The Problem with Spam Filters

While I am thrilled that anti-spam technology exists, I do find that it’s not always perfect. Just as you’ve noticed, sometimes spam lands in your inbox with your other good mail and sometimes good mail lands in your spam folder. When this happens, the spam filters are doing their job but not quite well enough. For example, if you regularly have to check your spam folder for good mail, you are still being exposed to all that unwanted e-mail - exactly what you were hoping to avoid.

Adjust Spam Filtering

Fortunately, spam filtering tools offer a means for adjusting the spam settings. Doing so involves a bit of trial and error. The trick is to get the right balance where most of the spam is tossed out and all of your messages routed to your inbox. You may have to sacrifice having a few spam messages land in your inbox in order to be sure that your legitimate emails come through safe and sound.

Adjusting the Spam Filter in Windows Live Mail

Not knowing exactly what e-mail or spam technology that you are using, I’ll give you an example of how you can adjust the settings in Windows Live Mail. Other e-mail programs and security tools will have their own unique steps but are similar in general.

First, go to Tools and select Safety Options. Several levels of junk mail protection are offered including: no filtering, low, high, and safe list only. In addition to these various options, you can also opt to permanently delete all identified junk mail instead of having it sent to your junk mail folder. In this case, changing the setting to low will route only the most obvious spam to the spam folder.

Deleting Spam Folder

To delete the contents of the spam folder, you usually just need to right-click it and choose “empty folder.” You can also set folders such as the Deleted Items folder to automatically delete everything when you close the program. For example, in Windows Live Mail, go to Tools > Options> Properties and click the Advanced tab followed by Maintenance. Here, you’ll see a setting for automatically deleting Deleted Items on exit. It’s possible that your e-mail client has a similar setting for the spam folder.

Why is Broadband so Slow?

Slow broadband connections can be related to computer viruses and malware chewing up your bandwidth as well as configuration setting errors within the modem itself. First, run a complete anti-virus and malware scan to rule out the possibility of malware. If you don’t have a good security solution, consider the products from Paretologic.com. You can even try a free scan to rule out malware but it’s a scanner only. If malware is found, you’d need to upgrade to the removal tool.

Next, contact your ISP and let them know that your connection speed is not what it should be. They should be able to help you troubleshoot the connection and configure your modem to work as promised.

 Yes and no. Both spam and junk mailings are unwanted correspondence. If you analyze the properties of spam, you will see ways in which it is different from the physical junkmail that lands in your mailbox every day.

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   • Spam costs the recipient money. While you may get a few unwanted catalogs or newspaper circulars in the mailbox, it only takes a second to realize that it is something you don’t want and toss it in the recycling bin. With spam, they usually put a misleading subject in the header in order to get you to open the email. Once you’ve opened the email, you then must delete it and hope that you haven’t been exposed to a costly virus or other evil contained within. If you only received one or two spam emails per day, this wouldn’t be a big deal. The fact is, if you don’t have a good spam blocking system in place, you can easily receive upwards of one hundred spam emails per day, which amounts to a significant amount of valuable time lost. In addition to the time lost, the user is the one who pays for internet access, so the spammer is using a channel that you pay for to send unwanted messages.
   • Spam is usually garbage. Junkmail can be annoying when it lands in your mailbox, but in most cases it is more targeted than spam. If you have purchased goods from a particular catalog, they may send you additional catalogs that contain things you are interested in, or they may send you coupons or sale notices. While there are a few cases of spam that follow these principals, most spam is for bogus health or financial products or things that you would never be interested in buying. The difference here is that junkmailers actually have to pay to send you mailings in the form of printing the catalog or ads as well as the postage to send it. Spammers can send millions of emails for a very low cost. The tiny percentage of people who buy their products still makes it a lucrative advertising vehicle for them.
   • Spam has very little regulation. Despite efforts to regulate spam in the past few years, there have been First Amendment concerns that have slowed the process. In contrast, junkmailers are limited in what they can send by federal postal regulations. In addition, the emerging green movement has put pressure on junk mailers by encouraging recipients to opt out of physical mailings.

