What Is Spam And Why Do We Need Anti Spam

Spam has rapidly evolved from simple e-mails to a contagious epidemics". The impressive volume of spam often prevents the good development of any e-mail based activity and, in most of the cases, behind these unwanted messages stands the attempt to attack electronic intimacy, such as viruses or phishing exploits.

Most Internet browsers come with free anti spam tools, which are also very competitive. Programs dealing with anti spam are a thriving area of activity, as spamming has become one of the most often encountered problems in using electronic mail.

A spam filter is the best solution against these unwanted mail messages. Its purpose is simple, that is to separate spam from important e-mail messages and condense it in a different folder. Large amounts of spam can overload the user's e-mail account and decrease work productivity. Of course, this is far from being a desirable situation. In an attempt to decrease the damage done by spam and phishing, besides anti spam programs, Microsoft has become partner with some of the most reliable companies specialized in such programs.

Their task has become the reporting of constant updates of different sites known for phishing traps. These pieces of information are to be included in a significant number of Microsoft applications. It is obvious that anti spam programs, anti phishing programs and programs that act as a spam filter are becoming more and more necessary in these times when communication by means of the Internet has become essential for all fields of activity.

E-mail spamming is particularly harmful if you think about large corporations that have to deal with thousands of spamming electronic letters per day. Just imagine how much it costs them to hire employees to waste such a long time with verifying e-mails that are only garbage", so to speak.

Think about the time it takes to enter your Inbox and then open an e-mail and realize it is all just spam. Of course, you will not read it entirely, but it still wastes about 5 to 10 seconds of your work time. Now multiply that time with thousands of e-mail spamming flooding corporate Inboxes and you will get a view on the amount of work, time and money wasted with them.

 A spam filter can be easily created by selecting a certain word that, if found in the subject area of the e-mail, automatically delivers it to the spam folder. Although spam is often a means of online marketing at least to some people's concern most of the people who encounter it consider it annoying and useless, because it is a time-wasting, mail-flooding activity, which simply gets in the way of any regular program.

This is why they employ filters and anti spam applications in order to keep their work safer. In short, spam refers to electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. In addition to being a nuisance, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Because the Internet is a public network, little can we done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, the use of a spam filter in e-mail programs is advantageous for removing most spam sent through e-mail.

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How To Test a Trainable Spam Filter

Unsolicited junk e-mail or spam is an unfortunate reality that comes with the use of internet although web users are affected by it in different degrees. At times it becomes difficult for e-mail account holders to distinguish between genuine messages and spam and this makes it a constant bother to many individuals as well as business enterprises.

There are several programs that have been created to block out spam from e-mail inboxes and among the main components to aid this process is what is known as a spam blocker or Exchange spam filter, which is installed within exchange servers.A spam filter for Exchange Server is capable of scanning messages that have spam keywords and spam headers.

After the spam messages have been identified, the Exchange spam filter server will inform the user which mails have been treated as spam. This will significantly reduce the chances of attacks from viruses and malware. There is an option of setting the server to block out blank senders; however this is not advised because some important documents such as read receipts do not have sender fields.

Winner of big spam filter test

The filtering process can be done without the sender knowing and this is advised because it can significantly reduce the server load. Most exchange servers have an inbuilt ORFilter or Open Relay Filter as well as a Realtime Blackhole List or RBL capability, which means that there will not be any need for any third party software for filtering spam.

The initial process is to go to the delivery settings for messages and clicking on 'new' so as to add another connection filter. From here, the preferred Realtime Blackhole selection will be chosen and the OK button clicked. There are some exceptions to these specifications that can be chosen by clicking on exceptions and filling in the desirable settings.

There will be a warning pop out stating that a SMTP virtual server will need to be enabled for the process of filtering. One will have to go to SMTP virtual server properties and click on 'edit'. The checkbox with 'Apply Connection Filter' should be checked. After clicking OK, exit completely.

Configuring Your Exchange Server to Filter Spam

There may be a need for third party spam filter software applications; however they are quite costly meaning that small enterprises and individuals will find it difficult to invest in it. In most cases though, the Exchange spam filter embedded within the exchange server is enough to block out most of the threats from spam.

There is an option that can be used to store junk mail and its configuration may be done by defining a particular threshold that is based upon the SCL rating. By doing this, the system will be able to distinguish whether a message is to be put into the inbox or in a folder for junk e-mail. The Exchange spam filter within the exchange server makes use of several combinations that are supposed to decipher the composition of messages and identify whether they are spam.

It is for this reason that the configuration should be appropriately done to ensure that the spam filter within Exchange will be able to effectively carry out all the necessary procedures to keep out unsolicited e-mails. Users, who want to control or avoid spam mail, will have a better alternative by using the Exchange filter for spam emails.

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Spam Filter Test How Does it Work

Is or isn't a message spam? This is how a spam filter test works. Who needs such a test? Web developers that depend on email marketing campaigns are the first interested in knowing whether their newsletters have any chances of passing an over zealous anti-spam program. A web marketing campaign can be thus tested against spam blockage tools. Here are a few tips to check how things work.

The spam features in a newsletter are easy to identify if you have a mailing list software that generates the messages. There are modern programs that have the feature incorporated while others require subscribing to get access to the service. The help documentation of an email blaster should help you identify the spam email filter test application. The testing mechanism could be outdated but even when they don't correspond to the latest trend, they can still provide some form of guidance.

The spam filter test variants include reports on headers as well as spam scoring details. The tests for Outlook and Outlook Express can even be performed online. There are other concerns related to the spam filter tests and these represent the evaluation of anti-spam programs from the perspective of the user. This time we refer to the spam filter test meant to determine how efficient a filter is against spam.

The really good anti-spam tools are those that can distinguish legitimate messages from real spam, and not the programs that block as many emails as possible. A spam filter test should be able to find out how many legitimate emails a anti-spam tool blocks and how many real spam messages pass undetected. Software designers thus aim to train programs to learn how to avoid such mistakes.

The spam filter test requires the use of an email that is unknown to the program. Results would be unrealistically good for the email sender that was used in training, which is why experts divide the messages they use in testing as training and control groups. In case such experiments are successful all the way, then, the Internet may become a spam free zone.

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