from David B Smith

Spam Solutions

Dave’s Quest for the ultimate anti spam package

Searching for the perfect Anti Spam appliance can be like the quest for the Holy Grail. You’re never quite sure whether what you’re looking for really exists.

There are a variety of solutions on offer, ranging from disposable email addresses to getting your own anti spam exchange server. I’ve tried most of them. I don’t think I’ve discovered the anti spam software Grail yet, but I’ve made some important discoveries.

Do you need a Spam Solution?

It’s curious. We accept unsolicited advertising in most areas of life. We didn’t ask for advertising on TV or radio, yet we don’t refer to it as spam. We certainly don’t ask for billboards, as if we need something to stare at on our way to work, and yet we don’t normally complain either, and when we do, it tends to be about content, not about the fact that we didn’t ‘opt in’ to billboard advertising as a medium. Yet when unsolicited advertising comes to us in the form of email, we tend to get very upset and not a little self-righteous. What’s the difference?

I assume the difference is that it’s harder to deal with.

With the TV or radio, we simply change channels. With newspapers and billboards, there’s always something else to look at. Yet when unsolicited emails fill our inbox, we can’t just ignore them and hope they’ll go away. At the very least, we have to delete them. And given that spammers routinely try to make their rubbish look like something we were expecting, we have to spend time sorting the wheat from the chaff. When there are only a handful of tares in the wheat, this is manageable. But the longer you stay online, the larger that handful becomes.

Three types of Anti Spam Solutions

1. Prevention is better than cure

Perhaps the most obvious solution is to avoid getting on the spammers’ mailing list in the first place. Some people suggest that if you follow a few basic rules and never give out your email address to companies that you don’t know, you will never end up on spam lists.

Unfortunately this only works up to a point. I’ve found over the years that I get plenty of spam to addresses that I never give out. How do the spammers get me? They generate random addresses until they find me!

The spammers pick major players – AOL, Hotmail, etc. – and send out a million emails to dave000@aol.com, dave002@aol.com, dave003@aol.com, etc. From a million, perhaps only a thousand emails don’t bounce back, but that means they’ve found 1000 real people, and they’ll now keep those addresses, mail to them again, and sell the addresses to other spammers!

Bottom line: you can’t avoid the spammers forever.

Of course, you can keep changing email addresses and so keep one step ahead of the spammers. Disposable email addresses are not hard to find nowadays. The problem here though is that you end up wasting more time than you save. Keeping all your contacts up to date with your ever-changing email address is likely to consume far more time than a daily clean-out of your inbox?

2. Anti Spam Inbox Filters

The second type of spam appliances are those that sort through the email that is in your inbox and throw it out before you get to it.

These programs generally require both an initial anti spam software purchase and an ongoing subscription, as file definitions continually need to be updated.

This type of solution is superior to thinking that you can avoid being spammed. It is not ideal though. Three reasons:

It can be quite expensive.

The spam is still downloaded to your inbox. This can take up a lot of time if you’re receiving between two and three hundred spams per day (as I do).

It is never 100% accurate. The technology of offensive weaponry always stays ahead of defensive weaponry. Hence spammers will most likely always be a step ahead of those who are trying to keep them out. Some spam will get through, and even more importantly, some emails you wanted to receive will be mistakenly weeded out as spam!

Now admittedly, with this last problem, most inbox-based anti spam solutions do allow you to review the emails that they’ve flagged as spam before you delete them, but this takes you back to the task of sorting through all your emails, and the whole idea of your anti spam appliance is that it’s supposed to free you up from doing this!

3. Server-based Anti Spam Solutions

In my opinion, server-based Anti Spam solutions are the way to go.

Most commonly, this solution just invokes filters, similar to those used in the inbox-based anti spam solutions. But the difference is that you don’t have to waste time waiting for the rubbish to download nor do you spend time installing updated filter definitions every week.

Another type of server-based anti spam filter is that used by Spam Arrest, who are my Anti Spam Appliance of choice.

What makes Spam Arrest different is that they don’t actually filter anybody out. They just bounce back an email to the sender, asking them if they will identify themselves as a real human being.

The system works on the assumption that most spammers are not personally sending and receiving their emails, but have mindless machines that do it for them. So when some machine sends you an email automatically, it will reside in the ‘unverified’ box on your server until you decide to either verify it or let the system delete it after a few months.

Spam Arrest is not the only company that takes this approach. There may be better systems out there by now? Look around for yourself. Check out the various options. I can’t tell you with certainty which software anti spam solution is the best one for you, but I’d encourage you to be clear about one thing. The problem with spam is that it wastes time. Beware of spam solutions that waste as much time as they save!

from Julia Gulevich

In this article we’ll continue talking about how to create a healthy email message and give a few tips how to survive anti-spam filters. Anti-spam filters catch every incoming email before it is delivered into the inbox and review it. They use a scoring system to classify an email as spam or legitimate. These filters (you might have heard about SpamAssassin, SpamProbe, or SpamCombat) look for certain patterns in the message, and assign “spam points” to it based on certain criteria: words, phrases, or even colors.

