How Spammers Fool Spam Filters

Trust

And How to Stop Them

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of tools spammers use coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just dont work anymore. Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be.There are several widely-used methods for filtering spam, each of which can be defeated by spammers to some degree. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and the methods spammers use to defeat them is the basis of an effective, comprehensive anti-spam strategy.

Signature-based Filters

Signature-based filters examine the contents of known spam, usually derived from honey pots, or dummy e-mail addresses set up specifically to collect spam. Once a honey pot receives a spam message, the content is examined and given a unique identifier. The unique identifier is obtained by assigning a value to each character in the e-mail. Once all characters have been assigned a value, the values are totaled, creating the spams signature. The signature is added to a signature database and sent as a regular update to the e-mail services subscribers. The signature is compared to every e-mail coming in to the network and all matching messages are discarded as spam.The benefit of signature-based filters is that they rarely produce false-positives, or legitimate e-mail incorrectly identified as spam. The drawback of signature-based filters is that they are very easy to defeat. Because they are backward-looking, they only deal with spam that has already been sent. By the time the honey pot receives a spam message, the system assigns a signature, and the update is sent and installed on the subscribers network, the spammer has already sent millions of e-mails. A slight modification of the e-mail message will render the existing signature useless. Furthermore, spammers can easily evade signature-based filters by using special e-mail software that adds random strings of content to the subject line and body of the e-mail. Because the variable content alters the signature of each e-mail sent by the spammer, signature-based spam filters are unable to match the e-mail to known pieces of spam.Developers of signature-based spam filters have learned to identify the tell-tale signs of automated random character generation. But as is often the case, spammers remain a step ahead and have developed more sophisticated methods for inserting random content. As a result, most spam continues to fool signature-based filters.

Rule-based (Heuristic) Filtering

Rule-based filters scan e-mail content for predetermined words or phrases that may indicate a message is spam. For example, if an e-mail administrator includes the word sex on a companys rule-based list, any e-mail containing this word will be filtered.The major drawback of this approach is the difficulty in identifying keywords that are consistently indicative of spam. While spammers may frequently use the words sex and Viagra in spam e-mails, these words are also used in legitimate business correspondence, particularly in the healthcare industry. Additionally, spammers have learned to obfuscate suspect words by using spellings such as S*E*X, or VI a a GRR A. It is impossible to develop dictionaries that identify every possible misspelling of spammy keywords. Additionally, because filtering for certain keywords produces large numbers of false positives, many organizations have found they cannot afford to rely solely on rule-based filters to identify spam.

Blacklists

The goal of blacklisting is to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to crack-down on customers who send spam. A blacklisted ISP is blocked from sending e-mail to organizations. When an ISP is blacklisted, they are provided with a list of actions they must take in order to be removed from the blacklist. This controversial method blocks not just the spammers, but all of the ISPs customers. Blacklisting is generally considered an unfriendly approach to stopping spam because the users most affected by the blacklist are e-mail users who do not send spam. Many argue blacklisting actually damages the utility of e-mail more than it helps stop spam since the potential for blocking legitimate e-mail is so high.In addition to the ethical considerations, there are other problems with blacklists. Many blacklists are not updated frequently enough to maintain effectiveness. Some blacklist administrators are irresponsible in that they immediately block suspect servers without thoroughly investigating complaints or giving the ISP time to respond. Another downside is that blacklists are not accurate enough to catch all spam. Only about half of servers used by spammers, regardless of how diligent the blacklist administrator may be, are ever cataloged in a given blacklist.Blacklists are used because they can be partially effective against spammers who repeatedly use the same ISP or e-mail account to send spam. However, because spammers often change ISPs, re-route e-mail and hijack legitimate servers, the spammer is a moving target. Blacklist administrators are forced to constantly revise lists, and the lag-time between when a spammer begins using a given server and when the blacklist administrator is able to identify the new spam source and add it to the blacklist allows spammers to send hundreds of millions of e-mails. Spammers consider this constant state of flux a part of doing business and are constantly looking for new servers to send spam messages.Blacklists, therefore, have some utility in stopping known spammers. Because of their limitations, however, this data should only be used in conjunction with other sources to determine if a given message is spam.

Whitelists

Whitelists are databases of trusted e-mail sources. The list may contain specific e-mail addresses, IP addresses or trusted domains. E-mails received from a whitelisted source are allowed to pass through the system to the users email box. The list is built when users and e-mail administrators manually add trusted sources to the whitelist. Once built, the catch-rate for spam can be close to 100%, however, whitelists produce an inordinate number of false positives. It is virtually impossible to produce an exhaustive list of all possible legitimate e-mail senders because legitimate e-mail can come from any number of sources. To get around this difficulty, some organizations have instituted a challenge-response methodology. When an unknown sender sends an e-mail to a users account, the system automatically sends a challenge back to the sender. Some challenge-response systems require the sender to read and decipher an image containing letters and numbers. The image is designed to be unreadable by a machine, but easily recognizable by a human. Spammers would not spend the time required to go through a large number of challenge-response e-mails, so they drop the address and move on to those users who dont use such a system.Whitelists are only partially successful and impractical for many users. For example, problems can arise when users register for online newsletters, order products online or register for online services. If the user does not remember to add the new e-mail source to their whitelist, or if the domain or source is entered incorrectly, the communication will fail. Additionally, whitelists impose barriers to legitimate e-mail communication and are viewed by some as just plain rude.Whitelists are not widely used by e-mail users and administrators as a primary tool to fight spam because of the high number of false positives, and the difficulties in creating a comprehensive list of e-mail sources. Because whitelists are not widely used, spammers typically do not develop countermeasures. As with other spam fighting techniques, whitelists are most effective when used in conjunction with other anti-spam tools.

Bayesian Filters

Named after Thomas Bayes, an English mathematician, Bayesian Logic is used in decision making and inferential statistics. Bayesian Filers maintain a database of known spam and ham, or legitimate e-mail. Once the database is large enough, the system ranks the words according to the probability they will appear in a spam message. Words more likely to appear in spam are given a high score (between 51 and 100), and words likely to appear in legitimate e-mail are given a low score (between 1 and 50). For example, the words free and sex generally have values between 95 and 98, whereas the words emphasis or disadvantage may have a score between 1 and 4.Commonly used words such as the and that, and words new to the Bayesian filters are given a neutral score between 40 and 50 and would not be used in the systems algorithm. When the system receives an e-mail, it breaks the message down into tokens, or words with values assigned to them. The system utilizes the tokens with scores on the high and low end of the range and develops a score for the e-mail as a whole. If the e-mail has more spam tokens than ham tokens, the e-mail will have a high spam score. The e-mail administrator determines a threshold score the system uses to allow e-mail to pass through to users. Bayesian filters are effective at filtering spam and minimizing false positives. Because they adapt and learn based on user feedback, Bayesian Filers produce better results as they are used within an organization over time. Bayesian filters are not, however, foolproof. Spammers have learned which words Bayesian Filters consider spammy and have developed ways to insert non-spammy words into e-mails to lower the messages overall spam score. By adding in paragraphs of text from novels or news stories, spammers can dilute the effects of high-ranking words. Text insertion has also caused normally legitimate words that are found in novels or news stories to have an inflated spam score. This may potentially render Bayesian filters less effective over time.Another approach spammers use to fool Bayesian filters is to create less spammy e-mails. For example, a spammer may send an e-mail containing only the phrase, Heres the link. This approach can neutralize the spam score and entice users to click on a link to a Web site containing the spammers message. To block this type of spam, the filter would have to be designed to follow the link and scan the content of the Web site users are asked to visit. This type of filtering is not currently employed by Bayesian filters because it would be prohibitively expensive in terms of server resources and could potentially be used as a method of launching denial of service attacks against commercial servers.As with all single-method spam filtering methodologies, Bayesian filters are effective against certain techniques spammers use to fool spam filters, but are not a magic bullet to solving the spam problem. Bayesian filters are most effective when combined with other methods of spam detection.

The Solution

When used alone, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as like charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same spam eradication method in order to be effective.Working alone, each individual spam-blocking technique works with varying degrees of effectiveness and is susceptible to a certain number of false positives. Fortunately, the solution is already at hand. IronMail, the secure e-mail gateway appliance from CipherTrust, provides a highly accurate solution by correlating the results of single-detection techniques with its industry-leading correlation engine, the Spam Profiler. Learn more about stopping spam by requesting CipherTrusts free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way.The core of IronMails spam capabilities, the Spam Profiler analyzes, inspects and scores e-mail on over one thousand different message characteristics. Each method is weighed based on historical accuracy rates and analysis by CipherTrusts experienced research team. Optimizing the Spam Profiler requires precise calibration and testing thousands of combinations of values associated with various message characteristics. To automate this process, CipherTrust developed Genetic Optimization, an advanced analysis technique that replicates cutting-edge DNA matching models. Genetic Optimization identifies the best possible combination of values for all characteristics examined by the Spam Profiler and automatically tunes the IronMail appliance, reducing administrator intervention and assuring optimum protection against spam and spam-born threats.

