Spam Articles

Simple Steps To Defeating Spam

(category: Spam, Word count: 1461)
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GMail SPAM filter is fighting a losing battle. I am doing some ANTI-SPAM testing. For the past 4 months I have been very public with my Gmail email address, signing up for newsletters, using it on forms, and sharing it publicly on forums, blogs, and discussion boards. I expected to get SPAMMED to death, that's exactly what's beginning to happen. Everyday, I receive about 20 junk emails. I know that is small, but for someone who is use to never seeing SPAM in their inbox, it's a quite bit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Email Anti Spam And Virus Protection For Businesses There Is Hope

(category: Spam, Word count: 730)
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With anti spam vendors offering low cost licensing, businesses can now afford advanced email spam and virus protection with a simple to use interface at a much lower cost. The great thing about technology is that as it evolves it gets faster, additional features and economical. Over the past few years the same evolution has taken place with anti spam technology and services. In large part this can be attributed to the open source software community plus enterprising companies enhancing the capabilities of this software and packaging it into easy to use anti spam appliances.

It is not practical to have anti spam software running on desktops in a networked business environment. Managing all employee junk email software at the desktop is not realistic. It can be a nightmare and costly in terms time and licensing.

Spam appliances sit in front of your email server so that when email comes in it will first go to the spam appliance and the email will be scanned for spam as well as viruses. The filter will block the message if it identified as know spam. If the filter is not sure if the email is genuine it will quarantine and hold the email at the filter and it will be stored until the recipient deletes it, releases it to their email box, or they can white list a trusted correspondent so that future emails will not be held back. This will greatly reduce the load on your email server and reduce your bandwidth needs. We have seen anti spam systems block up to 83% of incoming messages. This could help extend the life of your email server and push back the need for upgraded capacity.

Most virus outbreaks occur via email and for little cost an appliance can block viruses before they reach your network and user's inboxes. This provides an extra layer of defense in addition to your current anti virus solution.

Businesses have two options if they use an appliance based solution for their spam and virus control. They can purchase and administer their own filter. This is a good option if you have a large number of employee mailboxes to protect and the technical staff to administer the spam appliance. Businesses also have the option to outsource their spam control as a hosted service. This is a good choice for smaller companies and if information technology is not your specialty.

If you purchase your own spam filter, a subscription to updates may also be required. Make sure you get upfront pricing for the add-ons that you will need. If you have more than 100 email users and the technical staff to maintain the spam appliance, buying your own filter may be your best option. Generally the basic model will work for most organizations. Large organizations with thousands of users will require a spam filter appliance with increases capacity and features. Spam appliances are designed to work with all mail systems but some do have specific enhancements for Exchange server Microsoft's popular collaboration software and mail servers that support LDAP (light weight directory access protocol). Spam appliances use the LDAP protocol to verify recipients before delivering messages to your email server, this avoids consuming server resources.

If your business has five to one hundred employees, then an outsourced anti spam and virus filter service is going to be a good economical choice for your organization. Fees are based on the number of users and you only pay for what you use. You will not have hardware to buy, maintain, and upgrade. The upfront cost is minimal and most email filtering providers will let you try the service for free at first. Another added benefit to outsourcing your spam control is redundancy. It is important that you choose a provider that has their spam and virus filters collocated at secure internet data center facilities. Data centers provide redundant network connections and power, so if your email server or internet connection is down unexpectedly the spam appliance will hold your email until your email server becomes available, minus spam and viruses.

Anti spam technology is constantly improving and the costs are getting lower. With increased productivity and an added layer of defense against virus attacks, an anti spam appliance or service is something your business can not afford to be without.

Problems With Spam Learn How To Treat It

(category: Spam, Word count: 580)
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The first step in your antispam campaign may well be to understand spam and how it works.

