Turbo Charge Your Spam Filters

We all know what email spam is, and anyone who spends more than a little time online, has gotten more than their share of the stuff. It's the scourge of the internet world, and the one real chink in the armor of the webs first real killer application . . . email. Most of us probably can't remember how we managed to survive without email, and far fewer of us, remember a day when spam was just a really cheap and questionable luncheon meat byproduct.

Fortunately for us net-citizens, the good guys have been battling the evil forces of email spam pretty much ever since that first ludicrous email was sent out questioning thousands of men's manhood and potency. Unfortunately, spam blocking, and spam filtering is not an exact science today, and likely never will be. It always needs a little supervision and feeding from the good users of all those email services. Free or otherwise. I'd like to make a few suggestions, as to how to make your filters work better for you.

Throw Away Email

While this suggestion may not be really considered a filter, it is probably the most effective method of combating personal spam as any. That would be, a throw away email address. With the plethora of free email accounts available out there, this one is a no-brainer. It's always a good idea, to have one email account, that you use to give out to all those website offers, and forums that require one before letting you use their service. Whenever I sign up for any service that I'm not all that familiar with, I make sure to give them my throw away email account. I rarely if ever check this account. If at some point down the road I feel comfortable with the web service or forum, than I'll change my account information to reflect my "real" email account. The one I usually only give to family, friends, and trusted sites. Think of this throw away email account, as one big spam folder. This technique kind of makes you the filter, by using your own common sense as a filter for whom to trust with your personal email information.

Teaching Your Filter Right From Wrong

As I mentioned earlier, your spam filters are not perfect. They can all benefit from a little guidance. It's important, to not just delete spam from your email inbox every morning with a vengeance. It's far better to flag it as spam. Most email providers provide this feature somewhere prominently displayed on their email screen. If your email software doesn't, then it's time for a switch. Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Excite all provide this functionality. When you flag incoming spam mail as spam, your teaching your email filter to be a better filter. Filters make a best guess as to what is spam based on a very complicated set of algorithms running behind the scenes. Every email provider has slightly differ rules they follow, but the one rule they all follow is secrecy. They'll never divulge how they identify email spam, to anyone, including you their client. It would make it to easy for the spam kings to use it to their advantage. The point is, that when you flag spam, you make the spam filter a little smarter for you, and for everyone else. Most filters will collect flagging information from all their customers, and use it as a filter for everyone's email, not just the original flagger. So, don't just delete your spam, flag it.

And Vice Versa

Of course, the opposite is true. Sometimes filters can be a little too aggressive, and important personal emails you really need, can end up in your spam folder. Be sure to check your folder whenever your reading your email. And, don't just move any good emails you find to your inbox. Tell your filter this is real email, and not spam. Once again, most email software provides this feature, and if it doesn't then move to one of the previously mentioned that do. This works the same way as before, and makes your spam filtering better for you, and everyone else that uses your email provider.

Who knows, with a little perseverance from the good citizens of the net, maybe our grand kids will only know spam as that somewhat questionable luncheon meat.

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Best Anti Spam Software - Spamwasher Review

Many people today are using electronic mails (e-mails) to send and receive messages with others as it is the fastest way possible. With businesses getting their hands involved in the internet and most specifically, e-mail, our e-mails tend to receive lots of spam messages advertising everything from discount electronics to male enhancement products.

Its purpose is to get you attracted to anything they sell. It is prohibited under the Can Spam Act and is an abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages currently known as spam and its most widely known form is the e-mail spam.

Spamming cost your e-mail accounts memory space that can make you unable to receive new e-mails, due to lack of memory space. It has become a major problem for internet users.

Email and internet service providers also encounter problems and the solution that they come up of is to increase the memory space allotted for users' e-mail so that spam will not occupy that much space. Some providers do provide web based anti spam services however, it is unable to completely eradicate the email spamming problem.

There are many anti spam software on the market that provides the ability to stop spam before it reaches your inbox. One of these is Spamwasher, one of the best anti spam software I have used.

Spamwasher is suited for new internet users who want to stop spam and phishing emails from reaching their email inbox without the technical difficulties of setting up. It is easy to use and works well to block 99% of all spam emails. The default automatic spam rules setup is pretty efficient and works well right out of the box.