Take The Next Step

Learn more about how IronMail can secure enterprise e-mail systems by visiting www.ciphertrust.com or requesting CipherTrusts free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way. This resource will provide the information you need to make an informed decision about eliminating spam and securing your e-mail systems.

And How to Stop Them

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of tools spammers use coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just dont work anymore. Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be.There are several widely-used methods for filtering spam, each of which can be defeated by spammers to some degree. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and the methods spammers use to defeat them is the basis of an effective, comprehensive anti-spam strategy.

Signature-based Filters

Signature-based filters examine the contents of known spam, usually derived from honey pots, or dummy e-mail addresses set up specifically to collect spam. Once a honey pot receives a spam message, the content is examined and given a unique identifier. The unique identifier is obtained by assigning a value to each character in the e-mail. Once all characters have been assigned a value, the values are totaled, creating the spams signature. The signature is added to a signature database and sent as a regular update to the e-mail services subscribers. The signature is compared to every e-mail coming in to the network and all matching messages are discarded as spam.The benefit of signature-based filters is that they rarely produce false-positives, or legitimate e-mail incorrectly identified as spam. The drawback of signature-based filters is that they are very easy to defeat. Because they are backward-looking, they only deal with spam that has already been sent. By the time the honey pot receives a spam message, the system assigns a signature, and the update is sent and installed on the subscribers network, the spammer has already sent millions of e-mails. A slight modification of the e-mail message will render the existing signature useless. Furthermore, spammers can easily evade signature-based filters by using special e-mail software that adds random strings of content to the subject line and body of the e-mail. Because the variable content alters the signature of each e-mail sent by the spammer, signature-based spam filters are unable to match the e-mail to known pieces of spam.Developers of signature-based spam filters have learned to identify the tell-tale signs of automated random character generation. But as is often the case, spammers remain a step ahead and have developed more sophisticated methods for inserting random content. As a result, most spam continues to fool signature-based filters.

Rule-based (Heuristic) Filtering

Rule-based filters scan e-mail content for predetermined words or phrases that may indicate a message is spam. For example, if an e-mail administrator includes the word sex on a companys rule-based list, any e-mail containing this word will be filtered.The major drawback of this approach is the difficulty in identifying keywords that are consistently indicative of spam. While spammers may frequently use the words sex and Viagra in spam e-mails, these words are also used in legitimate business correspondence, particularly in the healthcare industry. Additionally, spammers have learned to obfuscate suspect words by using spellings such as S*E*X, or VI a a GRR A. It is impossible to develop dictionaries that identify every possible misspelling of spammy keywords. Additionally, because filtering for certain keywords produces large numbers of false positives, many organizations have found they cannot afford to rely solely on rule-based filters to identify spam.

Blacklists

The goal of blacklisting is to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to crack-down on customers who send spam. A blacklisted ISP is blocked from sending e-mail to organizations. When an ISP is blacklisted, they are provided with a list of actions they must take in order to be removed from the blacklist. This controversial method blocks not just the spammers, but all of the ISPs customers. Blacklisting is generally considered an unfriendly approach to stopping spam because the users most affected by the blacklist are e-mail users who do not send spam. Many argue blacklisting actually damages the utility of e-mail more than it helps stop spam since the potential for blocking legitimate e-mail is so high.In addition to the ethical considerations, there are other problems with blacklists. Many blacklists are not updated frequently enough to maintain effectiveness. Some blacklist administrators are irresponsible in that they immediately block suspect servers without thoroughly investigating complaints or giving the ISP time to respond. Another downside is that blacklists are not accurate enough to catch all spam. Only about half of servers used by spammers, regardless of how diligent the blacklist administrator may be, are ever cataloged in a given blacklist.Blacklists are used because they can be partially effective against spammers who repeatedly use the same ISP or e-mail account to send spam. However, because spammers often change ISPs, re-route e-mail and hijack legitimate servers, the spammer is a moving target. Blacklist administrators are forced to constantly revise lists, and the lag-time between when a spammer begins using a given server and when the blacklist administrator is able to identify the new spam source and add it to the blacklist allows spammers to send hundreds of millions of e-mails. Spammers consider this constant state of flux a part of doing business and are constantly looking for new servers to send spam messages.Blacklists, therefore, have some utility in stopping known spammers. Because of their limitations, however, this data should only be used in conjunction with other sources to determine if a given message is spam.

Whitelists

Whitelists are databases of trusted e-mail sources. The list may contain specific e-mail addresses, IP addresses or trusted domains. E-mails received from a whitelisted source are allowed to pass through the system to the users email box. The list is built when users and e-mail administrators manually add trusted sources to the whitelist. Once built, the catch-rate for spam can be close to 100%, however, whitelists produce an inordinate number of false positives. It is virtually impossible to produce an exhaustive list of all possible legitimate e-mail senders because legitimate e-mail can come from any number of sources. To get around this difficulty, some organizations have instituted a challenge-response methodology. When an unknown sender sends an e-mail to a users account, the system automatically sends a challenge back to the sender. Some challenge-response systems require the sender to read and decipher an image containing letters and numbers. The image is designed to be unreadable by a machine, but easily recognizable by a human. Spammers would not spend the time required to go through a large number of challenge-response e-mails, so they drop the address and move on to those users who dont use such a system.Whitelists are only partially successful and impractical for many users. For example, problems can arise when users register for online newsletters, order products online or register for online services. If the user does not remember to add the new e-mail source to their whitelist, or if the domain or source is entered incorrectly, the communication will fail. Additionally, whitelists impose barriers to legitimate e-mail communication and are viewed by some as just plain rude.Whitelists are not widely used by e-mail users and administrators as a primary tool to fight spam because of the high number of false positives, and the difficulties in creating a comprehensive list of e-mail sources. Because whitelists are not widely used, spammers typically do not develop countermeasures. As with other spam fighting techniques, whitelists are most effective when used in conjunction with other anti-spam tools.

Bayesian Filters

Named after Thomas Bayes, an English mathematician, Bayesian Logic is used in decision making and inferential statistics. Bayesian Filers maintain a database of known spam and ham, or legitimate e-mail. Once the database is large enough, the system ranks the words according to the probability they will appear in a spam message. Words more likely to appear in spam are given a high score (between 51 and 100), and words likely to appear in legitimate e-mail are given a low score (between 1 and 50). For example, the words free and sex generally have values between 95 and 98, whereas the words emphasis or disadvantage may have a score between 1 and 4.Commonly used words such as the and that, and words new to the Bayesian filters are given a neutral score between 40 and 50 and would not be used in the systems algorithm. When the system receives an e-mail, it breaks the message down into tokens, or words with values assigned to them. The system utilizes the tokens with scores on the high and low end of the range and develops a score for the e-mail as a whole. If the e-mail has more spam tokens than ham tokens, the e-mail will have a high spam score. The e-mail administrator determines a threshold score the system uses to allow e-mail to pass through to users. Bayesian filters are effective at filtering spam and minimizing false positives. Because they adapt and learn based on user feedback, Bayesian Filers produce better results as they are used within an organization over time. Bayesian filters are not, however, foolproof. Spammers have learned which words Bayesian Filters consider spammy and have developed ways to insert non-spammy words into e-mails to lower the messages overall spam score. By adding in paragraphs of text from novels or news stories, spammers can dilute the effects of high-ranking words. Text insertion has also caused normally legitimate words that are found in novels or news stories to have an inflated spam score. This may potentially render Bayesian filters less effective over time.Another approach spammers use to fool Bayesian filters is to create less spammy e-mails. For example, a spammer may send an e-mail containing only the phrase, Heres the link. This approach can neutralize the spam score and entice users to click on a link to a Web site containing the spammers message. To block this type of spam, the filter would have to be designed to follow the link and scan the content of the Web site users are asked to visit. This type of filtering is not currently employed by Bayesian filters because it would be prohibitively expensive in terms of server resources and could potentially be used as a method of launching denial of service attacks against commercial servers.As with all single-method spam filtering methodologies, Bayesian filters are effective against certain techniques spammers use to fool spam filters, but are not a magic bullet to solving the spam problem. Bayesian filters are most effective when combined with other methods of spam detection.

The Solution

When used alone, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as like charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same spam eradication method in order to be effective.Working alone, each individual spam-blocking technique works with varying degrees of effectiveness and is susceptible to a certain number of false positives. Fortunately, the solution is already at hand. IronMail, the secure e-mail gateway appliance from CipherTrust, provides a highly accurate solution by correlating the results of single-detection techniques with its industry-leading correlation engine, the Spam Profiler. Learn more about stopping spam by requesting CipherTrusts free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way.The core of IronMails spam capabilities, the Spam Profiler analyzes, inspects and scores e-mail on over one thousand different message characteristics. Each method is weighed based on historical accuracy rates and analysis by CipherTrusts experienced research team. Optimizing the Spam Profiler requires precise calibration and testing thousands of combinations of values associated with various message characteristics. To automate this process, CipherTrust developed Genetic Optimization, an advanced analysis technique that replicates cutting-edge DNA matching models. Genetic Optimization identifies the best possible combination of values for all characteristics examined by the Spam Profiler and automatically tunes the IronMail appliance, reducing administrator intervention and assuring optimum protection against spam and spam-born threats.

