We'll look at each type of spam filter and at the end you should be able to decide what spam filter is right for you.

Integrated spam filters

This type of spam filtering software is the most common. Once installed it sits "on top" of your existing email software and installs a new set of buttons into your email software. In future when you collect email you'll see options for marking email as Spam, marking the email as Not Spam, Bounce the email back to sender, etc. The description and position of these buttons varies from one product to the next but their purpose remains the same.

Most integrated spam filters automatically place suspected junk email into a separate folder on your PC for you to review or delete later on.

Sunday, April 15, 2007 | Views 105 | Comment(0)

Why Your ISP Takes Bribes From Spammers

tag : Why. ISP. Takes. Bribes. From. Spammers.

The lifeblood of the spammer is email. They need to be able to send lots of it on an ongoing basis to stay in "business". High profile spammers can send 80 million pieces of junk email every single day. Yes one single person.

ISPs all over the online world have vowed to stop spammers sending such vast amounts of email through their mail servers. Do they really keep their word? All the end user sees is that the spam keeps coming. There must be a loophole there somewhere. There is.

In the soft white underbelly of the internet there exists something known as a pink contract. The term pink contract comes from the color of the famous tinned meat that junk email gets its name from. A pink contract is simply a business agreement between the ISP and the spammer. The spammer agrees to pay the ISP to turn a blind eye to the junk email passing through their mail servers.

Surely this is bad business for the ISP? Well the answer to that is both Yes and No. Yes it's bad news for the people who receive the junk email and No it's good news for the ISPs bank balance. A monthly pink contract can pay the ISP amounts from $10,000 upwards. Bearing in mind that the average work-at-home spammer averages $100,000 net per year the above figure is small change fo the bigger junk email vendors (the guys who earn $200,000 - $400,000 per month.)

Sunday, April 15, 2007 | Views 70 | Comment(0)

Email Spam and Phishing

tag : Email. Spam. Phishing.

It seems like the volume of email spam has doubled in the last month. Increasingly, we receive daily emails for better mortgage rates, pharmaceutical discounts, and offers to enlarge body parts we don't even have.

The next generation of sophisticated tools is available to email spammers. Hidden code can be embedded into email allowing the sender to track it. A "spam beacon" lets the sender know that this is a valid, live, email address. The sender can also tell if you've opened the email before you tossed it. "Nearly half of all spam is bugged with so-called "spam beacons" for tracking users who open junk mail, said e-mail filtering firm MX."

The latest email scams have also evolved. The newest scams are called phishing attacks. Spammers copy and paste web coding, making their email message appear to be official. They provide links to "look alike" websites where they try to trick you into revealing your personal financial information, by asking you to update an account such as Ebay, PayPal or CitiBank (or other well known entities). Phishing attacks are successful 5% of the time.

Sunday, April 15, 2007 | Views 63 | Comment(0)

Is Your Email Address Blacklisted?

tag : Email. Address. Blacklisted.

A lady emailed me yesterday very upset over the fact that her friend's Internet Service Provider (ISP) wasn't delivering important email messages.

This lack of delivery caused a real problem for the two of them with ruined plans, missed appointments, and just plain inconvenience.

If you don't use email, this might not sounds like a "big deal."

But this problem of non-delivery has dramatically affected the way businesses use email and is now about to reach epidemic proportions for consumers using email.

To put things into perspective, imagine if every time you dialed a friend's phone number you had no idea whether it would ring or not.

Now imagine how frustrated you would feel over time if you kept dialing the same number and it never rang for you, but others could get through and your friend's phone number never changed.

That's exactly how you'll feel when your personal emails start getting blocked for seemingly no reason.

Sunday, April 15, 2007 | Views 116 | Comment(6)

Faster Browsing Tips

tag : Faster. Browsing. Tips.

IF WE say that it was mainly because of the Windows operating system that a Computer could become a personal computer it would not be an exaggeration. The revolution is still on. Windows is far beyond what a common man presently knows and uses.

Internet surfing

For searching something, search engines are being used. However, if you know a Windows trick, then searching for information on the Net may become easy, all you need to do is simply locate the address bar in Internet Explorer and write in the phrase that you want to search on the Internet. Here it is important to remember the Internet Explorer (IE) recognizes a phrase and not a single word. If it's a single word, then Internet, Explorer assumes it as a domain name and attempts to create a URL in its place. However key in a few words and IE will run your phrase through a search engine on Microsoft's Web site.

If you want to search for a single word then you should put a question mark at the beginning of the line to tell IE that this is a search keyword. The same thing applies to the Netscape Communicator also and searching the Web is as easy using the Netscape as it is with IE.

Sunday, April 15, 2007 | Views 210 | Comment(205)