The short answer to this one is easy: money. Even if only a small percentage of people who receive a spam email respond, that is thousands of hits for very little money. It is estimated that the average spam message is sent to over 1 million addresses. If only 2 percent of these respond, that is over 20,000 people answering and possibly purchasing whatever the spammer has to offer. Despite the annoying nature of this kind of advertising, it is effective. People buy the products, so spammers continue to market with these blanket emails.

Not only can you get a large number of responses for very little effort, spamming is a cheap way to advertise. Spammers set up hundreds of servers generating millions of spam emails every minute. It is easy and much cheaper to hire a spammer to get your product out to the marketplace than it is to buy advertising space in a more legitimate market. Google the word “spam” and you will find ads for CDs and email mailing lists put together by companies for the do-it-yourself spammer. For as little as $99, a company can buy a mailing list of 500,000 valid emails. Many of these companies insist that these lists are “spam-free”. This simply means that these emails were gathered by ‘opting in’ by the consumer when they buy a product or service. The company then sells these addresses to people who generate spam lists.

There is very little regulation on spam, meaning that it is still the wild west of advertising. There has been “do not email” list legislation proposed to great opposition by both spammers and legitimate marketing companies. According to a Washington Times article in April, 2004, the Direct Marketing Association claimed that anti-spam legislation would cost the U.S. economy $12.5 billion every year. They say that while legitimate marketers would follow rules and regulations governing spam, the most annoying spammers wouldn’t. There are also concerns about free-speech lawsuits. In September 2008 the Virginia Supreme Court threw out that state’s anti-spam law and overturned the conviction of a large-scale spammer citing the curtailing of free-speech.

Until there is no money to be made, spam will continue. The best way to stop spam is to invest in a good spam blocker like those by Paretologic and Barracuda Networks. And above all, don’t click on the spam email link, no matter how good the offer sounds!

Have you gotten the email about cheap Viagra? How about the one where you can help the deposed king get to his money - as long as you give him your bank account information first? Spam can come in all shapes and sizes, but there are a few common themes that run through many of the most popular emails:

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   • Health Issues: These emails usually deal with herbal remedies or cheap prescription drugs. They can also relate to weight loss schemes, baldness cures and miracle creams for your wrinkles.
   • Adult Goods and Services: These spam emails run the gamut from the aforementioned Viagra or other male enhancement drugs to porn sites or actual pornographic images embedded in the email itself. These emails often contain a totally unrelated subject in the subject line so that you are unaware of the content when you open it.
   • Technology: Often, these contain amazing deals on computer software or hardware as well as products for webmasters and domain name hosting.
   • Banking: Spam disguised as legitimate email from your local bank can be particularly dangerous. Many times, they will send you an email asking that you click on a link to verify your personal financial information. These can also come in the form of emails regarding low-cost loans and mortgages, insurance, debt relief and credit card offers.
   • Anti-spam Software: In an ironic twist, many spammers have taken advantage of the anti-spam sentiment to send emails advertising fraudulent anti-spam solutions. The links in these emails often lead to viruses or sites that can download something on your computer that will generate even more spam.
   • ‘419′ Spam: These are also called Nigerian scams, because many of the first of these types of emails were said to be from Nigerian princes, although today they are generated all over the world. These scams ask for your help in recovering money, often in a different country. Of course, once you have given them your information, your accounts are emptied before you realize that you’ve been had.

By Kat DeLong

Although these are some of the most common spam emails, it can really contain anything. As the seasons change, the spam contents often change from cheap summer getaways to holiday clearance items. Much of what the spammers sell are illegal in any state - prostitution, drugs sold without prescriptions or ‘grey market’ retail items. While spam can be annoying, responding to spam can be damaging. Knowing some of these popular spam topics may prevent you from opening something that looks too good to be true.

