http://justmelpublishing.com/ Articles at Just MEL Publishing Article Directory en-us http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/i-hate-spam-my-thoughts-on-spam-bully.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/i-hate-spam-my-thoughts-on-spam-bully.html Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:41:44 -0500
Spam accounts for 80 to 85% of all emails which just highlight how great the problem with spam is.

You will find out that the markets are all saturated with different kinds of programs and that includes anti-spam software. But the only catch is that no two programs are the same.

This goes on to say that no two program is alike and you'll have to be really savvy when it comes to picking the right anti-spam software.

Spam Bully is the newest anti-spam software that is released from the Bayesian spam filters.

I particular liked how Spam Bully has the capacity to take note of any trend and to learn from them. After getting single out different patterns, Spam Bully can adjust to these patterns and consequently learn from them.

What I mean by this is that the Spam Bully takes note of each message that you tag as a spam and as a legitimate email. Spam Bully can then mark off your emails automatically in the future after learning from you.

You may have to allow 2 weeks before you can successfully see Spam Bully mark emails accurately.

When you try to download the program, you will notice that the program file is relatively small at just 4.5mb so you won't really have to wait to long to get the entire file.

Also, the installation process is simple which makes it glitch free. Once you finally have Spam Bully up, the program will have to take a detailed look at your system before it can "optimize" itself.

The Spam Bully is specially designed for Outlook and Outlook Express users who want to be protected from different kinds of spam. This very specific approach is often undertaken by different companies to show how they can compete in tight markets. ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/a-look-at-spam-bully-the-spam-killer.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/a-look-at-spam-bully-the-spam-killer.html Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:22:54 -0500
Traditional mail has now been replaced by the instantaneous email which makes people from very different points of the world be able to still stay in touch.

We may correspond with important people through e-mail but the only problem is that a few people have tapped into this and made it extremely inconvenient for us.

Spam is 80 to 85% of all the emails sent worldwide.

In order to remedy the problem with spam, all one has to do is to install a good anti-spam program which will be able to filter out emails in one's inbox.

But even if there are plenty of anti-spam softwares, you will really have to sift through a couple of them to find the one that really delivers.

The newest anti-spam program from the line of Bayesian spam filters is Spam Bully. Spam Bully was designed for outlook and outlook express users who are currently having problems with the number of spam that they are receiving in their inboxes right now.

This very specific market approach makes Bayesian a very competitive software developer.

What I particularly like about Spam Bully is that it can mark e-mails as spam or not based on how you would mark these e-mails. It doesn't follow its own standards of what spam is but rather it follows yours.

Spam Bully can track any pattern made by the user when he marks the emails as spam or not himself, learn from this pattern, and do the filtering automatically from there.

Downloading Spam Bully does not typically take long as the program file is only 4.5mb. However, this may have to depend on your internet connection speed.

The installation process is basically seamless but do not be surprised if the program asks to look around your software for a few seconds to "optimize". ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/stay-safe-online-e-crime-guide.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/stay-safe-online-e-crime-guide.html Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:23:55 -0600
Businesses cannot afford to be complacent. Many attacks are not targeted directly at your business but could affect it nonetheless. Theft of data and identity can lead to widespread damage to your clients, reputation and your bottom line. We recommend taking the following steps in order to prevent and combat e-crime, thus helping keep your business safe.

Passwords

Consider the consequences of your passwords being compromised and criminals gaining access to your accounts - money could be stolen, sensitive emails could be read and your business could be seriously damaged. With a ‘weak' password in place this is a serious possibility, so make sure you do the following;

-Always try to use a password of at least eight characters, combining special keys such as £, $, ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/a-short-discussion-on-software-for-anti-spam.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/a-short-discussion-on-software-for-anti-spam.html Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:02:24 -0600
No one wants a box full of spam emails and advertisements. These can be quite a hassle to have to go through to find your actual important emails. With the internet becoming much more of a marketing tool, you will find that more and more emails are being sent as spam.