Take The Next Step

Learn more about how IronMail can secure enterprise e-mail systems by visiting www.ciphertrust.com or requesting CipherTrusts free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way. This resource will provide the information you need to make an informed decision about eliminating spam and securing your e-mail systems.

CipherTrust is the leader in anti-spam and email security. Learn more by downloading our free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way or by visiting www.ciphertrust.com.

3 Criteria for Controlling Enterprise Spam

Trust

Or: T*ake Y O U R email ba & ack + From the Sp@mmers! 0400constrictor bubble snake informational

If you have a business, then you have a spam problem. The efficiencies of communicating through e-mail not only benefit organizations like yours; they also benefit the spammers who profit off of sending pernicious e-mails to millions of people every day. In fact, spam is so cost-effective that it costs less than $0.0004 to send a single spam. Thats 25 emails for just one penny!

The Spam Problem

According to Meta Group, Companies are routinely getting 20,000 daily spam messages, putting significant burden (e.g. bandwidth and storage consumption) on mail relays, SMTP gateways, and internal mail servers. To make matters worse, companies have invested millions of dollars in spam-fighting technologies that have been rendered obsolete within months of purchase by the innovation of spammers who have found ways to thwart new technologies along the way. Examples of spammer ingenuity abound. As recently as mid-2003 Bayesian logic was touted as the immutable defense against spam, but by early 2004, most spam had evolved to be Bayesian-proof. There are even programs available for download on the internet that will test your spam for you before you send it to make sure it will get past the spam filters. Clearly, the solution is to partner with a company that specializes in fighting spam. Who you choose is a crucial step because you dont want your solution to become obsolete within a few months, and you certainly dont want to create a problem with false positives.

Criteria 1 Diversity The Cocktail Approach to Filtering Spam

The first step in addressing spam is identifying it. But, unlike viruses, spam identification is not straightforward. There is no smoking gun that clearly indicates to a detection system that a message is a spam. For instance, the common approach of looking for keywords such as Viagra or Free, misses many spams. The method of blocking known spammer IP addresses lags and does nothing to deter determined spammers. Any effective spam detection system must employ multiple techniques for identifying and measuring the probability that a message is spam including the newer heuristic analysis and real-time collaborative spam filtering tools.

Criteria 2 Flexibility Different Strokes for Different Folks

A fundamental issue with spam is defining what exactly constitutes spam. One person may consider any bulk e-mail spam, while another highly values the opt-in bulk e-mails they receive. Different organizations may have policies with very different definitions of what is allowed. A good anti-spam solution must allow administrators to enforce these different rules and even allow them to apply different rules to different users, preferably by integrating with policy tools and user databases such as LDAP directories. It should be able to support differing thresholds for different spam results and adjustable confidence values in spam detection techniques. It should allow administrators to customize responses for inbound or outbound traffic. Rules should allow re-labeling, blocking and quarantining of messages, as well as a test mode where rules are tried without impacting mail flow. Ideally, your solution will include an integrated policy manager, which enforces corporate policy across the entire e-mail system, and allows different rule sets for different users and groups.

Criteria 3 Expertise Know Thy Enemy

Spammers are constantly improving their methods, particularly as corporations have finally begun to fight back. Vendors must be able to develop and deploy policies, signatures, keywords and values to corporations using their solution. They should be developed based on data from a distributed network of customers and other Internet detection points by a team of spam blocking experts. Only by constant improvement can any solution continue to be responsive to spammers even in the face of new threats.

Or: T*ake Y O U R email ba & ack + From the Sp@mmers! 0400constrictor bubble snake informational

If you have a business, then you have a spam problem. The efficiencies of communicating through e-mail not only benefit organizations like yours; they also benefit the spammers who profit off of sending pernicious e-mails to millions of people every day. In fact, spam is so cost-effective that it costs less than $0.0004 to send a single spam. Thats 25 emails for just one penny!

The Spam Problem

According to Meta Group, Companies are routinely getting 20,000 daily spam messages, putting significant burden (e.g. bandwidth and storage consumption) on mail relays, SMTP gateways, and internal mail servers. To make matters worse, companies have invested millions of dollars in spam-fighting technologies that have been rendered obsolete within months of purchase by the innovation of spammers who have found ways to thwart new technologies along the way. Examples of spammer ingenuity abound. As recently as mid-2003 Bayesian logic was touted as the immutable defense against spam, but by early 2004, most spam had evolved to be Bayesian-proof. There are even programs available for download on the internet that will test your spam for you before you send it to make sure it will get past the spam filters. Clearly, the solution is to partner with a company that specializes in fighting spam. Who you choose is a crucial step because you dont want your solution to become obsolete within a few months, and you certainly dont want to create a problem with false positives.

Criteria 1 Diversity The Cocktail Approach to Filtering Spam

The first step in addressing spam is identifying it. But, unlike viruses, spam identification is not straightforward. There is no smoking gun that clearly indicates to a detection system that a message is a spam. For instance, the common approach of looking for keywords such as Viagra or Free, misses many spams. The method of blocking known spammer IP addresses lags and does nothing to deter determined spammers. Any effective spam detection system must employ multiple techniques for identifying and measuring the probability that a message is spam including the newer heuristic analysis and real-time collaborative spam filtering tools.

Criteria 2 Flexibility Different Strokes for Different Folks

A fundamental issue with spam is defining what exactly constitutes spam. One person may consider any bulk e-mail spam, while another highly values the opt-in bulk e-mails they receive. Different organizations may have policies with very different definitions of what is allowed. A good anti-spam solution must allow administrators to enforce these different rules and even allow them to apply different rules to different users, preferably by integrating with policy tools and user databases such as LDAP directories. It should be able to support differing thresholds for different spam results and adjustable confidence values in spam detection techniques. It should allow administrators to customize responses for inbound or outbound traffic. Rules should allow re-labeling, blocking and quarantining of messages, as well as a test mode where rules are tried without impacting mail flow. Ideally, your solution will include an integrated policy manager, which enforces corporate policy across the entire e-mail system, and allows different rule sets for different users and groups.

Criteria 3 Expertise Know Thy Enemy

Spammers are constantly improving their methods, particularly as corporations have finally begun to fight back. Vendors must be able to develop and deploy policies, signatures, keywords and values to corporations using their solution. They should be developed based on data from a distributed network of customers and other Internet detection points by a team of spam blocking experts. Only by constant improvement can any solution continue to be responsive to spammers even in the face of new threats.

CipherTrust is the leader in anti-spam and email security. Learn more by downloading our free whitepaper, Securing the E-mail Boundary: An overview of IronMail or by visiting www.ciphertrust.com.

Maximizing Email Security ROI: Stop Spam and Save!

Trust

This is the first of a five-part series on Maximizing Email Security ROI

In the realm of email security threats, the costs of spam are relatively easy to recognize. Although most organizations rarely, if ever, take the time to calculate their spam costs, they can easily account for the losses caused by spam with regards to employee productivity, consumption of IT resources and help desk costs. Harder to measure are the less obvious, and potentially catastrophic, costs incurred through legal liabilities and damage to an organizations reputation that can be caused by an ineffective spam filtering technology.Spam is much more than a nuisanceit costs corporations in both money and human resources. Understanding your exposure and taking steps to mitigate the problem not only saves capital, it can also help lower your exposure to costly litigation and damage to your companys well earned reputation.

Lost Productivity

Each spam message that makes its way past your organizations gateway costs the company money. The actual cost of each individual message is miniscule, but with an estimated 80% of all e-mail messages qualifying as spam, the constant flood of unwanted messages is of grave concern.How much time do employees spend dealing with spam, and how much does it cost you? Ferris Group estimates that the average employee spends 30 minutes each day dealing with spam, equating to 115 hours per employee, per year. Based on interviews with 82 Fortune 500 companies, Nucleus Research claims the average annual cost per employee of dealing with spam is now $1,934. While your costs will vary, it is safe to assume that if you dont have an effective spam filter, you are wasting thousands of dollars per employee per year to manage spam.

IT Resources Consumed

The costs of spam dont stop with the employee. According to CIO Magazine, costs include additional e-mail and networking equipment to maintain e-mail service quality, bandwidth costs from unwanted spam data across Internet links, and the staff costs to maintain and administer these additional loads.

Help Desk Cost

The ongoing barrage of spam generates increased calls to corporate help desks due to complaints and technical problems related to bad files, missing information, messages deleted by mistake and virus outbreaks. When a message is erroneously deleted as spam, Help Desk personnel are generally required to search through system backups to retrieve the missing email. Viruses and worms, frequently delivered via spam messages, also wreak havoc on the Help Desk as users call in for help restoring files and updating signatures. In addition, complaints from angry users tie up resources that could be spent on other issues.