At first glance, most spam looks a lot like the advertising that fills our inboxes from our banks, clothing stores and political parties. The differences lie in three basic areas:

1. Spam is sent out in bulk. Advertisements from legitimate retailers are usually sent to people who have already done business with the company either in person or online. Because spammers make their money on a tiny percent of recipients who respond, they send out a large amount of these unwanted emails at a time. Although there is no way to accurately count the number of email recipients, it is estimated that the average spam mailing contains over one million addresses.
2. Spam is anonymous. The actual sender is either concealed or intentionally masked. Many spammers make up names so that the recipients won’t know who the emails are from before they are opened. Legitimate advertisers will have their company name on the email so that you can see at a glance where the email is from.
3. Spam is unwanted. When you do business with an online company or order from an online store, there is often a box within that order form that you can check to ‘opt out’ of receiving further emails from that company or companies that they might give your address to. While an overwhelming amount of spam is either for goods or services that you would never be interested in, some spam can actually harm your computer if it is opened. Many spam emails contain ‘phishing’ schemes that try to obtain your personal information, spread malware that can harm your computer and those of people in your address book or simply clog up your inbox with emails that take valuable time to sort through.

Even though an email is unsolicited, it is not necessarily spam. Although you may not have knowingly signed up to get information from familiar companies, you may welcome emails that contain coupons good toward future purchases, notice of sales or free shipping offers or fundraising drives for your favorite charities. This is why you need to get spam blocking software that isn’t too aggressive, or you may miss opportunities that even though you didn’t ask for them, would be particularly welcome.

Many companies such as Paretologic and Symantec offer software with Bayesian filters that rely on distinct spam patterns so that your wanted emails will filter through, or be tagged as ‘possible spam’ for your review. Because spam can rob you of time as well as cause dramatic computer problems, having some protection in place is a necessity.

Phishing is a practice used by unscrupulous people in an attempt to obtain sensitive, personal data from unsuspecting individuals. The type of information that these thieves try to get includes social security numbers, credit card account numbers, bank account numbers and more. They might even attempt to steal usernames and passwords so that they can gain access to various online accounts. Phishing scams generally steal this information so that they can use it to create new credit accounts or take out loans.

Phishing scams often take on the appearance of emails or pop up windows that are quite similar in appearance to some of the trusted websites that you visit. Any links included within the email will direct the individual to a fake website. The best opportunity you have to protect yourself from phishing scams is to understand the signs and to guard against them.

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Most phishing emails will not include either your first or last name. Usually these emails are sent out in bulk so it is much easier to exclude names.

Another tip off is that many phishing scams ask the individual to verify their account. In order to do this, you will be asked to submit certain sensitive data such as your log in, password, account number, or social security number.

Many phishing emails will also include a “threat” that your account will be closed immediately or you will lose all of your assets if you do not respond within a specified amount of time. These messages are designed to get people to react quickly and without thinking.

Plus, some phishing emails direct you to click the links within them. If you hover over the link instead of clicking it, you should be able to see the true web address. In the case of a phishing scam, you will see a string of numbers or words that do not resemble the true company’s name.

To protect yourself even more fully, purchase and install up-to-date antispyware and antivirus applications. Each of these is designed to recognize and do away with malicious programs. Filetonic offers a number of programs that can scan and protect your computer from the unwanted spyware, adware, and viruses that sometimes come along with phishing scams. Install one of these programs to provide yourself with the protection you need.

If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, make sure that you install the latest version to get the best level of protection against phishing scams. In fact, you can use a particular feature of Internet Explorer,Phishing Filter (found in the Tools menu), to protect yourself against phishing scams. This program is designed with a built in filter to scan web addresses in order to identify potentially harmful ones. These websites will be blocked from your browser. It also includes an online service that provides hourly updates on newly developed phishing websites. Plus, you can report any suspicious websites or emails directly to Microsoft. You can also report phishing scams to the DTC helpline at 1-877-FTC-HELP.