Spam filters are usually not enough to keep the spam out of your inbox. You may want to find a product that is going to not only guard your email box from spam but will also protect your computer while you are surfing the net.

The main reason to have anti-spam software installed to protect the computer is because Trojans and other worms can be deadly to any computer it gets into. Most of the devastating viruses that cause computers to lock up are delivered by email. There are other ways of delivering them, but emails tend to be easy and quick. When a virus attacks a computer, it can mean that the owner will have to crash the computer and clear it out. After the virus is gone, the computer has to be built back up with the necessary software and programs to run.

Anti-spam software can often help protect your personal information. They put a little security on your emails and most of the programs offer even more protection. Spam is blocked from your inbox and sometimes the spam folder.

This type of security is very important. If not for the filtering process of the software, many computers would not run very long without some kind of problems. The program will block out anything that is known to harm the workings of the computer, whether it is in the form of an email or other ways. Many of the software packages that are available to the public have more than one way of protecting the information in the computer, making the internet a safer place to be.

Anyway you look at it, extra security added to your computer is a good idea. It will not only help you keep spam from getting delivered to your email, it can save the life of the computer by keeping virus carrying emails from getting into your computer. To find the best programs offered to the computer user, visit us.trendmicro.com. ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/reduce-the-junk-in-your-e-mail-with-anti-spam-methods.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/reduce-the-junk-in-your-e-mail-with-anti-spam-methods.html Sun, 10 Jan 2010 06:34:25 -0600
There are a number of ways to protect yourself against spam. On an individual level you can take control of what comes into your inbox. Your email provider works to filter and block unwanted spam. Your email provider will also kick off of their network any individual using their services for the purpose of spam. Anti spam measures are used in their maximum capacity for government agencies as well as research firms.

On an individual basis you can protect yourself from spam by limiting the number of people you correspond with via email, only send emails to people you trust. This is one way of helping prevent spam, but how realistic is it really? If you use your email for business you probably correspond with a number of strangers on a daily basis. Just to be on the safe side, ff you ever get the temptation to respond to a spam message, do not. When you respond you are confirming your email address to the spammer, and more junk mail is sure to come your way.

Your email service provider can also use a number of services or software that assist in filtering the amount of spam you receive in your inbox. Some programs do this by instantly rejecting messages that originate from websites that are known for spam. Another technique is actually analyzing emails you receive and blocking those that look like spam.

E-mail providers will kick off anyone who is caught spamming from their services. This is because as an ordinary person who receives a lot of spam from a particular service provider you will probably put this service on your ignore list, or report as spam. This is definitely bad for business.

Particularly sensitive to their information both incoming and outgoing are research institutions as well as government agencies. For this particular reason, laws have been passed in certain countries making spamming a punishable act by law.

The internet and email have become valuable assets to our personal and business lives. In order to safeguard this new way of living and doing business there are increasing measures being taken by private and public firms to reduce spam and increase internet safety. ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/should-i-look-into-obtaining-anti-spam-software.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/should-i-look-into-obtaining-anti-spam-software.html Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:54:27 -0600
Spam emails have been called by a plethora of different names, however regardless of what you choose to call them the point is they are simply not wanted. We all hate looking at our emails and being overcome with the amount of emails that we have, especially when the larger chunk of these emails are advertisements and things of that nature.

Spam emails are actually the biggest drawback to having your own email account. However, many people will protest that like in the case of anything in this world, you simply cannot have the advantages of something without having a decent amount of drawbacks to go along with it.

The rate of spam emails being sent is actually on the rise. For every 13 pieces of mail that a person receives in their inbox, 13 of these messages are actually considered some kind of spam. An anti-spam software program will help filter these messages out so you will not have to be burdened with them.

The great thing about these software programs, is they are set up specifically to eliminate spam from email boxes. The idea of having your own personal email is innovative, but having to be burdened with advertisements and excess spam mails can become a little frustrating to say the least.

