Spam is the internet’s equivalent of junk mail. Spam is defined as an e-mail message sent to people without their consent or permission. Addresses of recipients are often harvested from Usenet postings or web pages, obtained from databases, or simply guessed by using common names and domains.
Spam is sent to promote practically any product or service ranging from “Adult” products to logo design for websites. It is also used by hackers to spread viruses or links to dangerous websites used to gather your personal information like credit card details or passwords for sites like Ebay or PayPal. To the average user these messages appear genuine. Even the link has a genuine looking domain name. This technique is known as “Phishing.”
Here are some smart strategies and tips you can employ now to start reducing Spam and boost your email security.
- Configure your anti virus software to automatically scan your incoming email for viruses. Email is still widely used to distribute malicious software. Make sure you keep your anti virus software definitions up to date.
- If you are someone that frequently signs up for “freebies” or other stuff on the internet start using a separate e-mail account just for this purpose. Accounts from providers like Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Google’s Gmail all come with generous storage as standard.
- If sites don’t accept free e-mail address from the services listed above then use a free disposable email service like Sneakemail - http://www.sneakemail.com.
- If you are posting your email to a blog or your website then submit it in a way that is only recognizable to a human. For example if your email is johndoe@hotmail.com then post it as “johndoe at hotmail.com”.
- Never open a message from an address you do not recognize – always delete it straight away. This is especially so if there is an attachment. Never reply to a message as this only confirms the email address is “live” to the spammers.
- If you get an official looking message from your bank or Ebay or another site you are not sure is genuine here is what you do. Instead of clicking on the link embedded in the mail log on to the site normally via your browser. If there are any genuine serious problems you should get a message when you log on. Alternatively contact the site’s customer service via the phone if possible.
- Consider using standalone spam filtering software. This software analyses your email for common characteristics of spam email including words like “click” or “teens.” It also compares senders’ emails against a “Friends List.” Try Mailwasher for free here - http://www.mailwasher.net.
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Selasa, 20 April 2010
Senin, 19 April 2010
Fighting Spam!
It's been nearly a decade since spammers and their enemies begun evolving competitively. As with the classic cheetah/gazelle model originally formulated by Darwin, each time one group becomes a little faster or more agile, its adversaries develop traits for outwitting and outrunning it.
In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted e-mail, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Consequently, there are many organizations, as well as individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to fight spam with a variety of techniques. But because the Internet is public, there is really little that can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail.
Nobody wants it or ever asks for it. No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree. Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.
The number of unsolicted commercial electronic messages received by the average American in 2001 was 571, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. By 2006, Jupiter says, that number will increase to 1,400, with more than 206 billion spam messages going out over the course of the year. While these numbers are notoriously difficult to calculate, every survey and ISP record points to dramatic increases in spam, sometimes as much as 300 percent year over year. One reliable indicator of the problem's magnitude is the size of the anti-spam effort. The range of tools available to ISPs, enterprises and consumers in the fight against spam grew considerably during the Web bubble. Simultaneously, heavyweight Web marketers and interactive ad players have been scrambling to distinguish their services from the bad guys, as well as to counteract growing calls for government controls on digital marketing.
In one of the biggest such moves, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), through its subsidiary, the Association of Interactive Marketing (AIM), has released online commercial solicitation guidelines in an effort to promote high ethical standards among marketers. The rules require that members let e-mail recipients know how they can refuse future mailings and allow consumers to prevent the sale or rental of their addresses
In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted e-mail, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Consequently, there are many organizations, as well as individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to fight spam with a variety of techniques. But because the Internet is public, there is really little that can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail.
Nobody wants it or ever asks for it. No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree. Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.
The number of unsolicted commercial electronic messages received by the average American in 2001 was 571, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. By 2006, Jupiter says, that number will increase to 1,400, with more than 206 billion spam messages going out over the course of the year. While these numbers are notoriously difficult to calculate, every survey and ISP record points to dramatic increases in spam, sometimes as much as 300 percent year over year. One reliable indicator of the problem's magnitude is the size of the anti-spam effort. The range of tools available to ISPs, enterprises and consumers in the fight against spam grew considerably during the Web bubble. Simultaneously, heavyweight Web marketers and interactive ad players have been scrambling to distinguish their services from the bad guys, as well as to counteract growing calls for government controls on digital marketing.
In one of the biggest such moves, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), through its subsidiary, the Association of Interactive Marketing (AIM), has released online commercial solicitation guidelines in an effort to promote high ethical standards among marketers. The rules require that members let e-mail recipients know how they can refuse future mailings and allow consumers to prevent the sale or rental of their addresses
Minggu, 18 April 2010
Digging into spam and filtering services
If you talk to anyone who uses email, spam is something that is frequently on there mind. How often is it that you open your inbox checking for an email from your mom, and you end up with emails with subjective titles involving animals, and foreign objects.