Spam is usually defined as unsolicited e-mail that is delivered in bulk. It has become so prevalent because it's cheap, reaches the greatest number of folks in the least amount of time, and because it's unregulated. In the U.S. alone more than 50 million citizens are online, with their own Internet accounts.

For spammers this is an ideal situation. Even were it not to work, there's virtually no punishment other than subsequent inability to spam until a way is found around it. And ways are constantly found around just about everything we do in our antispam campaign. That's not to say you shouldn't try though.

Here are some of the things you can do:

First, don't respond - not even to say, "Hey you not nice person, get off my computer." First, it's a waste of time. As soon as the first batch of spam has been sent that spammer may very well have deleted that email address. It'll just bounce back. The second is that you're not talking to a live person anyway. And any response, no matter how negative, is noted by their system as a response. What this means to the spamming system is, "Hey this guy is interested. He answered our message. Let's send him the second message." If you have a provider that lets you note spam then do so. Block it if you want but that seldom really works. It's worth a shot, though, unless you're limited to the number of blocks you can place at which point you'll be forced to pick and choose.

If your provider allows spammers to get through what is going to happen eventually is that other sites will begin to block your provider if they do in fact police spam. Then you'll have trouble sending and receiving e-mail. That's when you step in and tell your provider that they start blocking spam or you're gone. There's nothing like an irate customer threatening cancellation to spur them into action. If they should not respond by blocking spam, then do follow through and change providers.

The primary principle for preventing spam is to avoid mailing to a list. We're all tempted to organize our emails into lists - business clients, friends, and so forth. Then we mail them all the same message. Saves time and effort. The problem here is not that you sent out one message but you didn't use the software necessary to hide each person's email from the others.

Not only does this set you up for spam but it's also just plain rude. It's like telling all those folks what your sister-in-law's address and phone number is without first asking her if it's okay to tell the buddy of your best friend's high school teacher where she lives. No, it's not. But where spam is concerned what happens is that a few of those folks are undoubtedly going to add everyone whose address they see to their own list, and send it on and on and on ad infinitum. It snowballs, and sooner or later there's a spammer who receives your name and your e-mail address.

Don't sign up with a site that offers you an antispam service. "Sign up with us, they say, and we'll add you to an antispam list." Wrong! They're spammers and you're now on their list.

Spammers And Spam Hunters

(category: Spam, Word count: 575)
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Sometimes I don't know which people are the worst. Those that spam or those that say they are going after spammers.

I deleted 145 spam posts on one of my blogs today. Fortunately I have moderate comments turned on so they never actually get posted. That makes the spammers bad, but that's the worst inconvenience spammers have caused me.

However those that supposedly are our Spam saviors. Those that say they are fighting spam have caused me more problems than the spammers themselves.

Sorbs.net lists your domain name as a spam domain name if you happen to be hosted on or near the same IP address as the spammers. Therefore you are guilty by association.

To get your domain name removed off of sorbs.net's list, you have to give them money. Sounds a lot like extortion since they manually add you to the list then ask you for money to be removed.

Then of course they tell you that they give the money to charity. I checked out the charity they say they give the money to. It goes to a legal defense fund they could use to defend themselves if you sued them. Some charity.

Twice now blogger.com has caused me spamconvenience. They have locked me out of one of my own blogs and one I manage for a client because their spambot said it might be spam. It also says that if you are a human reading this message then of course I am not likely a spambot and they will correct the situation.

They did this even though on that blog they require me to type into the little box whatever crazy letters they have in the little graphic to make each post on that same blog.

Half the time the little picture isn't even there. So you cannot type the little letters into the box because the little letters don't exist. So how can they use that method to make sure I am not spamming, then flag it as a spam blog?

However since I get paid to blog daily on the client's blog, my loss of income, that I am sure Google will not reimburse me for, is just that lost income due to the spam fighters.

They did this today to the client's blog. They are reviewing it they say. Like to see that blog? Go to http://hotelsandapartments.blogspot.com It's not spam.

