| Methods of Spam Filtering |
Whether you use your email account for business or
for pleasure it doesn't matter to the spammer, all the
matters to them is getting their message across to
seem to start getting more and more and we are left
wondering how the spammers got our email account
address in the first place. Spammers 'harvest' our
email addresses off the Internet. If you have ever
posted your email address anywhere on the Internet
such as a forum then chances are you are being
signed to a spammers mailing list as we speak.
Many people class spam as unsolicited and
commercial when it really should merely be classes
as automated. As that is the way spammers send
their mail; it is automated. However it should be
noted that if you are signed up to newsletters or if you
have purchased anything from the Internet you will still
be sent emails about these things even though these
are also classed as being automated.
The most common content of spam messages are
products being advertised, which makes up 25% of
spam messages, financial messages, which is 20%
of spam messages, adult content, 19% of spam sent
and health/pharmaceuticals being 7% of the spam
that we receive. All of these aspects make up the 90
billion spam messages that are sent everyday, which
makes up 80-85% of all of our incoming emails.
The one thing that spammers have to do is to deliver
their message. Although spammers seem to get
around all other forms of barriers that are created
through the use of spam filters, so if we can create
filters that can stop spam primarily on the message
there would be no way of getting around it. This
would work, for example, if you set the filter to look
for the word click. Just by doing this and setting your
filter to stop one word you would catch 79.7% of
spam emails. So what would happen if spammers
sent their messages containing merely images? Well
some spammers already do this and sometimes get
caught but if you want to ensure that you catch all of
them you can set your filter to scan for HTML as well
as the text of your message. This will work due to the
fact the email message will more than likely contain a
URL to a spam site as well as containing text with the
image name that will be deemed as spam by your
filter.
One thing that is worse than receiving spam emails
however is getting false positives blocked by your
filter. False positives are genuine emails that we
wish to receive that get caught up in our email filters.
When the filters that we are using becomes
extremely good at what they are designed to do we
start to not notice what these filters are catching,
meaning that we could be losing genuine mail. To
stop this from happening it is important that you keep
a check on what your spam filter is doing.
Helen is the web master of MySpamBin, specialists
in all of your Spam Filtering needs.
http://www.myspambin.com/articles/showarticle.asp?
article=425&cat=1
for pleasure it doesn't matter to the spammer, all the
matters to them is getting their message across to
seem to start getting more and more and we are left
wondering how the spammers got our email account
address in the first place. Spammers 'harvest' our
email addresses off the Internet. If you have ever
posted your email address anywhere on the Internet
such as a forum then chances are you are being
signed to a spammers mailing list as we speak.
Many people class spam as unsolicited and
commercial when it really should merely be classes
as automated. As that is the way spammers send
their mail; it is automated. However it should be
noted that if you are signed up to newsletters or if you
have purchased anything from the Internet you will still
be sent emails about these things even though these
are also classed as being automated.
The most common content of spam messages are
products being advertised, which makes up 25% of
spam messages, financial messages, which is 20%
of spam messages, adult content, 19% of spam sent
and health/pharmaceuticals being 7% of the spam
that we receive. All of these aspects make up the 90
billion spam messages that are sent everyday, which
makes up 80-85% of all of our incoming emails.
The one thing that spammers have to do is to deliver
their message. Although spammers seem to get
around all other forms of barriers that are created
through the use of spam filters, so if we can create
filters that can stop spam primarily on the message
there would be no way of getting around it. This
would work, for example, if you set the filter to look
for the word click. Just by doing this and setting your
filter to stop one word you would catch 79.7% of
spam emails. So what would happen if spammers
sent their messages containing merely images? Well
some spammers already do this and sometimes get
caught but if you want to ensure that you catch all of
them you can set your filter to scan for HTML as well
as the text of your message. This will work due to the
fact the email message will more than likely contain a
URL to a spam site as well as containing text with the
image name that will be deemed as spam by your
filter.
One thing that is worse than receiving spam emails
however is getting false positives blocked by your
filter. False positives are genuine emails that we
wish to receive that get caught up in our email filters.
When the filters that we are using becomes
extremely good at what they are designed to do we
start to not notice what these filters are catching,
meaning that we could be losing genuine mail. To
stop this from happening it is important that you keep
a check on what your spam filter is doing.
Helen is the web master of MySpamBin, specialists
in all of your Spam Filtering needs.
http://www.myspambin.com/articles/showarticle.asp?
article=425&cat=1
|
| Methods of Spam Filtering By Helen Cox |
Spam is an annoyance that has
been around as long as the Internet
itself. Every one of us who has an
active email account and who is a
frequent user of the Internet has
more than likely experienced the
growing problem of spam at some
point. (continued below ...)
been around as long as the Internet
itself. Every one of us who has an
active email account and who is a
frequent user of the Internet has
more than likely experienced the
growing problem of spam at some
point. (continued below ...)
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