, businesses cannot afford these types of problems. An effective, accurate anti spam solution aggregates multiple spam detection technologies, combining the benefits of each individual technique to stop spam while minimizing false positives. It also puts suspected spam into a quarantine that is available to end-users, and learns how to better identify spam in the future.

About the author:
Dr. Paul Judge, CTO, CipherTrust, Inc. 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.
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How To Avoid Getting Scammed

Listed below are some of the most popular and common scams:

1. Nigerian Letter Scam:
This one's been around for many years but continues to flourish. Many of these e-mails claim to be from a person in Africa, usually Nigeria. The writer claims to have access to millions of dollars, either from a relative or from knowledge of an idle account. A percentage of this money is promised to the victim if they will allow the money to be processed through their personal bank account. The victim is instructed to keep their share and send the remaining money to the scammer.

The check given to the victims is fraudulent. The victim is then liable to the bank for the check they wrote to the scammer.

Here's what will happen when you give strangers your bank account information: They will take your money. Period.

2. Phishing Scams:
"Phishing" is a high-tech scam that uses spam or pop-up messages to deceive you into disclosing your credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security number,
passwords, or other sensitive information.

Phishers send an e-mail or pop-up message that claims to be from a business or organization that you deal with--for example, your Internet service provider (ISP), bank, online payment service, or even a government agency. The message usually says that you need to "update" or "validate" your account information.

Recent phishing victims include Yahoo, Citibank, eBay, Best Buy and Bank of America among others.

If you get spam that is phishing for information, forward it to spam@uce.gov.

3. Chain Letters:
In this classic scam, you're asked to send a small amount of money (usually $5.00) to each of several names on a list, and then forward the letter including your name at the top of the list, via bulk e-mail. Many of these letters claim to be legal. They even include a section of the U.S. Postal Code on illegal schemes. Don't be fooled. They are not legal. And if you participate, not only will you be breaking the law, you'll lose your money as well.

4. Work-At-Home And Business Opportunity Scams:
These scams tempt victims with ads stating "no experience necessary," promise high earnings and claim to have inside information. The scammers usually require victims to pay anywhere from $35 to several hundred dollars or more for information, kits or materials that do not provide the promised results.

Frequently, these schemes involve making handicrafts, stuffing envelopes, medical billing, or state, "Use your home PC to make money fast in your spare time!"

In the craft making or envelope stuffing scam, after paying fees and completing the assembly of the products, victims are told their work is low quality and unworthy of compensation.

Medical billing scams require victims to purchase supplies and lists of doctors who, inevitably don't exist or are not interested in the service.

5. Bulk E-mail Scams:
These solicitations offer to sell you bulk e-mail addresses (spam software) or services to send spam on your behalf. Example: "Reach 100 million websites, $39.95"! The software is usually of poor quality. It's spam and a scam. Don't do it.

6. Auction and retail scams:
These schemes typically offer high-value items, such as Cartier watches, Beanie Babies and computers, in hopes of attracting many consumers. What happens is the victim wins the bid, sends the money and receives nothing or receives products of much lower quality than advertised.

7. Guaranteed Loans or Credit Scams:
This scam comes in a variety of flavors: home equity loans that don't require equity in your home, personal loans regardless of credit history, etc. After you pay the application fees, you receive a letter saying that your loan request was denied. Usually, you never here from these companies again.

8. Credit Repair Scams:
These scams promise to erase accurate, negative information from your credit file so that you can qualify for loans, mortgages, unsecured credit cards, etc. It doesn't work. Not only that. If you follow their advice and lie on loan or credit applications, misrepresent your social security number, or get an Employer Identification Number from the Internal Revenue Service under false pretenses, you will be committing fraud and violating federal laws. Another variation of this scam is the promise of a brand new credit file. Don't do it.

9. Vacation, Sweepstakes And Prize Award Scams:
In these scams you receive notification congratulating you because you've won a fabulous vacation, a car or some other prize award. All you have to do to collect your prize is pay a small fee (usually several hundred dollars). In return, what you end up getting is a toy car, (I kid you not) or a vacation certificate to the Bahamas or some other exotic vacation spot. It's really a lousy deal. You have to pay for your own airfare, and the accommodations that they arrange are usually in rundown hotels. Let the buyer beware!