There are ways to fight back against Spam, and one of the most popular is through the use of a spam filtering service. There is all different types of spam, and surprisingly not all of them involve email. Most spamming involves the advertising or otherwise promotion of a product, however this is not true in some cases.
Most common types of spamming include: Email spam, Link spam and search engine spam.
Email Spam is the simple act of sending out massive amounts of 'junk email' to anyone and everyone, in order to promote a product. Often times spamming has been exploited by more 'undergorund' industries such as the adult industry, but it would be unfair to say that other industries haven't used it as well.
Link Spam is a form of spamming or spamdexing that recently became publicized most often when targeting the increasingly popular weblogs. Weblogs is one of the biggest problems, however link spam also affects guestbooks, and online discussion boards. The purpose behind spamming these various places, is to display hyperlinks to a various page or product, which helps both with user exposure and search engine popularity.
Search engine spam is usually closely related with the above "link spam", as it is the process of creating countless numbers of pages, that populate search engines. Often times these pages will be full of garbage text and have no real value on there own. When a user visits them, they will either be re-directed to a completely different page, often times on another domain, or show prominent advertising.
Everyone can take their part in removing spam. The easiest way for a general user to not encourage spam, is not to use it. Spammers only spam, because it must be effective, otherwise they would find something better to do with their time. It is also recommended to get various levels of personal spam protection, which is often times included with anti-virus software. 3rd party solutions such as Hotmail, have very good spam detection, however often times spam will leak in, and in that case you can help hotmail out by notifying them of the occurence, so that they can better help protect you next time.
There are ways to fight back against Spam, and one of the most popular is through the use of a spam filtering service. There is all different types of spam, and surprisingly not all of them involve email. Most spamming involves the advertising or otherwise promotion of a product, however this is not true in some cases.
Most common types of spamming include: Email spam, Link spam and search engine spam.
Email Spam is the simple act of sending out massive amounts of 'junk email' to anyone and everyone, in order to promote a product. Often times spamming has been exploited by more 'undergorund' industries such as the adult industry, but it would be unfair to say that other industries haven't used it as well.
Link Spam is a form of spamming or spamdexing that recently became publicized most often when targeting the increasingly popular weblogs. Weblogs is one of the biggest problems, however link spam also affects guestbooks, and online discussion boards. The purpose behind spamming these various places, is to display hyperlinks to a various page or product, which helps both with user exposure and search engine popularity.
Search engine spam is usually closely related with the above "link spam", as it is the process of creating countless numbers of pages, that populate search engines. Often times these pages will be full of garbage text and have no real value on there own. When a user visits them, they will either be re-directed to a completely different page, often times on another domain, or show prominent advertising.
Everyone can take their part in removing spam. The easiest way for a general user to not encourage spam, is not to use it. Spammers only spam, because it must be effective, otherwise they would find something better to do with their time. It is also recommended to get various levels of personal spam protection, which is often times included with anti-virus software. 3rd party solutions such as Hotmail, have very good spam detection, however often times spam will leak in, and in that case you can help hotmail out by notifying them of the occurence, so that they can better help protect you next time.
Kamis, 15 April 2010
What Is Spam?
You have probably seen an increase in the amount of junk mail which shows up in your email box, or on your favorite newsgroup. The activities of a small number of people are becoming a bigger problem for the Internet.
Chain letters that ask for money, whether for reports or just straight up, are illegal in the US whether they are in postal mail or e-mail. Report these frauds to your local US Postmaster. You may see e-mail coming from Nigeria or another African country, sent by someone who wants to use your bank account to transfer 20 million dollars. This is called a '419' scam and people have been killed over it.
Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender. To the recipient, spam is easily recognizable. If you hired someone to read your mail and discard the spam, they would have little trouble doing it. How much do we have to do, short of AI, to automate this process? I think we will be able to solve the problem with fairly simple algorithms. In fact, I've found that you can filter present-day spam acceptably well using nothing more than a Bayesian combination of the spam probabilities of individual words. Using a slightly tweaked (as described below) Bayesian filter, we now miss less than 5 per 1000 spams, with 0 false positives.
One particularly nasty variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.) Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.
Chain letters that ask for money, whether for reports or just straight up, are illegal in the US whether they are in postal mail or e-mail. Report these frauds to your local US Postmaster. You may see e-mail coming from Nigeria or another African country, sent by someone who wants to use your bank account to transfer 20 million dollars. This is called a '419' scam and people have been killed over it.
Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender. To the recipient, spam is easily recognizable. If you hired someone to read your mail and discard the spam, they would have little trouble doing it. How much do we have to do, short of AI, to automate this process? I think we will be able to solve the problem with fairly simple algorithms. In fact, I've found that you can filter present-day spam acceptably well using nothing more than a Bayesian combination of the spam probabilities of individual words. Using a slightly tweaked (as described below) Bayesian filter, we now miss less than 5 per 1000 spams, with 0 false positives.
One particularly nasty variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.) Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.
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