Liability

Spam can force organizations to deal with lawsuits filed by employees for creating a hostile working environment. Spam containing pornography, insulting content or fraudulent phishing schemes can expose organizations that have not taken reasonable steps to combat such attacks. Employees unfamiliar with company policies may forward such content to fellow employees or even contacts outside the company, resulting in sexual harassment or countless other liability lawsuits.Each organizations exposure to such lawsuits varies, but large awards to the plaintiff are not uncommon when they do occur. In fact, the October 2002 issue of TechRepublic states that the average jury award against employers in [sexual harassment lawsuits] is $250,000. That amount often triples when attorney fees and litigation costs are added to the mix.

Reputation Cost

The cost of spam to a business reputation is equally difficult to define. The cost is nothing until something catastrophiclike a phishing attackhappens. The average individual victim of identity theft loses about $500, and businesses lose an average of $4,800. By allowing phishing and spoofing attacks into your business network, your organization is exposing itself, its brand and its employees to enormous risk. If your organizations trademarks or brand are used in phishing attacks, the cost to your companys brand is estimated at between $100,000 and $150,000.

What You Can Do Now To Stop the Spam

Knowing the risks involved in spam is the first step to solving the problem. CipherTrusts FREE whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way describes the issues that put your email system at risk. Download it today to learn more about how you can stop spam, secure your email system, and protect your company and employees from email-borne threats.Part II of this series will describe the issues involved in determining ROI for anti-virus software and services as they apply to email.

This is the first of a five-part series on Maximizing Email Security ROI

In the realm of email security threats, the costs of spam are relatively easy to recognize. Although most organizations rarely, if ever, take the time to calculate their spam costs, they can easily account for the losses caused by spam with regards to employee productivity, consumption of IT resources and help desk costs. Harder to measure are the less obvious, and potentially catastrophic, costs incurred through legal liabilities and damage to an organizations reputation that can be caused by an ineffective spam filtering technology.Spam is much more than a nuisanceit costs corporations in both money and human resources. Understanding your exposure and taking steps to mitigate the problem not only saves capital, it can also help lower your exposure to costly litigation and damage to your companys well earned reputation.

Lost Productivity

Each spam message that makes its way past your organizations gateway costs the company money. The actual cost of each individual message is miniscule, but with an estimated 80% of all e-mail messages qualifying as spam, the constant flood of unwanted messages is of grave concern.How much time do employees spend dealing with spam, and how much does it cost you? Ferris Group estimates that the average employee spends 30 minutes each day dealing with spam, equating to 115 hours per employee, per year. Based on interviews with 82 Fortune 500 companies, Nucleus Research claims the average annual cost per employee of dealing with spam is now $1,934. While your costs will vary, it is safe to assume that if you dont have an effective spam filter, you are wasting thousands of dollars per employee per year to manage spam.

IT Resources Consumed

The costs of spam dont stop with the employee. According to CIO Magazine, costs include additional e-mail and networking equipment to maintain e-mail service quality, bandwidth costs from unwanted spam data across Internet links, and the staff costs to maintain and administer these additional loads.

Help Desk Cost

The ongoing barrage of spam generates increased calls to corporate help desks due to complaints and technical problems related to bad files, missing information, messages deleted by mistake and virus outbreaks. When a message is erroneously deleted as spam, Help Desk personnel are generally required to search through system backups to retrieve the missing email. Viruses and worms, frequently delivered via spam messages, also wreak havoc on the Help Desk as users call in for help restoring files and updating signatures. In addition, complaints from angry users tie up resources that could be spent on other issues.

Liability

Spam can force organizations to deal with lawsuits filed by employees for creating a hostile working environment. Spam containing pornography, insulting content or fraudulent phishing schemes can expose organizations that have not taken reasonable steps to combat such attacks. Employees unfamiliar with company policies may forward such content to fellow employees or even contacts outside the company, resulting in sexual harassment or countless other liability lawsuits.Each organizations exposure to such lawsuits varies, but large awards to the plaintiff are not uncommon when they do occur. In fact, the October 2002 issue of TechRepublic states that the average jury award against employers in [sexual harassment lawsuits] is $250,000. That amount often triples when attorney fees and litigation costs are added to the mix.

Reputation Cost

The cost of spam to a business reputation is equally difficult to define. The cost is nothing until something catastrophiclike a phishing attackhappens. The average individual victim of identity theft loses about $500, and businesses lose an average of $4,800. By allowing phishing and spoofing attacks into your business network, your organization is exposing itself, its brand and its employees to enormous risk. If your organizations trademarks or brand are used in phishing attacks, the cost to your companys brand is estimated at between $100,000 and $150,000.

What You Can Do Now To Stop the Spam

Knowing the risks involved in spam is the first step to solving the problem. CipherTrusts FREE whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way describes the issues that put your email system at risk. Download it today to learn more about how you can stop spam, secure your email system, and protect your company and employees from email-borne threats.Part II of this series will describe the issues involved in determining ROI for anti-virus software and services as they apply to email.

CipherTrust is the leader in anti-spam and email security. Learn more by downloading our free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way or by visiting www.ciphertrust.com.

Keep Spam Mail Away From You

In the last couple of years, spam mail has become perhaps the most terrible headache of email users on the internet. Depending on how popular your mail service provider is and how old your email account is, you may be receiving every day ten to several hundred unwanted emails about advertisements, propaganda, news and a bunch of other topics that you did not and most probably will never ask for in the future. Mail service providers have developed some protection systems to reduce this discomfort their customers are experiencing, such as filters, but sometimes spam attacks can even get past these barriers. Even if these barriers are effective, all those spam mails produce annoying heaps in the junk mail folders just to take up your mail account's precious storage space.

In the last couple of years, spam mail has become perhaps the most terrible headache of email users on the internet. Depending on how popular your mail service provider is and how old your email account is, you may be receiving every day ten to several hundred unwanted emails about advertisements, propaganda, news and a bunch of other topics that you did not and most probably will never ask for in the future. Mail service providers have developed some protection systems to reduce this discomfort their customers are experiencing, such as filters, but sometimes spam attacks can even get past these barriers. Even if these barriers are effective, all those spam mails produce annoying heaps in the junk mail folders just to take up your mail account's precious storage space.

As mail services offering large storage spaces are becoming widespread this year, people are moving to these new accounts and creating their new addresses. Unfortunately, it hasn't been a couple of months since the most famous of these email services, Gmail, has started giving out accounts by invitations and the word has already gotten around that spam attacks have discovered these new fresh targets as well. Although the number of these attacks is low at the moment, it will surely increase and may reach a threat-posing amount in a short period of time.

No matter how well the spam filters are, us email users cannot be fully protected from spam today, but we can still take some precautions to evade these attacks, while registering for new accounts and after. Some crucial tips to avoid spam may be listed as follows:

1. While you're creating an account, do not choose a short username. You will receive spam mail due to dictionary attacks. For example, think of the username "angel". Each address starting with the word "angel" will receive a spam mail:
angel@
angels@
angelic@
angelica@
angelina@
...

2. Since usernames that are to be attacked are generated from the first few letters, it's better to start the username with letter or number series without a meaning:
Example:
ytgkj.username@ or 72149.username@

3. It's always better to use special characters in the user name if they are allowed.
Example:
user-name@, user_name@ or user.name@

4. If you are sure that it's a spam mail, do NOT click the links like "Click to unsubscribe, remove your address from the list" and do NOT reply them with emails having subjects like "Remove", "Unsubscribe" etc. These will verify your email address and will only make your address receive more of them.

5. Some sites may want email addresses for registration. These are potential spam dangers. If you have to use an email address for registration, always use a temporary address. Sites like "Mailinator.com" create temporary mail addresses for a short period of time and you are done with these addresses once you are finished with registration.
If you also have to receive email after you have registered, in other words, when you are filling out forms on the internet, do not use the mail account that you give your friends and relations. Instead, get yourself a free webmail (hotmail, yahoo, etc.) and use that always.

6. Never write your e-mail on the web. Some robots are scanning the web for email adresses. If you need to give your address, write it like :
myaccount "AT" myprovider "Dot" com
instead of 'myaccount@myprovider.com' .

7. When you are sending emails to multiple recipients, always use BCC. Why? If you type the addresses in the CC or To line, all the recipient addresses appear in the mail content when those emails are forwarded. If the forwarded mails reach the spam senders in some way, all these addresses are added to their spam lists.

8. If your webmail provides a junk/bulk mail filter service, make sure that this service is activated. However, all the mail coming into this folder might not be spam. Because the mass emails sent by some sites you register or mail groups that you are a member of are sent by script-based ways, they may be considered as spam and they make their way into these folders. It's good to check this folder once in a while.

9. Finally, make sure that you view the Message Headers fully. How do you do this? For example in Gmail, click "More options > Show original" besides the address received from and in Hotmail, click "Options > Message display settings > Message header > Full". This will allow you to see useful information about the sender of the spam mail you received.
If you are sure that it's a spam mail, copy the header information as it is and report it to spamcop.com. From the same web address, you can send the mail service provider the information about the spam mail.

Please do not forget that these are only precautions that you can take against spam individually and will not stop spam completely, but at least it will help in keeping spam away from you.