10. Employment Scams:
Employment scammers take advantage of job seekers. They claim to offer employment services, inside information or inside contacts to jobs. After paying a fee, victims learn they only provide advice, help writing a resume--or less. Some fraudulent employment services simply sell lists of companies that they have gotten from public directories. They usually have not contacted those companies directly or know if there really are any job openings.

11. Multi-level Marketing (MLM) or Network Marketing Scams:
I know I'm going to ruffle a few feathers with this one, so let me just say right now that all MLM or network marketing companies are not scams. Obviously, there are some good, reputable companies out there. However, there are so many bad ones that I'm compelled to include the entire industry on this list. Before getting involved with any MLM or network marketing company, investigate, investigate and then investigate some more. Don't get caught up in the hype. And here's a fact no MLM or network marketing company will ever tell you--not even the legitimate ones: Unless you have outstanding sales ability and/or people skills, it is extremely difficult to make any money in MLM or network marketing.

Here are some other things you should watch out for: Make sure the website you’re visiting contains all three of the following:

1. A real persons name (not just a company or business name)

2. A telephone number

3. A street address (not just a P.O. Box)

If all three of the above are not present, walk away from the offer.

Before purchasing anything, you should always check first to see if the company has had any complaints lodged against it. The following websites publish complaints and/or scams:

http://www.scamwatch.com

http://www.worldwidescam.com

http://www.bbb.org

If you do get scammed, report it to the aforementioned websites immediately. You probably won’t be able to recover your money. Few people ever do. But at least by reporting the crime and making it public record, you make it harder for that company to scam anyone else.

In closing, always carefully investigate any business opportunity, and remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

About the author:
Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net
Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net
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The Spam Dilemma

Learn all about spam and whether it will ever be stopped.

We have all had this experience. You log into your email account and discover that you have some new messages. Fervent with anticipation, you open your inbox, only to find nothing but solicitations and spam.

Most of the spam that I get in my inbox is abhorrent, but I still like to look at it because some of it is quite entertaining. My favorites include subjects such as 95% discounts on Canadian Viagra, quotes for 80 year mortgages, and ads for practically every sort of pornographic web site on the net.

Those of you familiar with spam have probably noticed that the name of the sender that appears next to the message subject is usually either a strange email address or a bizarre name. Spammers do this because obviously they do not want to reveal their real email address or name. They have developed programs that can actually mutate their email address so that the recipient will not be able to track where the email came from.

So, how did these freaks get your email address in the first place? One of the ways is through opt-in email. At one time or another, we have all subscribed to or ordered something online. In doing so, as part of the subscription or service that you signed up for, you may have inadvertently or unknowingly agreed to receive offers via email from that company in the future. As a result, they begin to send you email. This is legal as long as the company provides you with a way to unsubscribe from their mailing list.

However, the most nefarious email marketers do not provide you with a way to be removed from their mailing list. To make matters worse, they will often sell your email address and any other information you submitted to them to hundreds of other companies who are looking for mailing lists. Before you know it, your email address has been circulated far and wide to almost every online business imaginable.

There are other methods that spammers will employ to get their grimy hands on your email address. Sometimes what they do is once they have purchased a list of email addresses from someone else, they will then send a joke or an interesting cartoon to everyone on the list and ask that you forward it along to all your friends and relatives. Once you forward the message, the spammer actually has a program that can copy the list of addresses that the message has been forwarded to and send it back to him or her. So now, that person not only has your email address, but also has the email address of every one of your friends and relatives. Using this tactic, clever email marketers can grow their list exponentially.

Another popular technique is something called harvesting. Harvesting is quickly becoming the most powerful, sophisticated, and most useful method for grabbing thousands or even millions of email addresses almost instantaneously. This is accomplished by writing a simple software program that searches through every web site listed on a search engine for a certain keyword, and then quickly scanning through each web site and copying any and all email addresses that are posted there and then sending them back to the spammer. An example of harvesting would be a program written to scan every website listed on Google for a certain keyword, such as mortgage brokers, and then copying every email address that is found on the various web sites that come up in the search, and emailing the entire list back to the person doing the harvesting. In this manner, a person could build a list containing thousands of email addresses of mortgage brokers in less than an hour.

Harvesting has become a legal quandary, because spammers feel that it is permissible to harvest email addresses that are posted on public websites because, in their opinion, if someone has posted their email address for all to see, then other people have the right to contact that person and ask them questions or send them offers. However, web sites where email addresses are posted have struck back with threats of legal action against anyone that copies addresses and uses them for the purpose of building mailing lists or sending marketing offers. Unfortunately, these web sites really have no way to block this email theft, and it is becoming more rampant every day.