With a wide variety of people actively utilizing the internet for their business affairs, spam emails can get in the way of important emails. In fact, there are a lot of people that have actually made the mistake of deleting a pertinent email that they needed, because they thought that it was spam.

A lot of the software programs that you will obtain will perform a variety of different tasks to help you eliminate excess spam being sent to your inbox. The software will filter out and block email lists, so you will not have to worry about having to unsubscribe to every spam piece of mail that you receive. The software also isolates spam mail so it never has the opportunity to reach your inbox.

If you work in the comfort of your home, or you simply utilize the internet on a daily basis, an anti-spam filter can help you make your internet experience less stressful. ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/why-you-need-anti-spam-protection.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/why-you-need-anti-spam-protection.html Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:30:51 -0600
Todays viruses and spam sofware is not only deadly to your comp, but also, to your identity and financial health as well. Computer programmers are constantly looking for ways to steal your identity or make money from your email address, it's not just about bothersome email any more but more to try and steal vital personal information.

Remember, your email addy is often attached to a variety of important aspects to your life including your credit applications, quite possibly your financial accounts, and of course, most of your online shopping sites as well. All of these places use your email addy to contact you, and it's therefore attached to many different online accounts, and this information is also attached to your personal information somewhere online.

They can use your email address as a start point to find many other facts about you, and these facts could eventually lead them to vital information such as your employment, income, credit accounts and other personal information. This is why it's important to protect yourself from viruses as well as spammers.

Once your identity is taken, they continue to use it for a variety of purposes which can include creating a different identity for you with different pass words, making it extremely difficult to reclaim your self.

Try to remember that behind the spam programmers are some very smart people, who are trying to use your information, but then, there are some very smart people behind anti-spam programs that are trying to block the spam programmers. This means that you need anti-spamware that is up to date and trustworthy to block the wrong people from using your email address.

You'll find a wide assortment of good antispam software available, and it's from some of the best programmers available and also have been blocking spam for years, companies such as Trend Micro . Make sure your antispam program is from a trusted source, whether it's open source or a long associated company.

The reality is, that people are constantly looking for ways to make money, and some of them are looking for ways to make money by stealing it from you and financial institutions. Protect your email address, protect your financial health and make sure you have a good antivirus program as well as a good anti-spam program. ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/buying-that-anti-spam-software-that-works-well.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/buying-that-anti-spam-software-that-works-well.html Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:50:04 -0600
But you need to choose a good software that will help you out, but is something that will work in blocking all those problems too. You have many options that are out there, some are free, but others will cost you money.

That's why it is a very important tool to seek out and purchase if you can't find a good one for free. Yes you can find may anti-spam programs that will not cost you money. However, it may not be the best protection for the usage that you are doing on your system.

When you get all of these things in one software you may end up spending a bit of money. However, when you consider that any of these can ruin your computer and cost you money to repair. The prices really don't seem too bad at all. You will need to research many options out there before you choose one.

For many people their search will include something that will allow some sort of parental structure to where their children can go. This will not only protect your children from those x-rated sites, but possibly from your system getting hooked up with spam and virus problems.

Finding a way to protect your incoming emails and even instant messages is a huge plus. Because these spam and viruses will come in all kinds of packages. Plus you will need to find a program that is updated frequently. See those people who create viruses and send out spam, they never stop creating.

Compare many of these products that are out on the market before you decide on one. Look not only at reviews but what other customers thought of that software. Getting something that combines anti-spam and anti-virus is a big plus when you look around.

Some people feel that a separate program for each is a huge help. However, that is completely up to you as the computer user. Finding a program that will protect your computer from unwanted access is something that will keep spyware, viruses, and spam from completely overwhelming you.