Webmaster of Extreme Gmail Forums - http://www.email-x.net

Block Spam with An Easy Behavioral Change

E-mails now have a connection back to their servers. I will leave the technical aspects out of this article. Instead, I will walk you through how information from your computer is getting back to them.

E-mails now have a connection back to their servers. I will leave the technical aspects out of this article. Instead, I will walk you through how information from your computer is getting back to them.

You have probably experienced this already, an e-mail lands in your box with many symbols in the subject line created with the Shift Key plus a Number Key. This is the most common one. For example, it may look like this: &*)(*&^%$! Except the length of the symbols are longer.

When you click on it to delete it, any further action, including the deletion of the e-mail seems to go into la-la land. In other words, you can do anything else. This may last up to a minute or two depending on your computer speed. You have just been pinged and information is going back to their server saying there is a live connection.

In addition, because the symbols change all the time, its difficult to block them unless you use a program like Spam Arrest.

Here is an easy way and excellent way to protect from this and all you have to do is change the way you dial in and out.

If you have a DSL line or any other type Internet connection that is open all the time. Control how frequently you allow e-mails to upload into your system. If you use Outlook, you go into Tools, Options, select the Mail Delivery tab and change "check messages every" 30, 60 or 90 minutes. This also helps on time management if e-mails are eating up too much of your time.

Next, after all your e-mails are uploaded into your software, whether you set the time management feature above, close off the Internet connection. It will not stop the lost 30 or 60 seconds these e-mail lock up your computer but you have cut off any possible pinging.

After you close the Internet connection, read, review and delete the e-mails. After completing this, you can go ahead and reopen the Internet connection, and send your responses.

If you have a dial-up connection, you can do this same method, except you will ignore the Mail Delivery option mentioned earlier.

This actually isn't just happening on e-mails with these symbols. There are other programmed e-mails dumping cookies on your computer. I will not address how to remove cookies in this article. To find out how your software can remove your cookies use F1 (help) on your keypad in your e-mail software to find the answer before. WindowsXP also has additional information for removing cookies under: Start, Help and Support.

Catherine Franz, a eight-year Certified Professional Coach,
Graduate of Coach University, Mastery University, editor of
three ezines, columnist, author of thousands of articles
website: http://www.abundancecenter.com
blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

Demand for Spam? It exists

Do you like spam? No, I'm not kidding. Everybody knows what spam is, almost everybody seems to have learned by heart simple advice like "do not click ..." "do not respond..." , "do not buy..." but
On March 23, 2005 Mirapoint and the Radicati Group, a consulting and market research firm, released preliminary results of their end-user survey on email hygiene. "This preliminary data is surprising and somewhat shocking to us," said Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group.
The survey shows that some end users haven't learned the lesson and still make the same blunders.

Blunder 1 -- clicking on embedded links within spam (not including the unsubscribe link) -- 31% of respondents have done it at least once. The most dangerous mistake.
Clicking on any embedded links in spam messages helps spammers determine ‘live' email accounts, which means more spam. What's worse, users can pick viruses, Trojans or other malicious code--just by clicking on embedded links. It may cause various problems, including loss of confidential information--identity theft, and loss of money from bank accounts as a result.

Users shouldn't forget about such threat as phishing. Not long ago, on February. 15, 2005, it was the Radicati Group that pointed out --fraud and phishing types of email are one of the fastest growing segments of spam. In the first quarter of 2005 the Radicati Group expects fraudulent emails to reach 8% of all spam.

Blunder 2 -- trying to unsubscribe to spam using the ‘unsubscribe' link in the email -- 18% of respondents
Some users are naive enough to think that spammers really won't send any junk mail to their addresses if they tell them not to. Haven't they heard that spammers use the unsubscribe link solely to identify active email accounts. When individual email addresses or entire domains are found to be active, they are doomed to flood of spam.

Blunder 3 -- What's more: Over 10% of respondents have purchased products advertised in spam. Sending out huge volumes of spam is very cheap, so let's face it--spam is an effective means of advertising. Spam is booming, and these 10% users who actually bought anything advertised by spam, are partly to blame for it.

The consequences can be very serious when such a user is at work. Online criminals find more and more ways of stealing valuable information, some of these techniques include spam. Spam filters won't solve the whole problem; much still depends on end users. Marcel Nienhuis, analyst from the Radicati Group, was absolutely right when said " no technology in the world can protect an organisation if users exercise bad email behaviour."
On March 23, 2005 Mirapoint and the Radicati Group, a consulting and market research firm, released preliminary results of their end-user survey on email hygiene. "This preliminary data is surprising and somewhat shocking to us," said Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group.
The survey shows that some end users haven't learned the lesson and still make the same blunders.

Blunder 1 -- clicking on embedded links within spam (not including the unsubscribe link) -- 31% of respondents have done it at least once. The most dangerous mistake.
Clicking on any embedded links in spam messages helps spammers determine ‘live' email accounts, which means more spam. What's worse, users can pick viruses, Trojans or other malicious code--just by clicking on embedded links. It may cause various problems, including loss of confidential information--identity theft, and loss of money from bank accounts as a result.

Users shouldn't forget about such threat as phishing. Not long ago, on February. 15, 2005, it was the Radicati Group that pointed out --fraud and phishing types of email are one of the fastest growing segments of spam. In the first quarter of 2005 the Radicati Group expects fraudulent emails to reach 8% of all spam.

Blunder 2 -- trying to unsubscribe to spam using the ‘unsubscribe' link in the email -- 18% of respondents
Some users are naive enough to think that spammers really won't send any junk mail to their addresses if they tell them not to. Haven't they heard that spammers use the unsubscribe link solely to identify active email accounts. When individual email addresses or entire domains are found to be active, they are doomed to flood of spam.

Blunder 3 -- What's more: Over 10% of respondents have purchased products advertised in spam. Sending out huge volumes of spam is very cheap, so let's face it--spam is an effective means of advertising. Spam is booming, and these 10% users who actually bought anything advertised by spam, are partly to blame for it.

The consequences can be very serious when such a user is at work. Online criminals find more and more ways of stealing valuable information, some of these techniques include spam. Spam filters won't solve the whole problem; much still depends on end users. Marcel Nienhuis, analyst from the Radicati Group, was absolutely right when said " no technology in the world can protect an organisation if users exercise bad email behaviour."

Alexandra Gamanenko currently works at Raytown Corporation, LLC—an independent software developing company. This company provides software capable of disabling information-stealing modules, which can be hidden inside spyware as well as viruses, worms and Trojans.
Learn more -- visit the company's website
www.anti-keyloggers.com

What SPAM Means:

Darren Miller

Has anyone else noticed the sudden blast of unsolicited e-mail (spam) loaded with url's for the unsuspecting and curious Internet surfer to click on?

Has anyone else noticed the sudden blast of unsolicited e-mail (spam) loaded with url's for the unsuspecting and curious Internet surfer to click on?

What's even better, the bulk of this SPAM is in a foreign language. I was at a neighborhood party this weekend and you can't imagine the number of people who asked me for assistance with this. They have no idea what to do.

The sad fact is there are a lot of Stupid People who have nothing better to do and can't seem to find a better way of making a buck than Annoying Me and everyone else subject to their stupidity with spam. I guess that's a little harsh. Not really.

How Does The Average Person Deal With This

I wrote in a previous article how bad a feel for the average person having to deal with such things. It is increasingly becoming a nightmare for all to deal with. For the technical among us, it's not as bad given that we deal with such things on a technical level almost everyday.

Given this current flood of SPAM I thought I would post an article I wrote quite some time ago. It's a short article, and may be old news for some, but I can tell you that many people still don't follow the basic's when dealing with SPAM.

How You May Be Helping Spammers

I can't imagine that anyone with an e-mail address has not received unsolicited e-mail or spam in one form or another. What do you do when you receive these types of e-mails. Do you delete them right away, respond to them informing the sender you do not wish to receive them, or forward them to a friend whom you think might be interested in the information?

When the Internet as we know it was very young and most unsolicited e-mails where either by accident or the result of opt-in subscriptions, you could respond with the word "unsubscribe" in the reply subject and your name was taken off the list. That quickly changed once people found out how powerful a marketing tool e-mail was. Now, most of the time you respond to unsolicited e-mails you are letting the sender know that your e-mail address is active or alive. Instead of being taken off the list you are targeted more aggressively. The sender of the e-mail may also sell your e-mail address to other e-marketers, substantially increasing the number of unsolicited e-mails your receive.

WHow Do Spammers Get My E-mail Address

Well, there are quite a few ways, but one of the ways spammers get hold of your e-mail address is literally by guessing. For instance, say your e-mail address is part of the domain "-notrealdomain-.com", and your e-mail address is "me@-notrealdomain-.com", the spammers have programs that will generate thousands of combinations of names / domains i.e. "me@-notrealdomain-.com", "you@-notrealdomain-.com", "them@-notrealdomain-.com" hoping that somewhere along the line the target e-mail address exists. It's really not difficult to do, since a computer can do this over and over again. If you receive one of these e-mails and reply to it, you have just informed the sender that they did indeed find a live address. It's all downhill from there.