Spamming and email marketing is here to stay, as it is nearly impossible to regulate or prohibit. Both big businesses and small businesses have a strong incentive to send bulk email, because it does not cost anything, and helps them increase their business. Sending regular mail or hiring telemarketers is infinitely more costly. Also, people tend to discard solicitations sent to them in the regular mail very quickly, and telemarketers are usually hung up on. As a result, most companies favor sending massive amounts of email versus direct mail or cold calling. So, you should not expect your inbox to be any less crammed with spam anytime soon.

About the Author:
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make email forms.
Submitted on 2006-09-15
Article Source: http://www.articlesarea.com/

Basic Rules of Scam Baiting

The goals of scam baiting carry the pleasure of baiters and their readers. To that end, a general status symbol among scam baiters is the collection or display of a photographic "trophy," a picture apparently taken of the scammer, typically while holding custom made signs, or in odd poses with exact props (such as placing a fish on one's head). Other trophies could include documents such as oaths and the pseudo legal documents, taken as the 419 scammer as a step forward towards a hopeless goal.

There are handfuls on common sense basic rules, which a scam baiter should follow:

1. The first rules is to have a good anti-virus software running on your system all the time and do keep the virus definitions ready. This is must for any computer which has internet connection but it is most significant for the scam baiting.

2. Make sure you don’t believe in anything, which a scammer tells you until you know it is true. In case scammer tells you “here is my photo” you could argue it isn’t. If on Monday the scammer tells you its Monday, check the calendar. It’s possibly Tuesday.

3. Next you should make sure that you do not give any real personal information to the scammer. This needs to be very obvious. Any actual personal information carries your real name, real address, place of work, real bank account number, and personal e-mail address and so on.

4. Remember you should never go to meet any scammer in person, regardless of their location given. As most scammers are just nothing more than pretty cheat artists, there had been many cases of muggings, kidnappings and also murder of people who had gone to meet with 419 scammers. Please do not do it.

5. And the most important rule is, you should never involve directly any innocent third parties in your scam bait. No matter how much you may hate you boss or your ex-spouse, don’t take revenge through this. You should not take on the identity of any real person existing or do not send a scammer to meet with any real person.

About the Author:
Dany Siraz is an expert in analyzing and describing the spam’s that are making the people to fall as prey without awareness, especially the Nigerian 419 scams. He had published many articles about describing the way of spam producers to fraud the people especially through e-mails, and had advised the best ways and tips to escape from these spam frauds. For further more details of Nigerian 419 scam visit to http://www.nigerianspam.com/
Posted: 13-12-2006
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Fight The Hunters - Get A Shield Against Spam

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatsoever, those who not enjoy this certain kind of “entertainment” form coalitions and build a strong resistance against the impertinent intrusions of “the Others”. Not all of them are computer experts but everybody needs the Internet space and its unlimited resources. They are not powerless as long as they get help from the military center of software creators ready to serve peaceful folks in their needs for productive communication.

Now serious! The simplest way to fight against the junk mail is applying for software specialized in filtering your mail and detecting the spam automatically. Such programs are able to make you partially or entirely free from “marvelous” but useless data by isolating junk mail sent to your mail box. Your freedom and productiveness depends on the powerfulness of the program you choose. So, stop victimizing and get equipped!

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

About the Author:
Ted Peterson writes for Core Download, a software archive with over 30.000 software titles to download like Spam Monitor http://www.coredownload.com/download-Spam-Monitor-15126.html, PC Tools Antivirus and Spyware Doctor.
This article was posted on April 11, 2006
Article Source: articlecity

Will The Real Spammer Please Stand Up!

If you have been using opt-in email marketing for sometime, I'm sure you might have got accused of spam at some point, even after doing everything right.

Yes, I'm talking about people who actually agreed to receive your email, blaming you for sending unsolicited mail.

According to me it's not their fault, as nowadays it's very easy to mistake an 'email marketer' for an 'email bomber'.

The web has grown so wide and huge in the last couple of years that it has become hard to differentiate between a spammer and a legal email marketer.

Spammers just didn't disturb a regular email users life but also wrecked havoc in the Internet marketing community.