Spamwasher anti spam software has an update feature that regularly updates it's anti spam engine without user intervention. Currently, it works with any POP3 account such as outlook, fedora, mozilla and netscape. It also works with any webbased email clients such as hotmail, yahoo Mail.

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Join the Fight Against Spam

You are asked to join the fight against spam email. If you or a friend has ever received a bunch of marketing messages from people or companies you never gave your email address to, you will know what I am talking about. Unsolicited junk mail is annoying and a waste of your computer resources and time- unless you actually like receiving and reading junk mail. However, the chances of that being true are very slim.

Just to be certain, here is my attempt at a general definition of spam email. Spam or junk emails are unsolicited electronic messages that are sent in bulk to email addresses harvested from the World Wide Web without the consent of the respective owners. The messages usually contain material of a commercial or marketing nature. How much email spam is actually being sent on a daily basis? Some figures suggests that about 100 billions spam emails are sent each day. Networks of virus-infected computers are used to send most of the junk mail. Yet some figures suggest that the spam mail originates from only a few hundred spammers around the world.

The amount of spam mail has decreased in recent years, mainly due to the increased use of spam filtering and new spam laws. However, spam laws have proven difficult to implement and still has a long way to go. The use of opt in email has also had a positive impact.

In the fight against spam there are other types of electronic spamming that presents a problem to daily users.

-Spamming on newsgroups.

-Posting irrelevant information on forums.

-Posting useless information or advertisements as comments on blogs.

-Sending lots of unsolicited text messages via mobile phone.

-Search engine manipulation for search ranking popularity alone is called 'spamdexing'.

Where do spammers normally harvest email addresses? They usually collect addresses while surfing around chat rooms, forums, newsgroup or websites. They also employ viruses to gain access to personal computers and their address books. Spammers usually send harvested email addresses to each other as well.

What can you do to help fight spam? Well, first of all you should install anti-virus software on your computer. This will help to keep your computer free of viruses that may steal your personal contact details, passing it on to spammers. You can also run daily scans and updates to keep your computer healthy while removing any virus or spyware it may find. Use a spam filter to check your emails as you receive them. You may set up your email program to filter out unwanted words in the title or message and so forth. Your internet service provider may also provide this service to you if they can by filtering the emails on the server itself.

If your internet service provider is not capable of blocking those spam emails or they block the emails from friends or family, which they should not block, then you have to be prepared for some work. If you setup spam-catching rules within your email client software, it will help. If this does not help you catching more spam - then at least it should help by organizing your e-mails.

The second last resort before forking out a monthly payment for an anti-spam filtering service would be to setup your own spam catching system. It will take much more time and effort but it will work and it is not going to cost you anything. The fight against spam continues! Join the anti-spam community and do your part to make the world a more original and less repetitive place. Who knows, you may be the next target of unsolicited junk mail. Report spammers and promote spam protection.

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A New Approach to the Spam Problem

Current anti-spam efforts are mediocre at best and have us chasing our tail like the proverbial dog.

According to the estimates reported in the references below, the annual cost of spam has increased from about $ 20 billion (1) in 2004 to $ 35 billion (2) in 2007, for the US alone. Globally the estimate is over $ 100 billion and the spam volume could possibly double in 2008 (3).

If any of the current approaches to solving spam were effective we would not see this trend, and doing more of the same will not solve this problem.

Spam will not be solved by any law enforcement means because beyond questioning the constitutionality of anti-spam laws here in the US, spam is a global problem; and the jurisdictional and evidentiary issues are so resource intensive that they will not be practical for anything but anecdotal success. Therefore, such efforts will have no significant impact on the spam problem.

The solution to the spam problem will not come in the form of an advanced software widget with new fancier algorithms because such a device is still being asked to interpret what only a human really can.

The solutions to some problems await a major technological leap, such as the leap scientists are awaiting to succeed with nuclear fusion. However, the solution to spam does not require any technological leaps. This is not to say that advances in technology cannot help solve the spam problem, but this technology is already here. It just needs to be applied in a particular Internet environment, with some added processes, in concert with minor human participation and the right approach to accountability and enforcement.