Spoofing E-mail Addresses

Another interesting tactic is to send someone an e-mail and make it appear as if it came from your address. Have you ever received an e-mail from someone you don't know and don't have in you contact list asking you to stop sending them unsolicited e-mails? Many people experience this problem. Basically, the spammer made the recipient of the spam think you sent it to them. This is called e-mail spoofing and is relatively easy to do. The spammers use mail servers that allow something called "mail relay." This allows them to send e-mails from any source address (even yours) to any target address.

Conclusion

A few things to keep in mind when dealing with unsolicited e-mails and spam:

If you are starting to receive SPAM in alternate languages, check your e-mail client for the ability to filter / block SPAM by specifying language types.

If you only speak English, and don't expect to receive e-mail in German, then block it;

If your SPAM filter downloads data from your vendor for known SPAM sites make sure to perform and schedule the download to happen frequently;

If you receive e-mail or spam from someone you don't know, do not respond to it, just delete it;

If someone informs you that they are receiving spam from your e-mail address, inform them that it was not sent by you and most likely came from a spammer who spoofed your address. Tell them to just delete it;

Never give out your e-mail address unless you are sure the site or organization will be responsible for it's privacy;

If you are going to sign up for something like a news article or other information, read their privacy statement, agreement, and disclaimer before doing so; And

Review the entire privacy statement to make sure there are no check boxes or radio buttons on by default. You never know what you are agreeing to.

These are just a few of the things you can do to help prevent SPAM from becoming a huge burden. You will most likely not be able to prevent all SPAM from getting to your inbox, but you sure can decrease the number.

Darren Miller is an Information Security Consultant with over sixteen years experience. He has written many technology & security articles, some of which have been published in nationally circulated magazines & periodicals. Darren is a staff writer for www.defendingthenet.com

How To Stop Unwanted Email Spam

You can stop unwanted email spam, you can choose to reduce spam email or you can do nothing and continue to be annoyed. Those are your only choices because spam email is not likely to go away.

You can stop unwanted email spam, you can choose to reduce spam email or you can do nothing and continue to be annoyed. Those are your only choices because spam email is not likely to go away.

Every single one of us would love to stop unwanted emails but only a very small percentage of people do anything except complain about spam.

You might remember a couple of years ago they passed a new federal spam law that was supposed to eliminate spam email. So why is spam still around and why is it so difficult to get rid of it?

Email spammers buy lists of email addresses from list brokers, who compile their lists by harvesting email addresses from the Internet. Then they send millions of unwanted email messages to these email addresses with one click of a mouse.

Email spammers make huge amounts of money from these lists and that's why they do it. These email spammers are breaking the federal spam law, The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, in every way possible.

This federal spam law, which became effective January 1, 2004, is next to impossible to enforce. Email spammers make so much money they can afford to outsmart The Federal Trade Commission with sophisticated technology.

Now that you know the origin of spam email and why email spammers are sending this junk you realize that spam is not likely to ever go away. But that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. Here are a couple of ways to significantly reduce spam that won't cost you a cent.

Don't display your email address in newsgroup postings, chat rooms or in an online service's membership directory. Sometimes email spammers use these sources to harvest email addresses.

Another thing you can do is create two email addresses with one for personal messages and the other for public use, such as in newsgroups or chat rooms.

You can also create an account at a disposable or free email address service. You can then have those emails forwarded to your permanent email address. If the disposable address starts to receive spam, you can turn if off without affecting the permanent address.

You should also create a unique email address because email spammers often use dictionary attacks to sort through possible name combinations at some Internet Service Providers. A common name, like johndoe or thesmiths may get more spam than a unique name like fx721OMe9.

Check your email account to see if it provides a tool to filter out potential spam or a way to channel spam into a bulk email folder. When you're choosing an Internet Service Provider consider what email options they offer.

If you want to end your headaches, you can stop unwanted email spam altogether. All it takes is installing an Internet spam filter. Most are reasonably priced between $25 and $40 depending on where you get it.

Once you install an Internet spam filter you'll wonder why it took you so long because it takes all of the frustration away from your email.

A good Internet spam filter will completely eliminate spam email and that lets you take back control of your Internet message Inbox. You'll have to find something else to get annoyed about because a good Internet spam filter will block 100% of unwanted spam.

Internet spam filters stop unwanted email forever, and after all, isn't that the idea?

Copyright 2005 Spyware Information.com All Rights Reserved.

This article is provided by http://www.spyware-information.com
We offer you the safest, most effective and easy-to-use Internet spam filter available, blocking 100% of unwanted spam at
http://www.spyware-information.com/anti-spam-filter.html

A new release of Spam Blocker from Softinform Version 2.1Soft

A new release of Spam Blocker from Softinform Version 2.1

One of the major problems in the Internet is nothing more nor less than unwanted advertising letters, also known as "spam" - wasted incoming megabytes of information. The mail server filters block only a fraction of proposals to "increase" or "relax". The mighty "authorization" protection is, first of all, expensive (let's not forget the monthly fee), and second of all, it is not very convenient for the people on your contact list (they will have to go through a long and humdrum "access" process). If you want to rid your mail box of "spam", you need a comprehensive anti-ad "shield" that will save the money you spend on traffic by downloading bulky mail, as well as the time you spend on viewing and deleting useless emails.

The new version of Spam Blocker 2.1 delivered by the SoftInform company provides maximum efficient protection for user computer (user mailbox in particular) from torrents of "spam". This is due to the fact that all correspondence is analyzed before it is downloaded from the mail server. The application checks the mail and retrieves the headings of all letters pending in the user mailbox (email addresses, sender names, letter subjects, etc.).
The new release of "remote" ad blocker features a substantially tuned up interface. The added nice-to-haves include automatic and manual mail check buttons and a visualized process of receiving mail (an animated icon in the system tray and a tool tip with the total number of letters and the number of letters blocked by the application). The main alterations, however, concerned the "technical" facet of the application. Spam Blocker 2.1 is sported as a self-learning application. The new version of the spam-filter automatically registers sender names and servers (domain addresses) in the black (with letters marked as spam) and white (correct) lists.

By using various settings of Spam Blocker 2.1 you can fine-adjust the application to suit your needs. Various modes for checking messages (automatic and manual), support of an unlimited number of accounts, checking the mail box at set intervals (e.g., every five minutes) or at user's will, updating system lists, flexible rule settings and lists editing ability make Spam Blocker 2.1 a convenient and irreplaceable tool for blocking "spam".

Sick and tired of endless "spam"? Registering new ("clean") mail boxes over and over again? Every day dozens of letters for you and thousands for your company burning up megabytes of traffic that is by no means free? All it takes is to install Spam Blocker 2.1.
And watch annoying and useless e-mail advertising disappear.

You can download the trail version of Spam Blocker from:
http://spam-blocker.adscleaner.com/download/spamblocker.exe
You will find more information on the official site: http://spam-blocker.adscleaner.com
If you have any questions, please write to: max@offliner.com, Max Maglias, PR-manager at SoftInform.

 

Can one really get through those SPAM filters?

The e-mail marketing scenario has certainly changed over the past
year or so (the most significant changes being the increase in
e-mail blocking and filtering). These changes have resulted in
updates to e-mail marketing best practices that all legitimate
e-mail marketers should follow. The difference is that some of
these practices are now required by law. An innumerable amount
of SPAM complaints have forced the law to enforce certain
norms that should be complied to so as to keep your business
out of disputes.
Hence, there are certain precautions which are recommended to
keep your marketing campaigns unblocked and on the other hand
law friendly.

There are a couple of questions which need to be answered before
you press that send button:

Are you using a good permission policy?
Make sure you have a preexisting business relationship and/or
affirmative consent i.e. the recipient of your e-mail has made
a purchase, requested information, responded to a questionnaire
or a survey, or had off-line contact with you and that he/she
has been clearly and fully notified of the collection and use
of his/her e-mail address and has consented prior to such
collection and use.

Now, coming to the "From" and "Subject" part of the e-mail:

Does your "From" line include your company name or brand?
Is your "Subject" line the right length? (5-8 words, 40
characters including spaces)
Does your "Subject" line describe a specific benefit?
Does your "Subject" line include your brand?
Does your "Subject" line create a sense of urgency?

After implementing the above, the body of the e-mail comes into
action:
Mailing to a targeted audience eliminates the chances of being
filtered in the future. Is your e-mail personalized with the
recipient's first name, last name or both, if appropriate?
With respect to the above, it should also be kept in mind that
the consent has been taken to collect the recepient's details.

According to the law, all the e-mail campaigns should include a
way for recipients to unsubscribe or opt-out. This can be in the
form of a link or instructions provided anywhere in the e-mail
And the most important of all, unsubscribe requests must be
handled within 10 days of the request. Apart from this, the law
also requires you to include your physical address in the e-mail
campaign.
Follow these and you are a legitimate business in the the e-mail
arena.
Remember, when your answer is "yes" to these questions, you are
ready to hit the send button and maximize your success.

For more information on legitimate online marketing practices,
visit www.lead-solutions.com.

Anubhav Sinha is the webmaster and creator of lead-solutions.com which is a reknowned newsletter in the field of internet marketing and advertising.