Day after day it's becoming devastatingly difficult for permission based email marketers to use email legally and not get slammed for illegal mailing.

Even after making sure your email looks, sounds, smells and tastes 'Legal', you run a high risk of either getting blocked or being labeled as a spammer.

On the other hand, if luck favors you and your mail does make it to your subscribers' inbox safe and sound, what's the guarantee that it'll get opened and read?

It's a nightmare every marketer would love to avoid.

Well, you can stop worrying now and have a sigh of relief. It's about time all the hardcore spammers out there had their last laugh.

The Internet marketing world is abuzz with a brand new technology, which could finally send spamming back to the dark ages, big time.

If you still don't have a clue of what I'm talking about, it's called RSS and it's turning heads all over the web.

RSS, which stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' is a new technology, which enables anyone to syndicate his or her content online.

A lot has been written on what is RSS and how it works. So I would like to keep it short and sweet, as I'm sure you too wouldn't really want to get into the unnecessary technical stuff.

In simple words, RSS is a way to publish and receive content electronically. RSS files are XML based and are popularly known as RSS feeds.

What's revolutionary about RSS is, it can help you distribute your content directly to your subscribers, without any spam filters interfering.

To subscribe and read your RSS feeds, all your subscribers need to have is an RSS reader, also known as an aggregator.

What's more, they don't even have to worry about giving out any of their personal details to subscribe to your feed.

And with a screaming bunch of RSS readers available on the web right now (most of them being free), it wouldn't be very hard to convince your subscribers to get there hands on one.

RSS readers are available in both versions, desktop and web-based, of which the latter seems to be the most popular.

Once your subscriber adds your RSS feed to their favorite RSS reader, you go 'live' and instantly establish a direct connection with your subscriber.

Whenever you have something new to publish, all you have to do is update your already
published RSS feed with your fresh content.

As soon you load your feed with new content, walla! Your feed automatically gets updated everywhere it's subscribed.

No mess, no fuss. Just content that works.

Pretty neat huh?

That's the beauty of RSS. No wonder it's currently being employed by web honchos like Yahoo! and MSN to deliver content to their users.

They even allow their members to add any RSS feeds of their choice to their members' area, making them perfect examples of web-based aggregators.

Syndicating your content can mean a lot to you and your business. By publishing your own RSS feeds, you could eventually end up with more leads, more subscribers and not to forget, more money in the bank.

Happy syndicating!

About the author:
Mustafa K. is the co-founder of http://www.rapidfeeds.com - a free online service that helps anyone deliver targeted content to their subscribers through RSS. Sign Up for your FREE account on his site to put an end to blocked messages and add more subscribers.
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Features and Benefits of Anti Spam Services

Spam is term as any unwanted email that is coming to your mailbox. These spam mails can be dangerous because some may even contain viruses which can ruin your computer system. Some may even try to steal your password and personal information such as credit card number.

Spam has been one of the common problems of internet users. When you go online and check your mail, the chances of having an email which came from unfamiliar email address is very high.

So what you will usually do is to delete the email. However, what if it is not just one spam email but there are a lot of them. Deleting these mails can be very tedious and this is where anti spam services come in.

Anti spam services are tools that will help you reduce or even eliminate any unwanted email from your mailbox. Most internet service provider will offer anti spam services which allow you to filter the email you receive. One of its features is allowing you to have an approved list of email or domain addresses that you would like to receive email from.

Thus, those you don't know will not be able to send an email to you. Then, you can even block certain email or domain addresses. This is helpful if you have already recognized the addresses of spammers.

Another option that you can have on an anti spam service is filtering email according to its subject and content. This means that you can block email that contains specific word or phrases.

Another feature is the ability to filter email based on the language used by the sender. This is beneficial for those that only expect email from a specific language.

Some anti spam services will give you preset filters (e.g. low, medium and high). The system will automatically detect which email is considered spam. This is great for beginners because of its simplicity. You do not need to select a lot of option. However, the risk with this one is that some legitimate email may be branded as spam.

So you may be expecting an email from a friend but your anti spam software may have deleted it because of the settings you have for your filters. For businessman, this process is not recommended.

Most anti spam services usually have the basic features that you need to stop unwanted mails. However, if you would like to have smarter software, you may need to purchase or buy an anti spam software.

You may make a research on the internet as to which software will best suit your internet needs. Make a comparison of anti softwares so you can easily decide which one is appropriate for you.

