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Internet Security
Spam
Filtering Does It Actually Work?
In an age dominated by computers, the Internet,
and email, spam filtering has become very important to a lot
of people. Perhaps the biggest push against spam is coming
from the Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). For them, spam
is a problem because it drives away new customers. It also
clogs their servers up and slows things down altogether. To
help, they subscribe to spam prevention and filtering programs
as well as offer spam filtering for their customers use. Does
the spam filtering work, though? It does, but depending on
the spammer and the spam filter it works to varying degrees.
One
ISP offers a spam filter that works on color-coding. Your
email messages are marked in colors representing three different
kinds of senders. The types are known senders, unknown senders,
and known bulk emailers. The same ISP offers a button that
allows you to report the spam directly to them. ISP’s use these
filters to allow the option to report the spam so that they
can track down and pursue action against the companies. Spam
filters such as these are fairly effective, but are more so
when users do report the spam to the ISP. The more spammers
they can place on their list, the more they can filter out
before it hits your inbox.
A
second ISP uses software they developed. The software is
an intelligent program of sorts. It identifies the spam based
on its intuitive nature and characteristics of spam emails.
It then intercepts the email and sends it straight to a junk
mail box. This particular filter program has, so far, proven
to be highly effective. It has shown itself to be even more
so than the three-category filter used by the other ISP.
Another
spam filtering method is a downloadable program. Downloadable
programs are generally available online to be downloaded onto
your machine. There are hundreds of free spam-filtering programs
available on line. Many of these download programs are based
on rules. Rules-based means that these programs filter the
emails by watching for certain words or programming patters.
The software will look for certain words (Viagra, etc.). It
may also look for emails with excessive HTML in the body of
the message, which may show that it is a spam email. Such programs
could be classified as “better than nothing,” but overall are
not real effective in eliminating spam from your email inbox.
Most companies who spam know how to get around the free downloadable
software applications with rules.
Another
type of spam filter is one that is downloadable at a cost. In this particular filter, there is a peer-to-peer
network involved. When the filter misses a spam email, it messages
all of the other users of the program to catch that address
in the future.
Yet
another filter, that is actually very effective, bounces
the emails back. They are returned to the sender of
the spam as “undeliverable.” The idea is that perhaps the sender
will
think the email address is bad and remove it from the email
list they are using. This type of program has proven to be
very effective and can be had for less than $30. I've used
this one (called Mailwasher) for years.
There are some programs that will filter the spam and automatically
send a complaint to the spammer’s email as well as his ISP.
The problem with this type of software is that even though
it sounds like a good idea, it is a bit counterproductive.
Spammers often hijack email accounts to send their mail, which
means the complaints end up going to completely innocent and
ignorant emailers.
The
world we live in is becoming increasingly reliant on email
as a mode of communication, both personally and in the business
world. As with any technology or advancement, there are those
who look to use it as a way to make a quick buck. Though you
may not see how, spammers do what they do because either it
helps theSpam filtering software, because of this is
becoming more and more popular.m make money or they think it will.
It is not always the most effective means of curbing spam,
but in many cases it does a good enough job to be worth having.
Save yourself a lot of time and inbox space by getting a good
spam filtering software application.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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