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Email was the killer app of the Internet, but now it seems to be
killing the bandwidth, thanks to spam. While its impossible to completely get
rid of spam, you can reduce it by following various measures. One is rules based
blocking, which is not sufficient because spammers will always find new ids,
subjects, and body text to send you spam. The next level is using anti-spam
software at the client as well as servers level. These tools use sophisticated
algorithms to filter spam, and also keep updating their filters with fresh
rules. You can also subscribe to DNS blacklists, such as mail-abuse.org and
spamhaus. org, which keep a list of known spamming domains. Even these measures
are not enough. To fight spam effectively, its also important to know how it
is generated and spreads. Plus, you also need proper anti-spam policies.
How Spam is Generated
It all starts when spammers manage to get hold of your email address. The
most common way is when you register with a website, perhaps to download
software or purchase a product. The website could belong to a spammer, or it
might be in the business of selling its mailing databases. Either way you figure
in the spammers list and start receiving unsolicited mail. Subscribing to
newsletters is another common cause of spam. You could do it unknowingly or
worse someone else subscribes you to mailing lists. In such a case, you could
either ignore the deluge of mail or check out the websites (if they have one) of
each newsletter for legitimacy. This is important because most spammers provide
an unsubscribe link in their email. If you try to unsubscribe from the link,
then the spammer gets a confirmation of your existence, and starts sending you
even more spam. So as a rule of thumb, dont fall for the
"unsubscribe" bit in spam mail.
Its also important to know about Web bugs. These are clear or
transparent graphic images, merely 1x1 pixel in size that can be placed in email
or Web pages. These are used to monitor the usage patterns of websites or email.
While the Web bug points to the website from where the image has to be
downloaded, it also sends information about the users machine to the website.
This information can be the IP address and the Web browser used of the machine.
Spammers can use Web bugs to confirm the presence of an email address so they
can continue spamming. Web bugs use cookies for sending back information, so
blocking cookies can stop Web bugs from sending your personal information.
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Some Useful
Anti-spam Tools |
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yMail :
yMail is a stand-alone, portable email client with integrated
spam-tackling capabilities good enough to make it one of the contenders in
our shootout. The portable bit means that you can carry it around on a USB
drive as it can be configured to store mail, contact information and the
likes in the same folder as the program files. You can download this from www.spacejock.com/yMail.html
SpamAware:
This tool is very similar to SPAMfighter in terms of look, feel and
functionalityinfact we had to closely re-examine the two to really
appreciate the differences. For example, its default behavior is to mark
junk mail by adding a prefix SPAM to the subject, while SPAMfighter
moves it to a folder it creates. Of course, you can then create a filter
in your e-mail client to move all mail with a prefix SPAM to trash else
you desire. You can download it from www.jam-software.com
SPAMfighter
SPAMfighter sits inside Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, and
monitors incoming mail on all accounts.It compares the mail against
locally configured blacklists and whitelists as well as rules that are
periodically downloaded from a central server. Mails that are identified
as spam are moved to a separate folder within Outlook/OE, which you can
browse later, if necessary, to ensure that no useful mail was junked
and/or clean the folder. You can get it from www.spamfighter.com
Mailwasher
Free/ Pro
Mailwasher is like an e-mail
popper with advanced spam filtering capabilities. You set up an e-mail
account just like in an e-mail client and it downloads the mail headers
for you to preview, while marking the spam it can identify. The free
version identifies spam using built-in filters and, of course, allows you
to manually mark spam. it is available freely at www.mailwasher.net
Letterman
Spam Control Pro
This is perhaps the most feature rich tool amongst the ones we gave a run
during the shootout. It can operate in multiple modesas a standalone
popper to filter out your mail before download which you can use,
say, at the start of the day when youre checking mail for the first
time. And for the rest of the day, you can use it as a proxy server, an
intermediary between your email client and server that not only filters
out spam but also blocks hostile links in other email. You can get it from
www.whatlink.com |
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