Anti spam services will add more protection to your online life. It helps in reducing the risk of having a full mailbox at all times and protects you from computer viruses.

Great features and benefits can be fully enjoyed if you continue to update yourself about this spam. It will then allow you to take precautionary measures to minimize the problems that are brought about by spam.

About the Author:
Dave Poon is an accomplished writer who specializes in the latest in Internet Safety. For more information regarding Anti Spam Services please drop by at http://www.bye-bye-spam.com/
Submitted on 2006-09-04
Article Source: http://www.articlesarea.com/

Antispam. Aren't We All! Don't You Just Hate It?

Antispam. Aren't we all! Don't you just hate it? You've got enough to do without having to sift through a bunch of worthless, or worse yet, offensive junk e-mails in your Inbox.

So what can be done about it? What antispam procedures and software really work?

Spam filtering software is the first stop in your antispam campaign, but in some ways it's the easiest to subvert.

What this antispam tool does is tell your e-mail system to look for designated clue words - sex, nude, porn, for example - and to eliminate the messages that contain these clue words. Of course, there are easy ways to get around these antispam tactics. Did you ever see a message that comes through with the word sex spelled s*e*x? Well, that asterisk method has circumvented your spam filter - or the spam filter of your Internet and e-mail provider.

The other problem with this filter is that you could miss legitimate messages. A friend, for instance, who might mail you that she was "sick of porn sites popping up" might have her message deleted because it contained the word porn.

Two upgraded versions of these antispam filtering products are Bayesian and heuristic filters, which try to identify offensive messages through recognition of phrases as objectionable. SpamAssassin by Apache is probably the best known example of heuristic filtering. What these filters are doing that the more basic ones aren't is looking at the message itself rather than the subject header. Both Bayesian and heuristic filters have an Achilles heel in that they depend for their filtering on frequency. Were a spammer to send a short message it would get past.

To further complicate things by punishing the "good guys," major Internet service providers started simply considering batch emailing as potential spam. What this did, however, was to disrupt opt-in products such as e-zines and newsletters. So that didn't work well. The spammers themselves found a way around it anyway. As they sent out their batch messages they inserted a program that produced a variant in each heading. Perhaps a word that didn't even make sense, but still individualized each message enough to have the batching not appear as batching.

Some non-profit Internet watchdog agencies started keeping lists of the IP addresses of spammers. When these addresses cropped up in mail they were blocked. The way around this for spammers was simple - they changed IP addresses. The result was even worse, in that those addresses then got handed out to completely innocent folks who now had problems sending e-mail. Then the spammers got really aggressive and started creating and distributing viruses allowing them to hijack IP addresses that weren't on the "spam" lists.

Where the answer seems to lie for many businesses and their sites is to bypass standard email communication altogether and resort to online feedback forms for electronic communication. Which of course doesn't resolve the antispam issue for private individuals who have no Web site of their own.

About the Author:
Robert Michael is a writer for Lib Antispam which is an excellent place to find antispam links, resources and articles. For more information go to:
www.libantispam.com/
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

So What Makes a Good Spam Filter Anyway?

Spam Filters. Most of us know we need one. Some of know we need a better one, but how many stop to think what actually makes a good spam filter in the first place?

This is not just a rhetorical question. It is a question that many users - and many developers - do not ask, and consequently, goes unanswered.

Maybe this could be better answered by defining here the qualities of the perfect spam filter. We'll call our perfect spam filter the "SpamSplatter 3000". Here are some of the defining qualities of "SpamSplatter 3000"

1. It requires zero interaction from the user.

2. It produces zero false positives (good messages identified as bad) and zero false negatives (bad messages identified as good).

3. It is transparent - that is, you only ever see good messages and never need even be aware that spam exists.

That's it. Not much of a shopping list is it? Of course, "SpamSplatter 3000" hasn't been invented yet (and if it does, I want a piece of the action), but it does give us a frame of reference when looking for the best filter we can find.

Let's take each point in turn:

It requires zero interaction from the user There are two kinds of filters that come near to this ideal currently: Bayesian Filters and Community Filters. Bayesian filters strip messages down to small "word bites", or tokens and maintain a database containing lists of good and bad tokens. When a new message is encountered, the filter strips this message down to tokens, compares it to the database, and applies a formula based on the British scientist Alan Bayes' formula for probability calculation. Over time, the Bayesian filter "learns" the characteristics of spam messages.