Depending on what these filters find or don’t find in the message, points are added to or taken away from a scoring system. If the message score is 5.0 or higher, the filters add the *SPAM* word to the subject line of the message and the email is redirected to a “bulk” or “junk” mailbox. The lesser the score the better.

So, one of the main concerns when writing an email newsletter is to ensure that it is structured in a way that will allow it “pass” this test. I’ll go to the point and give you a few tips you may follow:

1) Check what you put in the subject line

The subject line is one area of your e-mail that is carefully examined. For example, if you type a recipient’s name in the message subject like “To: [recipient's name]“, your message will get 2.86 points because of this. If there is a lot of white space in the subject line, the email gets 2.64 points added to the score. The word FREE written in caps “weighs” additional 1.10 points.

If you put a date into the subject line, you can take off 0.48 points. And you can take one full point off if your subject contains a newsletter header!

2) Keep your message size from 20K to 50K

The size of the message does matter for anti-spam filters. The majority of spam emails are less than 20K. So, you can actually get 0.71 taken from your score if your message in within the 20K to 50K range.

3) Be wise with CAPS

If you use too many capital letters in your message, you’ll get 0.21 points added to your score. So, use them wisely!

4) Use full hyperlinks

If you use a hyperlink in your email, make sure you put the http:// at the beginning. A spam filter will add 1.28 points to your emails if you don’t!

5) Be restrained with colors

Different colors do matter too. Blue adds 0.21 points, red 0.33 points, and Magenta 0.44. The background color other than white adds 0.317 points to the message score. The Black is optimum as it won’t add or take any points off.

6) Be a welcome guest

Send your recipients an e-mail after they have “opted in” at you site, and have them confirm that yes, you have permission to send the newsletters to them. This will help in the case if you need to prove you are not spamming, and that people want to receive the emails from you.

Have your recipients add you to their address books or white lists and your messages won’t have to pass through anti-spam filters.

7) Beware of Blacklists!

Blacklists are databases of known spammers that ISPs regularly check. You may be added to a blacklist without you knowing it if one of your recipients clicks on the “this is spam” button. If you are blacklisted, contact the server provider immediately.

Test your message

Use a spam checker to test your message before you send it out to the world. A message content checker can help locate potential problems prior to distribution. It runs your receiver and sender addresses, subject line, and message content past a collection of rules. It then reports the result and tells you whether your message is likely to be filtered. Most checkers suggest a score of 5.0 will get your email sent to the spam scrap heap. One of our favorite free checkers is the Lyris’ Content Checker. Lyris ContentChecker filters your message through several hundred Spam Assassin tests to determine if it has characteristics typical of unsolicited “spam” mail. Just fill in the blanks, including your email text or the full HTML coding, and submit it. You’ll get an instant score on the next screen and a more detailed report by return email. This report highlights the factors used to evaluate your message, and may help you to make further improvements to it.

9) Don’t use the “spammers” e-mail software

Anti-spam filtering systems are aware of some of the favorite email programs that professional spammers use and they add on as many as 3 points if you send the messages with those program. Be sure to check the ISP’s “hit list” to see what email software are on it. Remember that the anti-spam filters are not perfect and they often happen to be “over protective”. They can give the “false negatives” and “false positives” results after the message analysis. A false negative is when a pure spam email gets through the filter, and a false positive is when a legitimate email ends in the “junk” box flagged as spam.

Around 150 companies now offer spam filtering software. The number of anti-spam techniques is growing and anti-spam technology is getting “smarter” too. For example, some servers (challenge systems) send an email back to the original sender and require a reply before they forward the email to the recipient. The idea behind this is that only a human can reply to a request for specific information. America Online recently announced a new spam filter that can actually “learn” the preferences of each of their subscribers.

from Robert Snoog

Would you like to catch and delete spam before it reaches your inbox? Self learning system based on your spam and good email detects spam with great precision and accuracy, adapts to new types of spam, stops viruses and malicious code.

It’s easy if you receive several unsolicited emails per day. But if you get tens or hundreds spam messages every day, it’s a real problem. That’s why you need an anti-spam filter. The anti-spam program will relieve you from a tedious manual work when you have to delete all garbage from your inbox by hand. Plus, you save your valuable time, bandwidth and money!

G-Lock SpamCombat is a complex anti-spam solution that combines Bayesian filtering with customizable rules. It scans the email messages while they are still in your POP3 account, and can automatically delete spam on the server, so that it is not even downloaded to your email program.

This is a simple, easy to use anti-spam software and has powerful features to stop spam & viruses. It’s a standalone easy-to-use anti-spam filter, which deletes about 99% spam emails before you download them with your email client.

Even though the email is deleted from your POP account, you can still browse through the deleted items and recover any mail if needed (similar to Windows Recycle bin).