The first time it happened was one day after I created the blog. It had exactly one post in it. Wow, what a spammer I am. They blocked me from logging in but sent me a very nice email, which I had not opted in for, saying they would be glad to review that blog too. They even provided a nice link to where I could fill out a form to request a review.

When I followed their nice link in the unsolicited email, (not spam), they sent me, it asked me to log in using the username and password that THEY HAD ALREADY BLOCKED ME FROM USING!

So that blog had to be rebuilt elsewhere. Again, I have had way more trouble from spam fighters than I ever have had from spammers. Well, that's all for my rant. Now I have to see if I can get the little picture below to load so I can see what stupid letters I have to type into the box so you can see this post.

Phishing It S Signs And Your Options

(category: Spam, Word count: 434)
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Phishing is the act of some individual sending an email to a user in an attempt to scam the user to release personal information. Is it easy to determine if it's a scam? Sometimes - but not always. I hope to give you enough examples and information to help you to safeguard yourself from these unsavory individuals.

In addition, sometimes the email is sent to malicious software so as to render your computer helpless. Thus, it is important that you do not click on the link they provide, because that is the trigger that will load the software to your system.

EXAMPLES OF PHISHING

You receive hundreds of emails in your mailbox, but one email catches your eye - it directs you to a website, requesting that you need to update your personal information. It requests such personal information as:

passwords

credit card numbers

social security number

bank account numbers

"It appears to be legitimate", you say to yourself. And you also notice that the emails are from companies that you have been doing business with for a while. Warning: The website could be bogus.

Here are several examples of phishing in action.

1. E-mails stating they are from E-bay and they feel that your account may have been compromised and would like you to verify your information with they so conveniently supply. DO NOT click on it.

2. E-mails from Paypal or your bank asking that you verify your information because they feel that your account has been compromised, or heaven forbid, suspended. Same scenario, different company. DO NOT click on the link.

3. E-mail that states that an unauthorized transaction has occurred on your account. Please click the link below and confirm your identity. DO NOT.

4. Here's a work at home scam - We have seen your resume on Monster and feel you would fit our position. If you are interested, please go to our website, look over the experience required and submit your resume if you have this background. Website is professional looking, offer looks good - but it could be a scam.

WHAT ARE THEY AFTER

In the above examples they are after information about you, be it passwords, credit cards, social security numbers, anything that can identify you - and that which they can use to profit from you.

The job email is used to verify that the email address is a true blue, active email address. What do they do with this info - they sell these accounts to spammers for good money. They need to verify your email address

The Economics Of Spam

(category: Spam, Word count: 2136)
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Tennessee resident K. C. "Khan" Smith owes the internet service provider EarthLink $24 million. According to the CNN, in August 2001 he was slapped with a lawsuit accusing him of violating federal and state Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and numerous other state laws. On July 19, 2002 - having failed to appear in court - the judge ruled against him. Mr. Smith is a spammer.

Brightmail, a vendor of e-mail filters and anti-spam applications warned that close to 5 million spam "attacks" or "bursts" occurred in June 2002 and that spam has mushroomed 450 percent since June 2001. This pace continued unabated well into the beginning of 2004 when the introduction of spam filters began to take effect. PC World concurs.

Between one half and three quarters of all e-mail messages are spam or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) - unsolicited and intrusive commercial ads, mostly concerned with sex, scams, get rich quick schemes, financial services and products, and health articles of dubious provenance. The messages are sent from spoofed or fake e-mail addresses. Some spammers hack into unsecured servers - mainly in China and Korea - to relay their missives anonymously.

Starting in 2003, malicious hackers began using spam to install malware - such as viruses, adware, spyware, and Trojans - on the unprotected personal computers of less savvy users. They thus transform these computers into "zombies", organize them into spam-spewing "bots" (networks), and sell access to them to criminals on penumbral boards and forums all over the Net.