A filter system that will allow you to block those spam emails can be a huge help. That way you won't be bothered by unwanted emails that may place spyware or a virus onto your computer when you open them. ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/trend-micro-for-home-home-office-anti-spam-programs.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/trend-micro-for-home-home-office-anti-spam-programs.html Tue, 05 Jan 2010 06:13:17 -0600
This program will offer good data protection for Internet banking, shopping or browsing. Some of the features include:1) Automatic updates2) Block of unauthorized operators' adjusting user applications3) Security updates and scan pauses when user wants to give presentations, play games or watch movies4) Helps user to handle all of PC home network devices5) Prevents suspicious USB devices' software from opening6) Easy parental controlsThis program is available for: $48.95.

The Trend Micro Internet Security package promises powerful anti-spam software. This software promises to shield the user and user's family from content which is inappropriate as well as criminals in cyberspace. Trend Micro Internet Security offers guarantees that the computer also won't be slowed down.

Trend Micro Anti-Virus plus Anti-Spyware software includes programs that assist in keeping home PC users' files protected from spam. The Trend Micro Anti-Virus plus Anti-Spyware guarantees users that their PC will be protected against dangerous viruses, Trojan Horses, worms and other spyware. Several features include:1) Antivirus program2) E-mail safety scan3) Rootkit shield software4) Chat support online, with phone and e-mail (in only North America)This software is available for $39.95.

The Anti-Virus plus Anti-Spyware from Trend Micro is a program that helps in keeping users' e-mail and share files safe from spam. This Trend Micro Anti-Virus plus Anti-Spyware assures the user that they will have user-friendly protection against malicious worms, viruses, Trojan Horses and all types of spyware. Some features include:1) Anti-virus2) A safety scan for e-mails3) A shield against Rootkits4) Online chat, e-mail and phone support available (in North America only)This software is available for $39.95.

1) Dangerous instant messaging, website and e-mail links are blocked2) This programs shields against phishing (that can trick a user into revealing confidential information.

1) IM, website and e-mail links that are malicious are blocked2) Shields against scams involving phishing (which can trap user into revealing private information)3) Prevention against malicious software being installed on the users' Mac computers. This software is available for $49.95. ]]> http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/an-analysis-of-modern-spam-techniques-the-game-goes-on.html http://justmelpublishing.com/internet-business/spam/an-analysis-of-modern-spam-techniques-the-game-goes-on.html Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:01:39 -0600
First, you want to own your own domain. You can buy a domain from any registrar such as Network Solutions or whoever. Usually, you would make the domain your-business.com or your-name.com or something like that. Be sure it's something you wont' mind typing a hundred times and won't come back to embarrass you later when you're giving the cashier at Borders your account email address.

If you are signed up with one of the many free email providers, be sure to enable any provided spam filtering services. If you download your emails to an email client on your computer like Outlook or Outlook Express, consider installing spam filtering software that integrates with Outlook and other email clients.

Take, for example, one of the numerous 'float tricks'. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow block-level elements to be 'floated' alongside each other, this functionality being most often employed to implement column-style layouts in web pages. But it also allows spammers to break words into bits, and insert spurious characters into common trigger words, in an attempt to fool filters. Once rendered by the HTML engine, though, those bits are reassembled in the correct order, the spurious additions shunted off to the right-hand margin. Another, albeit rarer, technique is to use the 'right-to-left override' feature of Unicode to reverse the order of letters bracketed by special codes. This hides the offending word or phrase from the filter (which sees, for example, 'argaiV'), but the user sees the letters in the correct order thanks to the Unicode-compliant HTML engine. But whatever methods spammers use to disguise their true message, most types of spam have an Achilles' heel: the URL-based call to action. In the majority of English spam a profit can only be made if there's a link to click. Attacking the URLs contained in spam emails is a very effective technique, and thus spammers have developed ways to attempt to circumvent this approach too.

Another good option for organizations that have a high volume of inbound emails is to enlist with an external to the organization spam filtering gateway service. This type of service receives all inbound emails and filters it before passing it on, majority spam free, to the final destination. An alternative to an external gateway spam filtering service would be to install spam filtering capabilities internally.