Community Filters simply work on a voting system whereby every user that receives a spam message "votes" it as spam. This information is stored on a central server and when enough votes are received the message is banned from all users in the community.

As can be seen, the user interaction from these types of filters is mainly limited to two button operation - correcting wrongly identified messages - and the more accurate the filter, the less those buttons are used.

OK, so that's pretty good. Not exactly zero interaction, but if the filter is accurate enough, then it should be pretty near. That brings us to point two:

It produces zero false positives or negatives This is the area in which most spam filter development is concentrating and things are getting pretty good nowadays. It is not at all unusual to see an efficient modern filter achieve accuracy of 96% or better. It is, of course, far better to have a false negative than a false positive if you are ever going to tear yourself away from the killed mail folder!

Of course, by definition, community filters cannot reach 100% accuracy as someone has to be getting the spam to be voting it as such! Theoretically, a Bayesian filter may be able to eventually get quite close to 100% accuracy, so at least there is hope there. Content based filters (those that look for certain words, phrases or other indicators in a message to identify it as spam), will almost certainly not get much higher accuracy figures than the best of them can achieve today. Adapting to changing spam requires new filters to be created on an ongoing basis.

And finally, we come to the holy grail of spam filtering:

It is transparent Strangely enough, not enough work seems to be done in trying to achieve this goal. Some of the best filters on the market today identify spam with impressive accuracy and then simply place them in a "killed mail" folder for your later perusal. Now, forgive me if I'm missing something here, but isn't the point to save you having to wade through the junk mail? Isn't that what you bought the filter for? With the "SpamSplatter 3000", you don't need to do that.

As we haven't achieved 100% accuracy yet (and probably never will), the only way to free us from checking the killed mail folder is a challenge/response system. This is where a message is automatically sent back to the sender requiring them to take some action for their message to actually be delivered.

Some systems tend to go overboard with the challenge/response system. These systems - often called "Whitelist" systems - block messages from anyone that isn't in the user's friends list. Guaranteed 100% effective, but too drastic a measure for most users.

Now, it seems that the most intelligent use of this system would be to send challenges only to messages that were flagged as "questionable". Good message can be delivered, definite spam can be deleted and questionable ones would earn themselves a challenge message.

So, to sum up, let's rewrite the qualities of our perfect filter and get a shopping list of what to look for while we wait for the "SpamSplatter 3000" to arrive:

1. Simple, minimal setup and maintenance.

2. Extremely low rate of false positives and as few false negatives as possible.

3. A transparent "fail-safe" mechanism whereby the victims of those false positives can force the message through to you.

It's simple really. Now, who's going to build me this "SpamSplatter 3000"...?

About the Author:
Alan Hearnshaw is the owner of http://www.WhichSpamFilter.com, a site which provides weekly in-depth spam filter reviews, user help and guidance and a community forum. alan@whichspamfilter.com
Posted: 20-09-2005
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

What Is Spam? How To Identify And Block It?

Almost everyone who used to communicate via e-mail has ever found in the Inbox the messages from people he doesn’t know proposing some services or products. All unsolicited and undesired messages you receive are SPAM. The emails of this kind usually offer pharmaceutical products, diet methods, sexual enhancements aid, and “get rich quick” plans. You can also meet bogus sales pitches, sales opportunities, and different types of scams. In addition to stock scams, in which spammers encourage you to invest money, a new spam-scam gambit called phishing is becoming very popular now. This scam is aimed to obtaining people’s private information such as user name, password, credit card details, etc. An example is an email coming from PayPal or Ebay asking you to go to the company’s web site and update your account. If you do it, the spammers will record your keystrokes and your private details will be disclosed to them. And have you ever received pitiful letters from a widow or a relative of the former ruler of Nigeria? Sure you have. It’s a famous Nigerian fraud that is still having a place on the Internet. Don’t be enticed by the millions they would promise you. All they want is your bank account details in order to rob you.

How do you identify spam among legitimate messages? You usually look at the sender’s name, which may be unknown to you or contain some gibberish. You also read the subject line of the message. As a rule the subject line of spam emails concerns gambling, pornography, or an offer to make a fortune in 24 hours. But the spammers are also able to create an email identical to legitimate one coming from a respected source. In other cases, the subject lines may indicate that the message is a reply to your email. A general way to distinguish spam is to read the To and From header fields in all the messages you receive. If you see strange, anonymous or scrambled alpha-numeric email addresses (for example, gt4590xx@domain.com) then you have spam. Some anti-spam solutions provide you with the capability to preview the emails. For example, in addition to a safe message content preview, G-Lock SpamCombat allows you analyze the message header in detail: From, To, Subject, Received and other header fields.