Spam is an industry. Mass e-mailers maintain lists of e-mail addresses, often "harvested" by spamware bots - specialized computer applications - from Web sites. These lists are rented out or sold to marketers who use bulk mail services. They come cheap - c. $100 for 10 million addresses. Bulk mailers provide servers and bandwidth, charging c. $300 per million messages sent.

As spam recipients become more inured, ISPs less tolerant, and both more litigious - spammers multiply their efforts in order to maintain the same response rate. Spam works. It is not universally unwanted - which makes it tricky to outlaw. It elicits between 0.1 and 1 percent in positive follow ups, depending on the message. Many messages now include HTML, JavaScript, and ActiveX coding and thus resemble (or actually contain) viruses and Trojans.

Jupiter Media Matrix predicted in 2001 that the number of spam messages annually received by a typical Internet user will double to 1400 and spending on legitimate e-mail marketing will reach $9.4 billion by 2006 - compared to $1 billion in 2001. Forrester Research pegs the number at $4.8 billion in 2003.

More than 2.3-5 billion spam messages are sent daily. eMarketer puts the figures a lot lower at 76 billion messages in 2002. By 2006, daily spam output will soar to c. 15 billion missives, says Radicati Group. Jupiter projects a more modest 268 billion annual messages this year (2005). An average communication costs the spammer 0.00032 cents.

PC World quotes the European Union as pegging the bandwidth costs of spam worldwide in 2002 at $8-10 billion annually. Other damages include server crashes, time spent purging unwanted messages, lower productivity, aggravation, and increased cost of Internet access.

Inevitably, the spam industry gave rise to an anti-spam industry. According to a Radicati Group report titled "Anti-virus, anti-spam, and content filtering market trends 2002-2006?, anti-spam revenues were projected to exceed $88 million in 2002 - and more than double by 2006. List blockers, report and complaint generators, advocacy groups, registers of known spammers, and spam filters all proliferate. The Wall Street Journal reported in its June 25, 2002 issue about a resurgence of anti-spam startups financed by eager venture capital.

ISPs are bent on preventing abuse - reported by victims - by expunging the accounts of spammers. But the latter simply switch ISPs or sign on with free services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Barriers to entry are getting lower by the day as the costs of hardware, software, and communications plummet.

The use of e-mail and broadband connections by the general population is spreading. Hundreds of thousands of technologically-savvy operators have joined the market in the last five years, as the dotcom bubble burst. Still, Steve Linford of the UK-based Spamhaus.org insists that most spam emanates from c. 80 large operators.

Now, according to Jupiter Media, ISPs and portals are poised to begin to charge advertisers in a tier-based system, replete with premium services. Writing back in 1998, Bill Gates described a solution also espoused by Esther Dyson, chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"As I first described in my book 'The Road Ahead' in 1995, I expect that eventually you'll be paid to read unsolicited e-mail. You'll tell your e-mail program to discard all unsolicited messages that don't offer an amount of money that you'll choose. If you open a paid message and discover it's from a long-lost friend or somebody else who has a legitimate reason to contact you, you'll be able to cancel the payment. Otherwise, you'll be paid for your time."

Subscribers may not be appreciative of the joint ventures between gatekeepers and inbox clutterers. Moreover, dominant ISPs, such as AT&T and PSINet have recurrently been accused of knowingly collaborating with spammers. ISPs rely on the data traffic that spam generates for their revenues in an ever-harsher business environment.

The Financial Times and others described how WorldCom refuses to ban the sale of spamware over its network, claiming that it does not regulate content. When "pink" (the color of canned spam) contracts came to light, the implicated ISPs blame the whole affair on rogue employees.

PC World begs to differ:

"Ronnie Scelson, a self-described spammer who signed such a contract with PSInet, (says) that backbone providers are more than happy to do business with bulk e-mailers. 'I've signed up with the biggest 50 carriers two or three times', says Scelson ... The Louisiana-based spammer claims to send 84 million commercial e-mail messages a day over his three 45-megabit-per-second DS3 circuits. 'If you were getting $40,000 a month for each circuit', Scelson asks, 'would you want to shut me down?'"