Over the last several years we've seen new modes of electronic communications emerge, such as text messaging, instant messaging, and systems within many social networking websites. Now these are subject to spam more and more. Overlooked within this emergence is the significance shown that the shifting of communications from one mode or system to another is a viable path. So, what if we built an entirely new email system based on a more effective methodology that people and businesses could shift their email communications to?

This may sound drastic, but considering that all anti-spam efforts to date have left us a spam problem in excess of $ 100 billion and growing, it may be time for an entirely new approach. It may be time for an entirely new email system. The question is how. For this reason, CapeMax is working on the "how". To learn more, please visit the CapeMax website.

(1) 2004 National Technology Readiness Survey, February 3, 2005, prepared by Rockbridge Associates, Inc., Great Falls, VA; sponsored by R.H. Smith School of Business, the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, page 6.

(2) Ferris Research - One San Antonio Place, Suite 3B, San Francisco, CA 94133, USA, http://www.ferris.com/research-library/industry-statistics/

(3) Communications News, May 2008 issue, page 8, Trends section, article headline, Spam volume could double in 2008. Nelson Publishing, Inc; http://www.comnews.com

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Is Email Harassment Illegal?

Not so long ago, a girl committed suicide because of messages that she was getting through the popular social networking site MySpace. This does not mean that MySpace is evil, but hopefully it was a wake up call for parents to know what their children are doing online, even if they feel they are being snoopy. Though you may not think of messages through MySpace as being email, they are. Not everyone behaves online, and there are times when email addresses can be harassing in nature, and even dangerous.

The nature of email makes it possible for people to think they are sending out messages that are anonymous, but that is rarely the case. There are some that know how to do this, but most Internet users have no idea. They just assume leaving their name off of an account means they are untraceable. That is simply not true, as many people have found out. They may feel free to send messages that are sinister and harassing in nature because they think no one will know who they are.

Though the line between a heated and illegal email is gray, and not all locations or jurisdictions with the US have the same laws, there are some that are definitely illegal. Some districts have deemed anything harassing to be illegal, no matter if it is going through phone lines, mail letters, electronic communications, or in person. Those that have this type of harassment in mind often use email because they think it is hard to trace. With the law on someone's side, a lawyer can get a service provider to hand over identifying information.

You may not know if a harassing email coming into your inbox is illegal where you live or not, but that does not mean you should not do something about it. You can try to find out about the laws where you live, and you can contact the authorities if you feel threatened in any way. You can also forward the email to your service provider, and then call them with an explanation to see if there is anything that they can do.

You may want to know who sent the email. You can find some limited information if you do a reverse email lookup Not all are traceable however. No matter what you find, do nothing with that information unless you want to turn it over to the authorities. Do not respond to such an email, and do not use what you find to contact the source of the email. You know who to avoid, if need be, but you don't want them to know you are on to them if they insist on remaining anonymous. Let the authorities deal with the problem for you.

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Keep Your Inbox Clean - Report Spam Email

Spam email can be overwhelming, and in fact, many people have changed or abandoned an email address because of the amount of unwanted messages they received. Now, however, you can use email lookups online to find out more about any unknown or suspicious email address by searching for relevant directory entries. Every server or domain name keeps its own email directory, and as these are the most up to date lists of account information, these are the resources that reverse email lookups search.

Of course, to really get the most out of email lookups online, you will need to know what kind of information it can provide, and what of this will be most valuable to you. Directory entries commonly contain the name, IP address, and server information registered to an account, which is all you really need to know in order to determine whether or not you should report a spam email.

Spam itself is not illegal, so you have to have specific abuses and data to report with your complaint. This is where email lookups online come in, because they allow you to determine the legitimacy of any spam email. Simply by comparing the IP address provided with that listed in the email's header, you should be able to tell if the email originated with the inbox listed as the server. If these numbers do not match, of course, you have ample reason to file a formal report.

You can use email lookups online to protect yourself and your family against unknown email addresses, but by searching spam emails, you are also doing your part to protect other innocent email users of becoming spam victims. After all, by reporting a spam email, you have guaranteed that they will not be able to continue their practices with, at very least, this same account information, and you can know that your inbox really is clean, and not just for the minute at hand.

The Scourge of Spam and How to Tackle It   Spam Filtering For Small Businesses - Increase Productivity and Protect Your Data   Ways to Fight Fraud   Email Spam Blocker - Free Up Space in Your Inbox