The Bayesian filter option allows G-Lock SpamCombat to learn from your actions, so all you have to do is mark a message as spam or good and the program automatically adjusts its filter settings to become more accurate.

This Software is a Shareware, the Price is $35. The publisher is glocksoft.

The latest G-Lock SpamCombat version is 2.65.0.650, the File size is 4.1 MB. In addition, you can configure custom rules for messages that should always be deleted or accepted, remove viruses and malicious code and more. Additional features include statistical graphs, HTML tag filtering and more.

from Jake Foster


Computer and the related technologies are very much in use today. People and businesses depend on different soft wares and programs to work and to do many tasks which may be very important to them. The internet, e-mails and the computer and IT in general are very helpful in this regard but there are certain problems which reduce the efficiency of these technologies.

Spam e-mails and computer viruses are two such problems. All the people who use computer in a routine and have a dependence on this machine know how problematic the viruses and the spam e-mails can be for you. Your precious time can be wasted due to these and along with that the viruses may also destroy the very important records or data. Anti spam anti virus solution is very important for making the computer and related technology dependable for you. There are many online companies which offer you the anti spam anti virus solution. Some of them are really good and can make your life much easier. Some such companies have their on line interface but they also work otherwise.

Spam e-mails are those e-mails for which the sender has not taken permission form the recipient. The mails are generally mass e-mails but a personal e-mail for which the permission has not been taken from the recipient can be classified as spam.

As spam e-mails are becoming more of a problem, anti spam anti virus solution has become more important in the recent past. Now let’s see what the viruses are. Viruses generally come from the minds of the evil geniuses.

Viruses are programs which have all the abilities to destroy or reduce the efficiency of other programs. As these programs are a problem, anti spam anti virus solution becomes very important for us. Both, the spam e-mails and the viruses, disturb the business environment in general. People are tired of these two problems and thus the anti spam anti virus solution is of importance to people. Anti spam anti virus solution makes your time more paying and more productive as the two major disturbances are no more there.

Anti spam anti virus solutions are very important to us. They make our life easier. One of such solutions is the e-mail fire walls. These firewalls are capable of stopping the bombardment of e-mails in our e-mail boxes. By using these firewalls our e-mail addresses and the connection is completely hidden from the spammers and the viruses. This makes the intranet safe at least. There are many companies who offer different types of anti spam anti virus solutions. You can learn a lot about the anti spam anti virus solutions if you search for them online.

Many companies offer their services in this regard. The online solutions are better in the sense that you can compare the prices of the available anti spam anti virus solutions before you go for the actual purchase.

Many companies are providing the anti spam anti virus solution to their clients but you have to know your own requirements before you go for one. It depends on the sensitivity of your data and the level of accuracy you want to retain in your data. The price you can afford is another factor. All these factors will help you decide what type of anti spam anti virus solution will suit you.

from Chad Kiser


ed email, known widely as spam, is a terrible inconvenience most Internet surfers face on a daily basis. Nowadays, its pretty easy to assume that there are more spam mails sent daily than real email messages worldwide.

Did you know that spam email could be more than just annoying? It can be downright dangerous to your financial and personal identity. Did you know that email spam is the top choice to steal information that is used today by Cyber-criminals and other organized online criminals.

How do they do this? It’s quite simple really. The spam messages they send are called phishing emails. The emails often appear to be legitimate messages from companies you conduct business with. It could be your bank, your school, a credit card company or some other website.

In the message, the cyber-criminal will state that you need to verify your account information. The message you receive will most likely include a link to a website that looks like a real website. The problem is that it is not. The website they send you to is nothing more than a data-harvesting website where they attempt to get you to outright give them your bank account numbers, social security number, credit card number, website passwords and other sensitive data.

How can you prevent this from happening to you? One simple step is to use spam filtering or blocking software in your email inbox. Now we are going to talk about the options you have for downloading free spam blockers and other software that will attempt to prevent spam from appearing in your inbox for FREE.

The first option is to use Google’s GMail, Microsoft Hotmail or Yahoo Mail as your email client. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft spend tens of millions of dollars each year developing spam blocking technology and you benefit from it for free with your account. All three of these providers offer POP3 email functionality, which means you can download other email into your webmail and use the spam filtering software to weed out spam messages, phishing emails and other unwanted mail.

If you prefer to use a POP3 email client on your computer, such as Outlook, Eudora or Windows Mail, you may want to consider a program like SpamFighter, POPFile or SpamPal. These are just a few examples.

These programs attach onto your email client and test each email that arrives in your email box. Questionable emails are normally delegated to a spam folder and outright dangerous emails can be deleted automatically if you choose.

The software use blacklist data and other features to weedout spam emails and determine legitimate messages. Sometimes legitimate messages will be flagged as spam, but you can setup rules to prevent this from happening again.

Although today there is no perfect spam prevention or anti-spam software on the market, using the techniques outlined here will go a long way in cutting down on the number of spam messages in your inbox each day.