The line between permission-based or "opt-in" e-mail marketing and spam is getting thinner by the day. Some list resellers guarantee the consensual nature of their wares. According to the Direct Marketing Association's guidelines, quoted by PC World, not responding to an unsolicited e-mail amounts to "opting-in" - a marketing strategy known as "opting out". Most experts, though, strongly urge spam victims not to respond to spammers, lest their e-mail address is confirmed.

But spam is crossing technological boundaries. Japan has just legislated against wireless SMS spam targeted at hapless mobile phone users. Many states in the USA as well as the European parliament have followed suit. Ideas regarding a "do not spam" list akin to the "do not call" list in telemarketing have been floated. Mobile phone users will place their phone numbers on the list to avoid receiving UCE (spam). Email subscribers enjoy the benefits of a similar list under the CAN-Spam Act of 2003.

Expensive and slow connections make mobile phone spam and spim (instant messaging spam) particularly resented. Still, according to Britain's Mobile Channel, a mobile advertising company quoted by "The Economist", SMS advertising - a novelty - attracts a 10-20 percent response rate - compared to direct mail's 1-3 percent.

Net identification systems - like Microsoft's Passport and the one proposed by Liberty Alliance - will make it even easier for marketers to target prospects.

The reaction to spam can be described only as mass hysteria. Reporting someone as a spammer - even when he is not - has become a favorite pastime of vengeful, self-appointed, vigilante "cyber-cops". Perfectly legitimate, opt-in, email marketing businesses and discussion forums often find themselves in one or more black lists - their reputation and business ruined.

In January 2002, CMGI-owned Yesmail was awarded a temporary restraining order against MAPS - Mail Abuse Prevention System - forbidding it to place the reputable e-mail marketer on its Real-time Blackhole list. The case was settled out of court.

Harris Interactive, a large online opinion polling company, sued not only MAPS, but ISPs who blocked its email messages when it found itself included in MAPS' Blackhole. Their CEO accused one of their competitors for the allegations that led to Harris' inclusion in the list.

Coupled with other pernicious phenomena - such as viruses, Trojans, and spyware - the very foundation of the Internet as a fun, relatively safe, mode of communication and data acquisition is at stake.

Spammers, it emerges, have their own organizations. NOIC - the National Organization of Internet Commerce threatened to post to its Web site the e-mail addresses of millions of AOL members. AOL has aggressive anti-spamming policies. "AOL is blocking bulk email because it wants the advertising revenues for itself (by selling pop-up ads)" the president of NOIC, Damien Melle, complained to CNET.

Spam is a classic "free rider" problem. For any given individual, the cost of blocking a spammer far outweighs the benefits. It is cheaper and easier to hit the "delete" key. Individuals, therefore, prefer to let others do the job and enjoy the outcome - the public good of a spam-free Internet. They cannot be left out of the benefits of such an aftermath - public goods are, by definition, "non-excludable". Nor is a public good diminished by a growing number of "non-rival" users.

Such a situation resembles a market failure and requires government intervention through legislation and enforcement. The FTC - the US Federal Trade Commission - has taken legal action against more than 100 spammers for promoting scams and fraudulent goods and services.

"Project Mailbox" is an anti-spam collaboration between American law enforcement agencies and the private sector. Non government organizations have entered the fray, as have lobbying groups, such as CAUCE - the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.

But, a few recent anti-spam and anti-spyware Acts notwithstanding, Congress is curiously reluctant to enact stringent laws against spam. Reasons cited are free speech, limits on state powers to regulate commerce, avoiding unfair restrictions on trade, and the interests of small business. The courts equivocate as well. In some cases - e.g., Missouri vs. American Blast Fax - US courts found "that the provision prohibiting the sending of unsolicited advertisements is unconstitutional".

