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| Articles: (Updated Frquently) |
| Spam, What is it Good for, Absolutely Nothing! |
| By: Jay B Stockman |
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Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), or spam has reached epidemic proportions, and continues to grow. According to American Online, of the estimated 30 million email messages each day, about 30% on average was unsolicited commercial email. As a result of its very low marginal costs, spam has become extremely prolific. Regardless of how many emails are sent out, the spammers' costs are low, and constant. With numbers like these, there is a tremendous burden shifted to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to process and store that amount of data.
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Huge volumes of this junk may undoubtedly contribute to many of the access, speed, and reliability problems suffered by many ISPs.
Further, many large ISPs have experienced major system outages as the result of massive junk email campaigns. Spam is an issue about consent, not content. Regardless of whether the UCE message is an advertisement, porn, or a winning lottery notice, the content is irrelevant. If the message was sent unsolicited, and in bulk then the message is spam.
This junk e-mail is more than just annoying; it costs Internet users, and Internet-based businesses millions, even billions, per year. When a spammer sends an email message to a million people, it is carried by numerous electronic systems on route to its destination.
The systems in between are bearing the burden of carrying advertisements, and other unsolicited junk for the spammer. The number of spams sent out each day is truly overwhelming, and each one must be handled efficiently, and expeditiously by many systems. There is no justification for forcing third parties to bear the load of unsolicited advertising. Ultimately, these costs are passed on to YOU, the consumer.
Spam originates in one of two ways, it is sent directly by the spammer from and under their control, or via illegal third party exploitation such as open proxies or open relays. Spammers get your address in a variety of ways. If you sign up for, and provide your email address, these seemingly friendly sites can turn around and sell your email to advertisers. Additionally, if you have your email address on a Web page, it is easy for unscrupulous advertisers to "harvest" it, and add you to their lists.
There are ways to reduce the number of spam messages, however it is presently impossible to stop them all. Spam filters, are software applications that redirect emails based on the presence of certain common phrases, or words. These automated measures are prone to being defeated by clever spammers. Additionally, there is a risk of
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important emails being deleted as spam. In 2003, Congress passed a sweeping law, CAN-SPAM act of 2003, which basically prohibits the use of deceptive subject lines and false headers in all emails. Additionally, the FTC is authorized (but not required) to establish a do-not-email registry. The CAN-SPAM Act took effect on January 1, 2004.
Spam is based on theft of service; it wastes time, money, and other resources. Spam can and will overwhelm your electronic mail box if it isn't fought. Over time, unless the proliferation of spam isn't stopped, it will destroy the usefulness and effectiveness of email as a communication tool.
About the Author
Jay B Stockman is a contributing editor for Spam Blocker Software Solutions Visit http://spam-blockeronline.com/ for more information.
Dr. Jay B Stockman is an individual contributor to Google Health Co-op
Dr. Jay B Stockman's public Google Health Co-op profile
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| How You Can Avoid The New Dangers Of Spam |
| By: Jeff Smith |
How You Can Avoid The New
Dangers Of Spam
Up until recently, spam has been an annoyance, a definite
load on your email system and network, a waste of productive
time and money, but we are about to find that the cost could
get much higher.
Spam blockers are now becoming a necessity rather than an
optional email utility, the reason is that spam is becoming
much more dangerous.
Now, just like you, I looked into spam blocker software mainly
because I didn't like being constantly bombarded with various
anatomy enhancing messages or ironically, advertisements for
spam blocker software itself.
A skeptical person may even wonder if this whole problem is
not rooted in the business model of lesser than honest spam
blocker software companies - but that's another article.
Whatever the root cause, one fact is true, the spam problem is
turning into a far more costly and dangerous issue that could
effect you in profound ways.
The dangers are becoming so serious that we finally got serious
about reviewing spam blocker software - the result you can
find here: http://www.blockmorespam.com/spam_blocker_software.html
The evolution of spammers into 3 new and very dangerous areas
had me scambling to get serious about finding spam blocker
software and techniques that are more effective than what I've
been using in the past.
The 3 new dangers that threaten you are:
1. Rise in hijacked and spoofed email addresses means that
someone can make it look like their spamming campaign is
coming from your computer. The impact is that you could have
your internet connection terminated or put on hold by your
ISP - all without your knowledge. This raises the issue that
spam needs to be blocked, ideally, in both directions - to
ensure you are not an unwilling accomplice to a malicious
spam campaign
2. Convergence of viruses and spam. You are no doubt aware of
the nasty rise in viruses that end up impacting your PC in a
number of harmful ways including slowing you system down,
crashing your system, logging your keystrokes, stealing private
information, redirecting you to porn sites, etc... Now, in the
past the incidence of a virus travelling through email would be
fairly predictable. That has changed with viruses working
together with spam. An example is the SoBig virus whos purpose
was to create a broad spamming infrastructure by planting code
on unwilling participants PCs creating a mass threat to email
security. This is just the tip of the iceburg, spam will
increasingly be used to spread and activate very dangerous
viruses - for this reason alone, you need to be looking at
spam blocker software.
3. Mix of spam and phishing. If you haven't heard of phishing
before, it refers to the misleading emails you get dressing
themselves up to look like legitimate emails to get confidential,
often financial, information from you. Some common examples are
the Paypal or Bank emails that claim you need to login with your
private information to verify contact information or update
account information. In reality, this is a malicious third party
that steals your private information and can cause you MAJOR
identity and financial problems.
So what can we do about this?
It's time to get serious about spam blocker software - as a first
line of defense. Regulation isn't working, while it is getting
tougher and tougher to quickly decide what is spam and what is not
in your inbox and as we have seen, the stakes are getting higher.
There are hundreds of shareware, freeware and otherware solutions
on the market, the time for experimentation is over. In my trials
of over 12 different spam blocker solutions, we found incredible
variance in the reliabiltiy, effectiveness leading to our finding
that there were only a small handful of serious spam blocker
solutions. For our findings, feel free to visit our review page
over at: http://www.blockmorespam.com/spam_blocker_software.html
About the Author
Discover More About Stopping Dangerous Spam With Reviews, Spam
Blocker Software, Anti-Spam Measures and More, Visit our Leading
Resouce Site Here: http://www.blockmorespam.com
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| Keywords: 'spam blocker' 'spam blocker', spam blocker software, blocker, spam, software, spam blocker, serious about, get serious about, blocker software, blocker software - |
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