Anti-Phishing Bill Introduced To Congress

Sen. Partick J. Leahy has introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 to Congress for consideration. The Act would allow federal prosecutors to seek fines of up to $250,000 and prison sentences of up to five years against individuals convicted for promoting phishing scams. Online parody and political speech sites would be excluded from prosecution.

"Phishing" is an online scam used to deceive computer users into giving up personal information such as social security numbers and passwords. Phishing scams usually involve email messages requesting the verification of personal information from a familiar business. Readers are provided a link that sends them to what appears to be the site of the company in question. The reader is then asked to verify their account information by providing their name, address, social security number, account number, etc.

In truth, the site is an illegal copy of the business in question and the reader's information is collected for later fraudulent use including identity theft. Consumers are estimated to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year to phishing scams. Undoubtedly, you have received more than a few of these emails.

Phishing emails are most likely to use the sites of banks, credit card companies, and large retailers. Online companies such as Ebay, PayPal and Earthlink have had similar problems. One particularly aggressive group even scammed the site of the IRS.

In April 2004, the IRS warned consumers that scam artists were sending emails purportedly from the IRS. Consumers received emails claiming they were under investigation for tax fraud and subject to prosecution. The emails contained language telling recipients they could "help" the investigation by providing "real" information and directed them to a website that was derivative of the IRS site. Consumers were then asked to provide detailed personal information to dispute the charge. Since most people fear the IRS, one can assume that a large number of people took the phishing bait.

Commentary

The Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 is a nice start to combating scam artists that use phishing to pilfer money from consumers. The Act, however, will not put an end to deceptive phishing practices if it is passed. There reason involves jurisdictional issues.

A large percentage of the individuals promoting phishing scams reside outside of the United States. While they may take notice of the law, it will have no discernible effect on their fraudulent scams. Until there is an international response, phishing scams will continue to be a problem. Nonetheless, Senator Leahy should be commended for initiating efforts to deal with this growing problem.

About the Author:
Richard A. Chapo
Posted: 20-09-2005
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

Keep Your Work From Home Newsletter From Being A Spam Filter Casualty

It’s hard to get your email through to clients, friends and family with all the Spam Filtering going on these days. If you are a Home Based Business owner that sends out a newsletter regularly you’ll want to keep the following tips in mind to make certain your Work At Home Newsletter is getting through all the Spam Filters.

Spam is defiantly a problem. At one time I was receiving almost 300 per day, spending a good part an hour sifting through the mass of junk was more than I could tolerate. So I too enlisted the help of a Spam Filter – Spam Arrest.

I do worry about losing out on emails that are important and interesting, but this is the price we all have to pay for those Spammers that have abused and are abusing the Internet.

Most Spam Filters use a Blacklist – these are clusters of email addresses and domain names that are known for sending out a lot of Spam. Recipients of Spam generate most Blacklists’. So your newsletter could fall victim to a click happy Spam identifier that clicks your email into the dreaded Blacklist vault.

Spam Assassin, Cloudmark’s SpamNet and Spam Arrest all use different methods of blocking spam. Spam Assassin uses a point system to conclude whether or not an email is Spam. If your Newsletter scores high it will surely be treated as spam and blocked. SpamNet blocks Spam two ways; the first, filters email based on keywords like “Free”, and the second allows users to mark email and submit identified Spam to be blocked to other users of SpamNet.

My personal favorite is Spam Arrest, because it offers you total control over your inbox. You can decide who is allowed to send you email by importing your personal address book, or entering your known and approved contact addresses directly into the system.

Emails from unknown senders will receive an auto-reply message containing a "challenge" -- if or when the sender completes the challenge (the response), their email is forwarded to your inbox, and they are then added to your authorized sender list.

The challenge is easy for people, but impossible for automated systems (i.e. spambots) to complete.

The Spam Arrest challenge/response system effectively blocks all the spam while still allowing friends, family and trusted contacts to email you without the risk of being filtered out by imprecise software systems.

So How Do You Keep Your Newsletter From Being Blocked?

