Spam

Spam – the facts and figures
By: Carolyn Clayton

Spam is the result of the activities of a small number of people; however these activities are becoming a big problem for Internet users. Spammers are flooding the Internet with messages and making it increasing difficult to get on with our daily tasks and work, which involves the Internet.Spammers are not only attacking our inbox they have also started to turn on anti-spam sites. They have started to send out spam emails using the anti-spammers names, email addresses and website addresses within their spam messages. This is known as a ‘Joe-job.’ The reason as to why spammers do this is to cause trouble for the people who are fighting them and trying to stop them sending out spam messages. There are two main forms of spam present on the Internet. The one is what we all already know about, email spam, which targets individual users with direct mail messages and steals Internet mailing lists as well as searching the web for email addresses that spammers can add to their spam lists. The second popular form of spam on the Internet is not so well known. This comes in the form of Usenet spam. This is a single message that is sent to around 20 users of Usenet newsgroups. However through experience Usenet users have grown to ignore such messages as they have found that a message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant. These messages are aimed at ‘lurker’s,’ people who read newsgroups but never post in them or rarely post in them. By doing this spammers are robbing the user’s utility of the newsgroup as it will be overwhelmed with adverts and irrelevant posts. The submission of the name "Spam" to unwanted posts and communication originates in Chat-rooms. It was first seen in the chat-rooms of People-Link in the early 1980’s as a way of getting rid of unwanted "newcomers." When someone would enter a chat-room full of friends who were in mid-conversation, and tried to turn the conversation in an unwelcome direction, two veteran members of the room would begin typing in the Monty Python "Spam" routine at high speed. They would fill the screen with "Spam Spam Spam eggs Spam Spam and Spam" etc, and make all other communication impossible. The other members of the room would just wait until the newcomer moved on to a different room.Email, newsgroup and chat room spam is a globally growing problem with the countries that spread the most spam globally being the USA (28.4%), South Korea (5.2%), China (4.9%) and Russia (4.4%).There has previously been pressure to make email spam illegal and it has been successful in certain jurisdictions but not in all meaning that spammers merely take advantage of this fact and post more spam to places where they won’t get in trouble for doing so. Anti spammers want to see this pressure to make spam illegal more often as spam can not only waste many production hours and be really aggravating; it can also lead to criminal activity in the sense that spammers have to potential to spread computer viruses such as Trojan horses and other malicious software. There objective for doing this may well be identity theft meaning that action needs to taken against spammers and it needs to be taken now.
Helen is the web master of MySpamBin, specialists in Anti Spam Blocker software. Please feel free to republish this article providing this resource box remains intact with a working hyperlink to our site.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com




Tips to Prevent Spam
By: Kelly Liyakasa

Spam isn’t limited to the harmless email chain we’ve all been guilty of sending to friends and family members. Many of us feel that receiving email spam is a lost cause and we’re sentenced to cleaning our inboxes out each morning. Though completely ridding spam from your life may be an unattainable task, there are steps you can take to reduce the number you receive:• Create a separate email address (free ones like Gmail and Hotmail work great) when registering for an online group or Web-newsletter.• When posting content on the Web, don’t include your primary email address. Spammers can easily add you to their lists.• Trick the spam spiders-If you post an email address online, disguise it’s setup, spelling out ‘dot com’ in place of ‘.com• If you sign up for a list, be sure it’s for that sole site and your information won’t get passed around.• Read text-only emails or request your mail provider notify you before downloading images or HTML.• If you receive forwarded chain emails from friends or family, ask them to stop. Even if you trust who is sending you the email, your name will still be visible to whoever continues sending the chain.• Purchase a spam filter. It’s a small price to pay when you think of all the junk mail you’ll avoid.6StarReviews.com notes several spam filters that can do the trick and reduce unwanted spam mail. Anti-spam software programs like Spam Shield have unique features such as LashBack, a setting that removes spam and prevents that user from ever forwarding you junk mail again. Spam Monitor also paves the way in spam protection by letting users make black and whitelists to ensure important email reaches their inbox. Preventing spam doesn’t have to cost you your sanity!
Kelly Liyakasa is staff writer for 6StarReviews.com, a site dedicated to giving YOU, the consumer, the best product and service reviews around. If you like saving time and money by having someone else review leading sites and

products, then Visit our site at 6StarReviews.com.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com




Anti Spam Products
By: Sachin Gupta

In today’s world every internet user suffering a very common problem and this problem is receiving amount of spam mails. But these days’ things are not same as it was earlier. Now days you have many of anti spam products for Secure Messaging. If you are receiving amount of spam mails and you are looking solution for this problem, then you can use anti spam products to solve out this problem. There are many anti spam products available in the market. One of them is ITA Secure Messaging which provides you a comprehensive solution for eliminating spam and viruses and strives to provide you better control over e-mail traffic on your mail server. Safeguard your organization’s Microsoft Exchange 5.5, 2000, 2003 or 2007 and all other SMTP servers against spam and e-mail virus attacks with ITA Secure Messaging.Other one is ITA Mail Archive is an affordable email archiving solution. It provides secure archiving environment with the ability to setup user accounts. ITA Mail Archive is fully compatible with Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 servers. It also helps businesses with regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley and SEC. Besides these, ITA offering many others anti spam products like: ITA Secure Messaging Server, ITA Secure Messaging Appliances, ITA Mail Archive appliance including free online Tools and utilities for IT Administrators. Online tools such as Open Relay Test, WHOIS lookup, Email Valuator, DNS Lookup will help you troubleshoot and secure your mail server.What you’ll have to do simply installed, Anti-Spam software in your machine to divert the spam e-mails coming to your mail box. When you installed anti spam software in the mail server, then you will never receive any unwanted mail, to begin with anti spam software.If you want to take free trial & want to download all these anti spam products then visit http://www.itanetworks.com

