Monday, October 6, 2008

Anti Spam

What is Spam ?
Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, in attempt to increase sales and profits.
If you have ever gotten an email from an unknown sender, advertising some product or service you have never been associated with? If so then you are probably a victim of spamming. But not only does spam infect your computer through emails but through message board or forums posts/comments where the full intent is to advertise. Email spam can also be refereed to as junk mail.
Spam is the new virus that is affecting responsible webmasters and publishers.
How to stop this annoying and potentially dangerous spamming from reaching and cluttering your mail inbox? That's where anti spam software comes into play.

Free Anti Spam Software
Most free software is accessed through internet downloads. Finding the right free software is important so do your research. This will ensure you don't end up with software that will perform only basics tasks, and have little configurable options and features but rather a more developed, secure software. However you look at it free software is... free, so get some. Examples

POPFile
Comodo AntiSpam
SpamButcher
eXpurgate Spam Filter
Email Remover

Anti Spam Software For Purchase
Although there is tons of free software available, the best complete protection often must be purchased. The advantages to bought software over free software is more protection, more features and drastically increased program stability, and most importantly updates since new forms of spamming are always in the works, due to new tricks or techniques spammers may be developing. Spammers began as a minor annoyance, but they now control the Internet so get protection and join the fight against spammers. Below I have listed some of the best anti spam software for purchase:

SpamKiller
SpamEater Pro
CA Anti Spam
SpamNet
SPAMfighter
ChoiceMail One



To find info or applications about antivirus protection visit:
Antivirus Software Info


Proactive Tips To Avoid Spam
-Don't use your primary email address to sign up for anything. You never know what might happen to an email address you use to sign up for Web sites or newsletters. It might be passed on to spammers.
-Don't buy from spammers. Your only proving that spamming works and supporting them further.
-Spammers use special programs (bots) that extract email addresses from Web sites and Usenet postings. To avoid ending on a spammer's mailing list when you post to a Web forum or a newsgroup, you can obscure your email address by inserting something obvious into it. If my email address is todd@yahoo.com, I modify it to read todd@yah[delete_this]oo.com
-Never reply to spam messages, even when they entice you to reply to "remove" you from their mailing lists. Often the instructions are either bogus, or a way to collect more addresses. Replying confirms to the spammers that your e-mail address is active, and you may receive even more junk mail
-Do not threaten violence to spammers. Is fighting violence with more severe violence a good idea?
-Remove your email address from your website's pages and provide a web based mail form instead. This way spammers can't send robots to your page to harvest email addresses and put them on their mailing lists.

Bottom line spammers want email addresses and tons of them, so avoid leaving yours out in the open.


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