 

I Think I've Become A Spam Addict

I THINK I'VE BECOME A SPAM ADDICT

I recently wrote an article, "5 Reasons Why You Should Post
A Free Classified Ad" and have received a lot of positive
feedback about the article but nobody said anything nice
about the spamsters.

I tried to imagine what the Internet would be like without
spam and concluded my life would be negatively impacted by
it's absence.

Most of the spam I get is funny. Ridiculous claims, poor
syntax and bad spelling seem to be the constants.
Sometimes when I try to reply to their scheme I am told by
the server that they have been shut down. These pathetic
souls are promoting something that is, at least
temporarily, out of business. They cite U.S. House and
Senate bills that died in session as evidence they are not
spamsters. I have actually been advised that unsolicited
bulk email is not spam.

When I check my email and find no new messages it's a let
down. I feel unpopular, unloved. If it's a slow day and
all I have is a little spam I read it. It's pretty obvious
these front line spamsters have been taken in by the slick
website that provides a bundle of services for a fee which
includes "blasting" a pitch to millions of "opt in" email
addresses. I feel better just knowing there is somebody
dumber than Stupidman. They're so dumb they probably don't
know they're spamming plus they paid for the privilege.

I used to save the "Nigerian" letters that arrived by snail
mail. The stamps were pretty and there was some variation
in the story line. Visitors that came to my office were
amused by my collection and often requested copies. I
received a Nigerian email a couple of weeks ago that was
sent from a Yahoo! account.

What a pleasant, nostalgic experience. The poor grammar,
their admission of stealing $70,000,000 from the Nigerian
government (death sentence ?), offering me 30% to committ
a federal crime by laundering the money. All I had to do
was provide them with the information necessary to raid my
bank account and steal my identity. Sure it was spam, but
it was entertaining. The Yahoo! account made me suspicious
that this might be a "fake" Nigerian scheme. I hope not,
as I thought it was uplifting to know that the Nigerians
were using the Internet to improve their economy.

I've even received some educational spam. Got a long chain
letter scheme in Spanish (or Spammish as it is referred to
in the Stupidman household). It became a project for my
son, Greased Lightning, and me to translate. As he'll be
taking Spanish II next year this was a worthwhile family
project. He even enjoyed it.

I don't like receiving the porn spam. It might be okay if
I was single but I'm not. I worry that I'll be accused by
The Boss, Mrs. Stupidman, or the kids of being a porn
addict. (It's bad enough being a spam addict.) All I can
do is delete it. On the rare occasions when they offer an
"unsubscribe" you have to do it at a website. That sounds
like a good way to get on even more porn lists.

If you are viewing an empty mail box and missing out on the
rich, cultural experiences like the Nigerian letter and
Spammish email, it may not be because you are unpopular.
It's probably due to your spam filters. Turn them off,
have some fun and read the spam.

Stupidman, Internet Guru Trainee. Doesn't that say it all.

How To Prevent Being Lynched By Heavy Handed Spam Laws

California's new heavy handed spam law, slated to take effect on 1 January 2004, not only provides stiff fines PER SPAM EMAIL sent. It also opens the doors wide for civil litigation against a spammer, and gross amounts of cash recovery for "damages" done to the recipient. In a society that is already embroiled in lawsuit frenzy, this law appears to be a ticket to instant riches for any California resident that owns an email account.

The term "spam" of course, refers to unwanted commercial e-mail that clogs millions of computer mailboxes every day. The Internet culture's current mindset toward spam is so near to reaching critical mass, it's akin to that of a rabid and out of control lynch mob in old Tombstone - to put it succinctly, "shucks, let's hang somebody."

While 30 or so states in the US now have anti-spam laws on the books, most of them are difficult to enforce against real spammers (the ones who send multi-millions of emails at a whack, hawking this week's special snake oil.) Those people often are located outside US borders, and are about as easy to track down as a ghost.

It's my prognostication that few if any real spammers will be lynched. The people who are most likely to be harmed are legitimate businesses who participate openly in electronic marketing, conducting their affairs above board with real addresses and real phone numbers.

Small emarketers who derive part or all of their income from email marketing, and have worked to develop their own opt-in emailing list, appear to be the ones who are most vulnerable to aggressive anti-spam laws.

The fact is this: Sooner or later, some list member will "forget" that s/he opted-in, and will inevitably scream SPAM at the top of their lungs. With the prospect for major remuneration under the California law, there undoubtedly will be those who suddenly contract a case of chronic "opt-in amnesia." Managing the most valid opt-in emailing list in the Universe is about to become even more taxing.

What To Do?

1. - Develop an iron-clad opt-in agreement that the new subscriber must read and electronically agree to (via a radio button, checkbox, etc.) before s/he is presented with your opt-in form.

2. - Rigorously use a double opt-in subscription process, where the first message the new subscriber receives will require them to "confirm" the voluntary status of their opt-in action. It's likely that this process will reduce somewhat the number of new subscribers who make it all the way to your opt-in list. Still, you'll wind up with a higher quality list, containing subscribers who are serious about reading your emails.

3. - Email any existing lists you have, explaining that you are cleaning your lists, and asking those subscribers to re-subscribe under your new policy. (Offer them something good in return for their trouble.) You may lose some subscribers, but those are probably the ones who never paid attention to your mailings to begin with, and are most likely to suddenly contract "amnesia."

4. - Retain electronic confirmations of all opt-in actions. It would be wise to save those records externally to disk on a daily basis.

5. - Provide an automated removal link in all emails sent. A "reply to this email for removal" or "email this address for removal" statement may not be sufficient in the near future.

7. - Sign all messages you send, top and bottom, with your full name and email address. Keeping your name in front of your subscribers will greatly improve their ability to recall their voluntary opt-in action.

8. - Be sure your email subject line relates directly to the context of your message body. This is a prominent clause in most current spam laws.

9. - Use only a valid and working return address for any email sent. The recipient must be able to reach you (or a member of your staff) by clicking the reply button to any email received.

While I don't appreciate being spammed, I've also learned to quietly use the technology available to me, ie. email filters and delete buttons. Still, it won't surprise me in the least to soon hear of some guy who has filed a million dollar lawsuit because he contracted carpal tunnel syndrome in his "delete" finger.

Blind and uninformed legislation appears to be laying a foundation for just such a frivolous boondoggle, as slick legislators continue to jump on the bandwagon, "taking action" on popular social issues as a self-serving exercise in ensuring their own re-elections.

What I fear most however, is a terminally diseased social consciousness that refuses to take individual responsibility, while expecting big government to be a panacea for all ills, no matter how small or insignificant.

Dan B. Cauthron runs several websites and publishes his 100% original and highly opinionated *Revenew QuikTips* online whenever he has something significant to say. To subscribe please visit: http://DanBCauthron.com Dan also operates: http://Earn-Revenew.com
http://SlideInADSGenerator.com

Copyright 2003 - All Rights Reserved Worldwide Serenity Marketing Group - Dan B. Cauthron

Search Engine Spam: Useful Knowledge for the Web Site Promoter

Before getting started on using gateway pages and other HTML techniques to improve your search engine ranking, you need to know a little about spam and spamdexing. Spamming the search engines (or spamdexing) is the practice of using unethical or unprofessional techniques to try to improve search engine rankings. You should be aware of what constitutes spamming so as to avoid trouble with the search engines. For example, if you have a page with a white background, and you have a table that has a blue background and white text in it, you are actually spamming the Infoseek engine without even knowing it! Infoseek will see white text and see a white page background, concluding that your background color and your page color are the same so you are spamming! It will not be able to tell that the white text is actually within a blue table and is perfectly legible. It is silly, but that will cause that page to be dropped off the index. You can get it back on by changing the text color in the table to, say, a light gray and resubmitting the page to Infoseek. See what a difference that makes? Yet you had no idea that your page was considered spam! Generally, it is very easy to know what not to do so as to avoid being labeled a spammer and having your pages or your site penalized. By following a few simple rules, you can safely improve your search engine rankings without unknowingly spamming the engines and getting penalized for it.