Image spam is arguably the ultimate in text obfuscation: spammers can say whatever they want without fear of triggering even the most sophisticated ASCII-based text filters. And straightforward hashes over the attachment body are prevented by (thus far) simple randomization of the image content, such as changing the compression level, adding faint dots in random locations within the image, rotating the image slightly in either direction, offsetting the actual content of the image within the frame around it, randomly changing font styles, sizes and colours, randomly chopping up the image and reassembling with HTML, and so on. There are far more ways to obfuscate image spam than text spam, and given the range of image effects available even in consumer-level image processing tools it is clear that the possible combinations are as good as infinite, with only little impact on the readability of the text. There are numerous other challenges that must be surmounted in order to recognize and thus block image spam. First, the email often looks, at a source-code level, identical to a legitimate email containing only an attached image. In fact, a large portion of the image spam we analyse seems to have been created by first composing the email with a dummy image attached in Outlook Express or other popular mail user agent, then simply replacing the attachment with a randomly altered image and providing a random subject line, each time the message is mailed. This means the headers, the MIMEstructure and the enclosed HTML are entirely consistent with legitimate emails, and so there are no spam signs upon which to base detection other than the image itself and the IP address from which it originated. A seemingly promising approach to the problem is, of course, employing optical character recognition to turn the rasterized text back into ASCII so it could then be scanned with existing text-based technologies. While theoretically appealing, this is unlikely to be a sustainable approach in practice. Though OCR technology has advanced a great deal in recent years the main focus of development has been on improving recognition of stable and reasonable inputs, such as printed material and handwriting. These inputs are designed to be readable (by humans, at least) and more or less consistent, and typeface designers have significant incentive to make their creations more accessible to OCR software. For spammers, on the other hand, the incentive is precisely the opposite. The moment anti-spam filters begin employing OCR to pre-process image spam (and a SpamAssassin plug-in already exists to do just that, though it's still in a fairly early stage of development at the time of writing), spammers will begin to manipulate their images in such a way as to make this harder to do, i.e. by further obfuscating the content. Given the myriad ways in which this is possible, and given the sensitivity of current OCR technology to unexpected input, it is difficult to envisage this approach being sufficiently reliable to justify the research and development investments required. Even if a full OCR-based analysis of an image proves impractical, there are a variety of other, less fragile approaches that should be considered. A great deal of information can be easily and quickly extracted from image headers, for example, that can provide valuable clues as to the 'spamminess' of the image in question. Perhaps the most valuable of these is the compression level of the image, which can be expressed as the number of bytes required to represent all the pixels present. Generally speaking, the more complex the image in terms of texture, the less compressible it is, whereas images with large areas of very similar colours tend to compress well. Since the great majority of the spam images currently consist of text on a plain background, they exhibit a significantly higher compression level than 'normal' images sent through email (Figure 9), which more often than not are texturally complex photographs or drawings. This can be a very good indicator of the spamminess of an image. If it is judged feasible to decompress the entire image (rather than just extracting the metadata) for further analysis, then another promising technique is to produce a histogram of the unique colours used within the image. Again, normal images tend to exhibit a large number of unique colours, and their frequency distribution is relatively smooth. Spam images consisting of text on a flat background, by contrast, contain few colours, one of which is seen far more frequently than any other, and thus their histograms are often dramatically different from normal images. Once the image is decompressed it becomes possible to perform some of the classic image processing manipulations, such as converting it from the spatial domain to the frequency domain with a Fourier transform. With such processing it may well be possible to differentiate between normal - especially photographic - images (with relatively little very-high-frequency information) and rasterized text images (with a predominance of very-high-frequency information due to the rapid contrast changes where text is present) with a reasonably high degree of accuracy. Converting to the frequency domain before analysis also makes the algorithm less sensitive to such obfuscations as random rotations and faint random speckles added to the background of the image. These and many more image processing techniques may prove valuable in anti-spammers' efforts to remain standing in the latest round of this decades-old competition. ]]>