According to Spamlaws.com, the 107th Congress, for instance, discussed these laws but never enacted them:

Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001 (H.R. 95), Wireless Telephone Spam Protection Act (H.R. 113), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (H.R. 718), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (H.R. 1017), Who Is E-Mailing Our Kids Act (H.R. 1846), Protect Children From E-Mail Smut Act of 2001 (H.R. 2472), Netizens Protection Act of 2001 (H.R. 3146), "CAN SPAM" Act of 2001 (S. 630).

Anti-spam laws fared no better in the 106th Congress. Some of the states have picked up the slack. Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The situation is no better across the pond. The European parliament decided in 2001 to allow each member country to enact its own spam laws, thus avoiding a continent-wide directive and directly confronting the communications ministers of the union. Paradoxically, it also decided, in March 2002, to restrict SMS spam. Confusion clearly reigns. Finally, in May 2002, it adopted strong anti-spam provisions as part of a Directive on Data Protection.

Responding to this unfavorable legal environment, spam is relocating to developing countries, such as Malaysia, Nepal, and Nigeria. In a May 2005 report, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) warned that these countries lack the technical know-how and financial resources (let alone the will) to combat spam. Their users, anyhow deprived of bandwidth, endure, as a result, a less reliable service and an intermittent access to the Internet;

"Spam is a much more serious issue in developing countries...as it is a heavy drain on resources that are scarcer and costlier in developing countries than elsewhere" - writes the report's author, Suresh Ramasubramanian, an OECD advisor and postmaster for Outblaze.com.

ISPs, spam monitoring services, and governments in the rich industrialized world react by placing entire countries - such as Macedonia and Costa Rica - on black lists and, thus denying access to their users en bloc.

International collaboration against the looming destruction of the Internet by crime organizations is budding. The FTC had just announced that it will work with its counterparts abroad to cut zombie computers off the network. A welcome step - but about three years late. Spammers the world over are still six steps ahead and are having the upper hand.

Two Main Groups Of Spam

(category: Spam, Word count: 510)
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There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at lurkers, people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.

I think it's possible to stop spam, and that content-based filters are the way to do it. The Achilles heel of the spammers is their message. They can circumvent any other barrier you set up. They have so far, at least. But they have to deliver their message, whatever it is. If we can write software that recognizes their messages, there is no way they can get around that. Email spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. Email spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive. Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.

The statistical approach is not usually the first one people try when they write spam filters. Most hackers' first instinct is to try to write software that recognizes individual properties of spam. You look at spams and you think, the gall of these guys to try sending me mail that begins Dear Friend or has a subject line that's all uppercase and ends in eight exclamation points. I can filter out that stuff with about one line of code.

But the real advantage of the Bayesian approach, of course, is that you know what you're measuring. Feature-recognizing filters like SpamAssassin assign a spam score to email. The Bayesian approach assigns an actual probability. The problem with a score is that no one knows what it means. The user doesn't know what it means, but worse still, neither does the developer of the filter. How many points should an email get for having the word sex in it? A probability can of course be mistaken, but there is little ambiguity about what it means, or how evidence should be combined to calculate it. Based on my corpus, sex indicates a .97 probability of the containing email being a spam, whereas sexy indicates .99 probability. And Bayes' Rule, equally unambiguous, says that an email containing both words would, in the (unlikely) absence of any other evidence, have a 99.97% chance of being a spam.

Digging Into Spam And Filtering Services

(category: Spam, Word count: 419)
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If you talk to anyone who uses email, spam is something that is frequently on there mind. How often is it that you open your inbox checking for an email from your mom, and you end up with emails with subjective titles involving animals, and foreign objects.

There are ways to fight back against Spam, and one of the most popular is through the use of a spam filtering service. There is all different types of spam, and surprisingly not all of them involve email. Most spamming involves the advertising or otherwise promotion of a product, however this is not true in some cases.