What constitutes spam?
Some techniques are clearly considered as an attempt to spam the engines. Where possible, you should avoid these:

Keyword stuffing. This is the repeated use of a word to increase its frequency on a page. Search engines now have the ability to analyze a page and determine whether the frequency is above a "normal" level in proportion to the rest of the words in the document.
Invisible text. Some webmasters stuff keywords at the bottom of a page and make their text color the same as that of the page background. This is also detectable by the engines.
Tiny text. Same as invisible text but with tiny, illegible text.
Page redirects. Some engines, especially Infoseek, do not like pages that take the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. using META refresh tags, cgi scripts, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques.
Meta tags stuffing. Do not repeat your keywords in the Meta tags more than once, and do not use keywords that are unrelated to your site's content.
Never use keywords that do not apply to your site's content.
Do not create too many doorways with very similar keywords.
Do not submit the same page more than once on the same day to the same search engine.
Do not submit virtually identical pages, i.e. do not simply duplicate a web page, give the copies different file names, and submit them all. That will be interpreted as an attempt to flood the engine.
Code swapping. Do not optimize a page for top ranking, then swap another page in its place once a top ranking is achieved.
Do not submit doorways to submission directories like Yahoo!
Do not submit more than the allowed number of pages per engine per day or week. Each engine has a limit on how many pages you can manually submit to it using its online forms. Currently these are the limits: AltaVista 1-10 pages per day; HotBot 50 pages per day; Excite 25 pages per week; Infoseek 50 pages per day but unlimited when using e-mail submissions. Please note that this is not the total number of pages that can be indexed, it is just the total number that can be submitted. If you can only submit 25 pages to Excite, for example, and you have a 1000 page site, that's no problem. The search engine will come crawling your site and index all pages, including those that you did not submit.
Gray Areas
There are certain practices that can be considered spam by the search engine when they are actually just part of honest web site design. For example, Infoseek does not index any page with a fast page refresh. Yet, refresh tags are commonly used by web site designers to produce visual effects or to take people to a new location of a page that has been moved. Also, some engines look at the text color and background color and if they match, that page is considered spam. But you could have a page with a white background and a black table somewhere with white text in it. Although perfectly legible and legitimate, that page will be ignored by some engines. Another example is that Infoseek advises against (but does not seem to drop from the index) having many pages with links to one page. Even though this is meant to discourage spammers, it also places many legitimate webmasters in the spam region (almost anyone with a large web site or a web site with an online forum always has their pages linking back to the home page). These are just a few examples of gray areas in this business. Fortunately, because the search engine people know that they exist, they will not penalize your entire site just because of them.

What are the penalties for spamdexing?
There is an inappropriate amount of fear over the penalties of spamming. Many webmasters fear that they may spam the engines without their knowledge and then have their entire site banned from the engines forever. That just doesn't happen that easily! The people who run the search engines know that you can be a perfectly legitimate and honest web site owner who, because of the nature of your web site, has pages that appear to be spam to the engine. They know that their search engines are not smart enough to know exactly who is spamming and who happens to be in the spam zone by mistake. So they do not generally ban your entire site from their search engine just because some of your pages look like spam. They only penalize the rankings of the offending pages. Any non-offending page is not penalized. Only in the most extreme cases, where you aggressively spam them and go against the recommendations above, flooding their engine with spam pages, will they ban your entire site. Some engines, like HotBot, do not even have a lifetime ban policy on spammers. As long as you are not an intentional and aggressive spammer, you should not worry about your entire site being penalized or banned from the engines. Only the offending pages will have their ranking penalized.

Is there room for responsible search engine positioning?
Yes! Definitely! In fact, the search engines do not discourage responsible search engine positioning. Responsible search engine position is good for everybody - it helps the users find the sites they are looking for, it helps the engines do a better job of delivering relevant results, and it gets you the traffic you want!

As a webmaster, you should not be too afraid that you are spamming the search engines in your quest for higher search engine rankings. No question about it, though, spam is something that every webmaster should understand thoroughly. Fortunately, it is easy to understand it. So learn the rules, re-examine your web pages, resubmit to the engines, then create gateway pages to get better ranking on the engines, using the rules above. If you need any more information on search engine spamming and search engine positioning, see http://www.searchpositioning.com. I wish you the best of fortune in your web promotional efforts!

David Gikandi

support@searchpositioning.com
SearchPositioning.com
http://www.searchpositioning.com
Positioning is 95% of your business!

Why I Love Spam!

Why I Love Spam!
By Paul White

Actually I hate it as much as everyone else when I get an anonymous email in my box from someone who has harvested my email address, and who always has a return address like:- XX1234@hotmail.com

Luckily I have a special tool installed on my email program. It's called a delete button!

What I do love however, is the type of unwanted emails you get when you are a member of a safe list, or if you mail to an FFA page, or even the solo ads which you get when you subscribe to some newsletters.

Those of you who have used these FFA mailing services know that you get hundreds or thousands of emails all at once, from people trying to sell you something.

The inexperienced marketer would use a junk email account to collect these, and then delete them all without even looking at them.

But the really smart marketer realises that these ads are a rich source of learning!

You could pay a thousand dollars for a marketing course which would teach you as much as you learn from looking through these ads!

So when you do look at them, what is the first thing that strikes you?

Yes! You can't possibly read them all!

So which do you choose to look at?

Those with the great looking subject lines.

Those that have that magic 'something' that set themselves apart from all of the other ads.

Now can you use whatever these ideas are for your own advertising campaign?

The same of course applies once you open the email. Does the headline grab you? Does it make you want to read on, or does this become just another one which you delete?

There is no single way to get your own ad to stand out. If there were then everyone would use it, and it would no longer be effective.

Trust your instincts. If it grabs your attention, then chances are, other people will respond to it as well.

Don't copy someone elses ad exactly though! Just use the feel of it, use similar words, similar layout etc.
until it becomes your own.

And keep experimenting, until you get the response you want.

And keep reading and looking at other people's ads to see what you should, and just as importantly, what you should not be doing!
Paul White is a former teacher, and is now a highly successful online marketer. He helps people all around the world to become successful online. Visit the popular 'Profit Websites' at:- http://www.profitwebsites.com

Who Sends Out Spam?

Who Sends Out Spam?
by Bob Osgoodby

There are a number of different groups of people who send out unsolicited commercial email, or as it is called spam. First there are those that don't provide a real existing email address and use one that is forged. They're no dummies - they don't want a ton of complaints sent to them. They may also not provide a mechanism that someone can use to be removed from future mailings.

Every jurisdiction on the state level and country level should pass legislation similar to that which exists in Utah, that requires that their real email address is used and there is a mechanism in place to be removed. Non-compliance fines should be severe.

The really bad guys, use the address of someone else which is valid. The holder of that email address could indeed be in for a rocky road, and even face the possibility that their ISP will shut them down. If this ever happens to you, and it will be obvious by the amount of "hate mail" you receive, immediately notify your ISP so they can takes steps to protect you.

Then there is the "poor soul" who isn't aware of the conventions of the web, joins an affiliate program, buys a disk with millions of names and starts his own advertising campaign. These people are identifiable and will be shut down in a matter of hours. In the "school of hard knocks", they have learned their first lesson.

Most people who purchase web space from a provider are put on a web server with 254 other people. If any one of those people start spamming, it clogs the server and slows down the service for everyone else. In fact, many servers have a built in "self protection mechanism" and if the number of returned emails (bounces) exceeds 500, it automatically shuts your account down. If people start complaining about the slowness of their service the technician on duty will quickly identify who is causing the problem.

Now we come to the professional spammers. These people follow all the rules, and send out bulk mail on the behalf of others. They use a legitimate email address and provide a method to "opt out" from receiving future emails from them. The fees they charge range from 2 cents to 5 cents for each email sent. Their lists are cleansed daily, and if they say they can deliver 100,000 impressions, they can. But, do the arithmetic - they will be receiving between $2,000 and $5,000 for a mailing of that size.

These "pros" have their own servers, don't go through the various ISPs, have their own dedicated high speed telecommunication links and servers, and are virtually "bullet proof" as far as being shut down.

Professional spamming is big business, and those who are involved have a lot of money tied up in equipment and ongoing costs. If national legislation is enacted similar to the "Utah Model", they will comply. Any attempt to stop them will likely result in failure. If they can't comply, their investment is so large, they would likely move out of the jurisdiction imposing the rules to someplace which is more lenient.

But let's think about the problem of spam a bit deeper. I'm sick to death with the porno ads - these people should not send me stuff I simply don't want to receive. They can send email to people who have agreed to receive it, but leave me alone as well as all the kids who receive their garbage. Violators should be heavily penalized for sending this out to people who have stated they don't want it.

I also don't want to get ongoing ads for affiliate programs or for mortgage services I don't want or need. Give me an "opt-out" system that works and penalize those who don't follow the rules.

I really don't care if I receive legitimate offers from reputable companies, and I will most likely read them once this problem is brought under control.

What we need is a national "opt-out" list. The penalties should be severe for those who send email to someone who is on this list. The list should be available to anyone who wants it to ensure they will not send advertising to them. There should also be a clearinghouse where complaints could be sent for those violating the law.

But there should also be a mechanism to protect the innocents such as publishers of newsletters. If I say something that someone doesn't like, they should not be allowed to report me for spamming. Any complaint received should require that a copy of what they received be included with their complaint. Face it - there are some people who simply react and make a complaint without following the "unsubscribe" options. There are others who simply forgot they requested something, and when they receive it go "ballistic". And then there are the zealots who fire off a complaint, about any email received that is not from a friend or family member.

Yes Virginia, there are some people who are not the "sharpest knives in the drawer", and any legislation enacted should account for this. We need legislation like this, and if enacted, perhaps the Internet would truly be a more viable place to do business.

Did you know that subscribers to Bob Osgoodby's Free Ezine the "Tip of the Day" get a Free Ad for their Business at his Web Site? Great Business and Computer Tips - Monday thru Friday. Instructions on how to place your ad are in the Newsletter. Subscribe at: http://adv-marketing.com/business/subscribe2.htm