 |
The Small and Home Office Association of Southeastern Connecticut
| :: | Members |
| :: | Meetings |
| :: | Articles |
| :: | Links |
| :: | Newsletter |
| :: | Join Us |
| :: | Contact Us |
| :: | Home |
 |
|
 |
|||
|
|||||
 |
 |
Renew
Online
You may now renew your annual membership dues online. Annual dues are $45.00.
By Trish Sullivan and Will Spigel,
99Main Internet
Services
Spam, or unsolicited commercial E-mail, is on everyone’s mind
these days. It’s abusive, crude, full of deception and a major time
sink for nearly everyone with an E-mail address. According to
several news sources including CNN, 50 to 60 percent of all E-mail
traffic on the Internet today is Spam, and that percentage is not
likely to decline. Most people who receive a ton of Spam everyday
have asked themselves, “Why am I receiving this junk?”
The reason that you and millions of other people in the world
receive junk mail is because E-mail addresses are pilfered by
Spammers every day by various nefarious means. The addresses are
then placed on mailing lists that are sold over and over again to
those who distribute spam messages. Most Spammers collect E-mail
addresses a few different ways:
- Some hold contests where you must supply an E-mail address.
- If you sign up for a newsletter there may be a statement that says "We may share your information with other companies who have products and services that you may be interested in" - this is just another way of saying that they may sell their E-mail list to another company.
- If you get forwarded a joke or funny story you probably noticed many E-mail addresses in the TO: field. If this gets forwarded to a Spammer, your address and everyone else’s included in that header will be added to their lists and sold over and over again to various databases.
- If you post on newsgroups, your E-mail address shows up. There are Spammer bots which look through newsgroups messages and pick out addresses.
- Even though they will deny it, the big ISPs, who shall remain nameless here but we all know who they are, will re-sell E-mail addresses. It's a sure way for them to make money.
- If someone sends you one of those cute greeting cards, your E-mail address is placed in a database and sold.
- Hosting or owning a website with your E-mail address on it can get you on Spam lists.
Even if you never do any of the above you will get Spam out of the blue. This is basically dictionary type Spam. They take a word from the dictionary and then a host (i.e. @99main.com or @yourbusinessname.com) and then try sending a message to it (i.e. apple@99main.com, fork@99main.com, bat@99main.com)
Another thing you probably have noticed is a statement that says
"Please reply to (some address) with the subject of REMOVE, to be
removed from this list" on the bottom of the message. This is a
trick. You do not want to reply to that address! Replying just tells
the Spammer that the E-mail address is "live" and will only get you
placed on more lists. By replying, Spammers then know you actually
looked through the entire message to find out how to be removed.
Additionally, "live" addresses are sold to other Spammers at a
premium which only makes the Spamming problem worse.
The big question then remains: is there anything you can do to can
the Spam?
Yes and no. Spammers are pretty clever and their tools of the trade
are pretty sophisticated. They commonly change their techniques and
the words they use to try to avoid being blocked. For example, if
you blocked the word “Viagra” today, tomorrow they may change it to
“V!agra” and the next day it could be “V|agr@”. Simple word blocking
would filter the first word but would completely miss the second
two. Similarly, phrase filtering is accurate in catching Spam but,
like word blocking, it is too restrictive to be very effective. The
downside of using these methods alone can also lead to false
positives, where legitimate mail is being blocked because it
contains a word or phrase you have blacklisted.
Blacklisting E-mail addresses, refusing all E-mail from an address,
doesn’t work either since Spammers just spoof (falsify) their
outgoing E-mail address each time they send a new batch of junk
mail. I’m sure we’ve all seen something like azx13dqir@hotmail.com.
This is a randomly generated set of letters and numbers with a
domain tacked on the end. This could just as easily be your own
E-mail address, a friend’s or a business associate.
Whitelisting E-mail addresses, only allowing E-mail from an address
and no one else, is very effective at blocking Spam. However, it is
not very flexible. Each person you would want to receive E-mail from
would have to be added to your address book and then set up in your
E-mail filter.
Another method of Spam prevention is a statistical analysis method
called “Bayesian” filtering. This method requires training to work
effectively. Training takes time but custom tailors your Spam filter
to your tastes. Bayesian filtering works by building a list of
tokens (keywords) that you consider Spammy and another list you
consider not Spammy. When a new message comes in, it scans the
message for tokens and compares them to your customized lists of
Spam and non-Spam words. If it finds that the E-mail message
contains more Spam words then non-Spam words, it filters the message
out. Bayesian filtering is currently considered the best tool to
combat Spam these days; any good Spam filter should have it.
The very best way to clean up unwanted mail is to purchase a Spam
package or service that combines the above methods. For example, the
Spam filtering service used by 99main Internet Services filters
first by checking to see if the sender has been blacklisted or whitelisted. If the sender is blacklisted it rejects the mail right
away. If the sender is whitelisted it passes it though with no
checks. If the sender does not fall on a blacklist or whitelist it
is then checked against a database of known Spam-like
characteristics. Then it is checked against our Bayesian databases.
If the message was rated poorly, it is rejected. If the message
receives a good rating, it is sent through to the mailbox recipient.
It’s important to remember that no Spam filtering system is perfect.
Spammers come up with new techniques all the time. While no system
can eliminate all Spam, most can cut the junk messages down
significantly. Many Internet Service Providers currently offer some
kind of Spam scanning service, but if you would rather manage the
junk mail on your own, there are many Spam-fighting software
packages on the market today that can be purchased from your local
office supply store.