Most common types of spamming include: Email spam, Link spam and search engine spam.

Email Spam is the simple act of sending out massive amounts of 'junk email' to anyone and everyone, in order to promote a product. Often times spamming has been exploited by more 'undergorund' industries such as the adult industry, but it would be unfair to say that other industries haven't used it as well.

Link Spam is a form of spamming or spamdexing that recently became publicized most often when targeting the increasingly popular weblogs. Weblogs is one of the biggest problems, however link spam also affects guestbooks, and online discussion boards. The purpose behind spamming these various places, is to display hyperlinks to a various page or product, which helps both with user exposure and search engine popularity.

Search engine spam is usually closely related with the above "link spam", as it is the process of creating countless numbers of pages, that populate search engines. Often times these pages will be full of garbage text and have no real value on there own. When a user visits them, they will either be re-directed to a completely different page, often times on another domain, or show prominent advertising.

Everyone can take their part in removing spam. The easiest way for a general user to not encourage spam, is not to use it. Spammers only spam, because it must be effective, otherwise they would find something better to do with their time. It is also recommended to get various levels of personal spam protection, which is often times included with anti-virus software. 3rd party solutions such as Hotmail, have very good spam detection, however often times spam will leak in, and in that case you can help hotmail out by notifying them of the occurence, so that they can better help protect you next time.

Steps To Reducing Spam In Your Inbox

(category: Spam, Word count: 530)
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Steps to Reducing SPAM in Your Inbox

Spam first made its mark in the world in 1978 when Gary Thuerk, Marketing Director of Digital Equipment Technology sent an email solicitation to 400 employees at Arpnet. The email created a few sales, but it also created fierce backlash. Today, more than 180 billion spam messages are sent out each day to over 1 billion Internet users. This staggering statistic makes it clear why spam is such a major problem for Internet users. Many companies are working hard to solve the spam problem, but the first step to stopping spam starts with the consumer.

By following the steps below, Internet users can reduce the number of spam email messages they receive in their inbox.

Before an Invasion of Spam

Software:

Choose email providers that offer built-in spam protection services. Look for service providers that promote a high success rate of blocking spam email.

Spam Filters:

Spam is a cat and mouse game. Spammers are constantly looking for ways to bypass filters. Regularly check your spam filter software if you're using non-web based email to make sure it is up to date. If you're using web-based email,m make sure your webmail provider is working hard to protect you from spam.

Improve Security:

A firewall may be one of the most important applications on a computer. It acts as a barrier between hackers and the computer, and prevents access to unauthorized information.

Limit Email Dispersal:

When performing online transactions, thoroughly scan the page for any checked and unchecked boxes. Some companies will word these boxes in a way to increase the likelihood of a consumer opting-in to their email campaigns.

Shop From Known Vendors:

Shopping from known vendors can greatly reduce the threat of spam email. Many companies are guilty of selling email addresses to third parties, which are then used for spam. The company's privacy policy is supposed to list their intended uses of your personal information, such as whether they will sell your email address to third parties. Consumers can check the Better Business Bureau's and the FTC's (Federal Trade Commission) websites for lists of reputable companies and for lists of violators.

Once Spam Becomes a Problem

Internet users should avoid opening spam. It should be immediately deleted. Pay close attention to the senders email address as most spammers use deceptive subject lines intended to promote opening. If opened, avoid attachments, which may contain viruses, and do not purchase goods or donate to charities solicited in the message. Many spam email messages will have unsubscribe links at the bottom of the message, as dictated by the CAN-SPAM Act.

If consumers find themselves with an inbox full of spam, they can also report the spam emails to their Internet Service Provider.

There are numerous companies and organizations designed to regulate the Internet and protect users. But, it is important that Internet users are informed of the threats of spam. By following the stated suggestions and by not falling victim to the ploys of spammers, users can help put spammers out of business, and keep their inbox free of junk email.

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