Sachin Gupta offering ideas on the use of Anti Spam Products with the help of http://www.itanetworks.com
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com




Bayesian Spam Filters - How Do They Work?
By: Arvind Singh

Bayesian spam filters, which are a type of scoring content-based spam filters, analyze the contents of the mail, and calculate the probability of the message being spam.Bayesian spam filters, which are a type of scoring content-based spam filters, analyze the contents of the mail, and calculate the probability of the message being spam. It builds up a list of characteristics of elements that are typically spam as well as good emails. The advantage of the Bayesian spam filters is that they build up the list of characteristics themselves, and do not depend on the manually built list.Bayesian spam filters more or less try to emulate how you personally identify your spam emails. One look at an email tells you whether the email is genuine or spam. The probability that you will characterize a good mail as spam is 'zero'. Ideally, it would be great if spam filters do work in the same way. At least, the Bayesian spam filters are trying in this direction.Spam FilteringSuppose that the word 'textile' often appears in your legitimate mails, but never in your spam mails, then there is zero probability of the word 'textile' indicating spam. On the other hand, the words 'Nigeria' and 'lottery' quite often and at times most exclusively, appear as spams - made famous by the 419 scams out of Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.For Bayesian spam filters, these two words 'Nigeria' and 'lottery' have every probability of being found in spam emails - as much as 100 percent.Whenever you receive a new message, the Bayesian spam filter analyzes it, and calculates, by using the individual characteristics, the probability of it being a spam. If it so happens that your message contains both words, 'textiles' and 'Nigeria' or 'lottery', the Bayesian spam filter cannot ascertain whether the message is a genuine one or a spam. It will further analyze other characteristics that will allow it to assess the probability of classifying the message as either, spam or legitimate.Bayesian Spam Filters - Adapting AutomaticallyOnce you have classified the message, as shown above, it can be used to further train the spam filter. This is how it works. In the above scenario:
If the message is analyzed as being spam, then the probability of the word 'textile' indicating legitimate mail is lessened.
If the message is analyzed as being legitimate mail, then the probability of the words, 'Nigeria' or 'lottery' - whichever was used - needs to be re-analyzed and re-considered as spam.The advantage of Bayesian spam filters is that they self adapt by learning from their own decisions, as well as the user's decisions - if made manually. This automatic adaptability of the Bayesian spam filters is excellent for individual email users. Most spam emails have very similar and at times identical characteristics, whereas the characteristics of legitimate mails are different for each individual.
Author is admin and technical expert associated with development of security and performance enhancing software like Registry Cleaner, Anti Spyware, Window Cleaner. Learn how Anti Spam filter helps in securing online privacy.

Visit our Home page or Resource Center to read more about products.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com




The Basics Of Bayesian Spam Filtering
By: Arvind Singh

Bayesian spam filtering is a way to distinguish between legitimate emails and illegitimate spam emails, through a process that uses Bayesian statistical methods.Bayesian spam filtering has become a popular way to distinguish between legitimate emails and illegitimate spam emails, through a process that uses Bayesian statistical methods. It filters emails by classifying documents into categories. Based on the contents of the message in your email, the Bayesian spam filters calculate the probability of the message being a spam. They are much more robust than the normal content based filters, and their anti spam approach hardly has false positives.Normally when you receive an email, one look tells you whether the email is a spam or not. To your eyes, there is 'zero' probability of a spam looking like a good email. How would it be if spam filters, too, worked in the same way!Bayesian Spam FiltersBayesian spam filters are what are known as scoring content-based spam filters. They try to work the way your eye does in identifying spam emails, by looking for words and other characteristics that typify spams. Every characteristic typical of spam is assigned a score, and the total spam score for the whole message is computed. Depending on the type of Bayesian spam filter you are using, it may also look for legitimate email characteristics, thereby lowering the total score.The basic difference between the Bayesian spam filters and other simple scoring content based spam filters is that the Bayesian spam filters build the list themselves, as against other filters that depend on a manually built list of characteristics.You start with a sizable bunch of emails you have identified as spam, and another bunch of good emails. The filters look at both, the legitimate and the spam emails and calculate in what probability various characters appear in them. Bayesian spam filters may look at:
The words in the message body
The headers (message paths and senders)
The word pairs and phrases
HTML code, such as colors
Where a particular phrase appears (meta information)The Problems With Scoring Content Based FiltersThough the scoring based spam filters work well, they also encounter certain problems; the normal ones more so than the Bayesian spam filters. These are some of the problems faced:
The scoring content based spam filters build a list of characteristics from the spam emails and the good emails they get. For building a good list of spam characteristics, mail needs to be collected from hundreds of sources (email addresses). This may weaken the efficiency of the spam filters, as the characteristics of the good email would be different for each person.
If the spammers make an effort to make their mails look like genuine mails, the filtering characteristics may have to be corrected manually - a very big effort.
Author is admin and technical expert associated with development of security and performance enhancing software like Registry Cleaner, Anti Spyware, Window Cleaner. Learn how Anti Spam filter helps in securing online privacy.

Visit our Home page or Resource Center to read more about products.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com