Here are some tips to help your Newsletter reach your subscribers:

DO NOT send your newsletter unsolicited. Be sure your customers have requested to be on your subscriber distribution list – using an auto responder, like Aweber, that requires your subscribers to opt-in and confirm that then have requested your Newsletter will help keep you off the blacklists.

Use your Newsletter’s name in the subject line. Your subscribers should recognize your Newsletters name. Using subject lines that are full of hype and so called trigger words may get your Newsletter blocked by the Spam filters.

NEVER TYPE IN ALL CAPS. This will surely get the Spam filter red flags raised and your email forwarded to the dreaded blacklists.

Words like “Free”, “Limited Offer”, “Money” even “home business” will engage most Spam filters.

The simplest words like “remove” should be avoided as well. Use “unsubscribe” in your directions to subscribers that want to stop receiving your Newsletter.

Spammers most often use free email addresses – so you should avoid using them at all costs. Send your Newsletter from a reputable domain name – one that matches your own website would be best.

Never send attachments with your Newsletter. Attachments put a fear in most email recipients and will tag your email as Spam.

Your Newsletter will most likely have words within the text that trigger Spam filters – these words like “Free” and “Home Business” can be easily disguised by adding a period or hyphen between two letters – do not over do it though. It will not be long before this tactic will be a trigger for the top Spam filters, so keep up with all aspects of the best Spam filters so your Newsletter will reach your subscribers.

Copyright 2005 – Tim Somers, 3G Enterprises, LLC

About the Author:
Tim Somers "The Home Biz Honcho". Changing Your Life, Helping You Make Money While You Work From Home. Get Tim’s Top Ten Home Biz Opportunities – Free Report at: http://www.Home-Based-Business-Opportunity-Honcho.com If you are ready to start building a Residual Income – Tim will build you your very own Money Generating Website for FREE! http://www.Free-Make-Money-Site.com
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

People accusing you of sending spam? FIVE 'Email Marketer must know' tips.

People tend to forget their subscriptions. Sometimes they don't even know why they subscribed to your newsletter. Especially if the person is seeking for information, he/she will subscribe to every ezine or ecourse that will come across their search. They don't remember it after a while. If you send email to them after few months, they simply accuse you of sending spam.

So how to safegaurd yourself from this type of accusations?

Follow up and Mailing list management software: You can manage your ecourses, broadcasts, follow ups with this single software- http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/follow-up-autoresponder-pro/index.shtml

1. Provide their personal details in every email:

On top of each email, put their email address, their ip number with which they subscribed, URL of the form where they subscribed, list name they subscribed. This way your subscribers are aware of that you have their details with their permission.

You only gets the subscriber ips when he/she subscribes using a form. If they subscribed using email addresses, the ip will not be grabbed by your autoresponder software.

2. Use Double opt-in:

Some of the marketers say that 'You have to make it easy for the subscriber to receive your emails'. So people tend to neglect to implement double opt-in. They think that it will be a hassle for subscriber to click on the confirmation link in the email. Remember one thing... if they are really interested they will click, not one... more than that to receive information from you. This type of list is best to target your information and to get some profits from it.

3. 'Unsubscribe' link:

Put 'Unsubscribe' link in every email in the footer area. Sometimes subscribers subscribe using subscriberATdomain.com, redirects his email to subscriberATdomain2.com. Then he tries to unsubscribe using second email, which obviously not in your database and he can't be removed by your software. Then he/she will get upset that you are sending spam. So tell them that use the same email address that they used to subscribe, to unsubscribe. You can put this information under your unsubscribe link.

4. Privacy statement:

Create a tag in your autoresponder like [privacy_statement], if your software allows it. Then put this tag in all email below 'Unsubscribe' link. Let this privacy statement should be similar that you put on the subscription form web page. If your autoresponder software don't allow tags, then put url to your privacy satement on your web page.

5. Authentication Seals:

Recently I came across this site where they provide email marketers a special code that goes with headers of your email(s), making them legitimate.
http://www.habeas.com/servicesHowSWEWorks.php
There is another one: http://www.truste.org/businesses/email_services.php

Radhika Venkata (c).

About the author:
Radhika Venkata
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