A Guide to Spam-Junk Mail-Unsolicited EmailEmail spam ,junk mail, Unsolicited Email is mail you receive that you don't want or didn't ask for and is sent by someone you don't even know. Here we will look at what it is, how it arises and how to control it. Why do People Spam?Every week we get a magazine from the local supermarket in our normal mail. This mail I didn't request, but I don't really mind it, and sometimes I even look at what offers they have, and yes sometimes I even buy something because of it. Now in the world of paper that small magazine costs money to print and money to distribute. In the email world it is essentially free! This means that regardless of the number of people who actually end up buying something based on the contents of the spam email message they can still make a profit, as they have no printing or distribution costs. How Spammers get your Email Address?There are many mechanisms by which spammers get the email addresses of their victims. The most popular ones are :
How to Control SpamAn ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.-Benjamin Franklin -- So see my 5 top tips to avoid spamRegardless of how careful you may be you will probably eventually appear on a spammers list and because of the nature of how spam works very soon you will appear on other spammers lists. Therefore you need to look a ways of filtering or blocking the spam before it appears in your inbox. In general there are three filtering mechanisms that can be used. They are:
Word Filters This is the most common mechanism used. Most Spam filters use a set of rules or keywords to
determine if a message is spam or not. Example: If an email message contains one
of the words that your spam filter is looking for, that message is marked as
spam. White Lists and Black ListsThese are like two sides to a coin "heads or tails". A black list is a list of addresses that you don't want to hear from. Adding an email address to your black list means any messages received from that email address will either be deleted or quarantined depending on the system. You can create your own black list or subscribe to a free or commercial list. See Spamhaus block list. However see False Positives below White listsA white list is a list of addresses that you want to receive email from (your contacts). Adding an email address to your white list means that any messages received from that email address will not be blocked by the Spam filters and will be delivered directly to your inbox! White lists can be used to stop the Spam filtering of messages only from specific email addresses. Using white lists helps reduce the number of false positives as it takes you most important contacts out of the spam blocking loop. White lists can however be tedious to maintain as you need to remember to add each new contact to the list. False Positives-The flip side of fighting SpamA False Positive is a legitimate e-mail that is incorrectly blocked by a spam filter because it identifies it as spam. While accidentally deleting email from a friend may be inconvenient, the loss of an email from a customer, client or prospect could be costly. When setting up and configuring anti spam measures and software be aware of the necessity of not blocking legitimate email. There is no point in choosing an anti spam solution that is 100% effective against spam but also blocks 70% of the legitimate email. In "real world" testing, a false-positive rate of 2% or 3% is usually considered to be exceptionally good. Related Articles and Resources:
|