How to block spam? Remember, the point of spam is to have you open the email. Once you do it, the least trouble you may have is to let the spammer know that your email address is valid. It’s luck for a spammer. He can continue spamming you in the hope that earlier or later you will swallow the bait. Or, he can sell your email address to someone else. Also, be aware that spammers send millions emails at a time, so even a very tiny response rate is a great success for them. Let’s imagine that 100 out of 10 millions people invested 5 dollars each into a scam offered by a spammer. So, the spammer makes 500 dollars at a time.

If you are really suffering from a continuous spam flow, you can consider getting a new email address and disclose it to trusted senders only. Or, you can start clearing your inbox from spam right away using anti-spam software. Although not perfect, anti-spam filters are now very sophisticated and very effective at cutting out most of spam.

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

1. Check the senders’ email addresses and names against a blacklist of spammers they own and delete the message if the sender is on the blacklist.

2. Check the recipients’ email addresses and names and filter the messages according to certain parameters. For example, if the email is sent to a large group of recipients sorted alphabetically, the email is considered spam.

3. Analyze the message content and subject line and search for certain words or phrases, which are typically met in spam emails such as “Viagra”, “Cialis”, “Mortgage”, “Invest” and filter the spam email accordingly.

There are many kinds of anti spam solutions now. Software developers offer standalone spam blockers like Mail Washer, Spam Nullifier, G-Lock SpamCombat, etc. Most of the big, free email services such as Yahoo!, Google, MSN, and Hotmail also provide effective spam filtering. You just need to choose the right anti-spam solution that will serve you in the most effective way.

About the Author:
Julia Gulevich is a technical expert associated with development of computer software like AATools, Advanced Email Verifier, G-Lock EasyMail, Junk Email Filter http://www.glocksoft.com/sc/ More information can be found at Anti-Spam Software Resources http://www.glocksoft.net/sc/.
This article was posted on November 21, 2006
Article Source: articlecity

The Hidden Dangers of HTML Email

As a veteran Internet user, I can honestly say I remember a time when HTML email was not possible. Back then RTF wasn't available either and for that matter, email programs did not even wrap lines for you or allow file attachments.

Today however, I receive a steady and annoying stream of email in all shapes, colors and sizes. Almost all promotional advertisements and many newsletters come in Html format.

Now, Spam is annoying, Spam in droves even more so, but Spam with "twirlygigs" is intolerable -- and dangerous. HTML is for websites. I visit them all the time and enjoy their various amusements. Email however, is a tool. A communications method used for getting work done. I get plenty of regular email, hundreds of pieces a day usually, due to the support, consulting and writing services I provide. If all of those emails are in HTML format then I'm stuck looking at potentially hundreds of web pages and thousands of graphics.

HTML email takes extra time to download, and for me it takes extra time to read. You see I don't trust HTML email. I've coded many websites in my day and I know that scripts can be hidden in the pages. Now when you couple that fact with the daily news about viruses and worms being sent, well that's just downright scary, so I do not allow my email program to automatically open HTML formatted email. Now I rarely use Outlook and Express (sorry Microsoft but they feel just a bit too dangerous to me now days) however I'd rather be safe than sorry no matter which email program I use. So, I have my email software configured to show all HTML messages as attachments.

Having the email converted to an attachment allows me to immediately see if there are any other files included with the message. And let me tell you, this has saved my butt time after time! I've lost count of how many times I've gotten email with the HTML attached, and malicious code, worms and viruses attached right next to it. If my email program was configured to "conveniently" display HTML as a web page, then a lot of those attached files would have opened on their own and done who knows what to my system.

So, if you receive a lot of email yourself, be careful what you allow to come in. If you run a newsletter or Email update service of any kind, please be courteous and at least ASK before sending HTML formatted email. And when you do have permission to send HTML email, don't include heavy graphics, scripts or other file attachments.

Text may not be as glamorous, but it's a heck of a lot safer and much easier for your readers to glance through.

(c) 2002 Kathy Burns.

About the author:
Kathy Burns-Millyard
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