What’s the difference between user-based and non-user-based filters?

Spam filters come in two varieties: user-based and non-user-based. But I wonder, what exactly does this mean? After all, I’m a computer user, so wouldn’t my spam controls be user based?

Not necessarily. For example, if I worked for a large company and accessed my email on the corporate intranet, I may or may not have user-based spam filtering. The company’s server may do the filtering on my behalf, removing any messages it deems as spam long before they arrive in my mailbox. In this case, this would be a server-based spam filter.

Depending on how the network administrators have set up spam filtering, I may also have a user-based spam filter. If this were the case, the server passes all emails to my inbox. My computer would have a local spam filter which would then handle the messages according to settings that I have set up to meet my individual needs. In this case, this would be a user-based spam filter.

Server-based spam filtering has its pros and cons which is why some companies implement it and others prefer user-based filters. On the plus side, workers don’t have to deal with unwanted junk mail and administrators don’t have to hear complaints about sexually offensive material. Blocking such material is also a proactive move as far as sexual harassment policies go too. However, blocking messages companywide at the server level also has the potential to block legitimate messages. Users do not have control over the level of filtering that takes place, nor do they have the ability to scan the deleted messages in search of legitimate ones.

User-based spam filtering puts the user in control of the filtering. They can adjust the filter to best meet their needs as well as view the Junk Mail folder to see if any legitimate emails have been filtered along with the junk. In addition, they can add or block senders on an individual basis. While this type of filtering is ideal for individual computer users, it’s not necessarily so in a corporate environment. The servers must still handle and route spam traffic which puts a greater load on them and administrators may not want users dealing with spam, especially if there’s a lot of it and if it’s sexually (or otherwise) offensive.

I also want to mention a related type of spam filtering which is similar to user-based filtering: community-based filtering. With community-based spam filtering, the anti-spam solution offers some sort of reporting function. When a message arrives that the user deems as spam, they click a button on the interface to report the message as spam. Likewise, a similar button is used for reporting legitimate messages as “not spam.” If the spam filter marks a legitimate message as spam, you can inform the developers of your opinion.

As a member of a larger community of users, your input is entered into a database. If enough community members report a particular message as spam, it will then become part of the algorithm. For example, spammers send millions of messages at once. A new spam message will get through filters that haven’t yet identified it as spam. However, when enough users say, “This is spam,” this particular message will be identified and blocked.

What about newsletters? What if enough users report this type of email as spam? Subscribers to newsletters may disagree. In community-based environments, this problem is solved when enough users say, “This is not spam.”

How efficient should a good Spam filter be?

Any technology that you pay your hard earned dollars for had better be efficient, right? If I’m going to buy a product, I expect it to be efficient. However, spam filters can be too efficient. I know, that sounds contradictory. However, there’s a method to my madness: spam filters that are too aggressive will mark too many legitimate messages as spam which defeats the purpose.

For example, if your spam filter is too efficient, many of your legitimate emails will wind up marked as spam. You may start to wonder why no one is emailing you or you’ll miss important emails. Eventually, someone will advise you to check your Junk Mail folder. When you do, much to your horror, you’ll find numerous important emails hidden amongst the offers for herbal remedies and investment opportunities from Nigerian kings. Soon, you won’t trust your spam filter and you will religiously search your Junk Mail folders for legitimate messages. What good is that?

On the other extreme are spam filters that are not effective enough. The whole idea is to avoid spam. If your inbox has enough spam to annoy you, your filter isn’t very efficient. I can deal with one or two spam messages a week finding their way into my inbox without being annoyed but much more than that and I’d be opening the anti-spam program interface and making adjustments.    

No matter which anti-spam filter you use, finding the right efficiency balance is critical. The goal is to keep legitimate emails where you want them (in the inbox) and never have to look at another spam message ever again.

Fortunately, most good anti-spam filters offer various control levels. You’ll have to experiment with the different levels to find the right balance for your needs. Start at the lowest level and see if the filter is catching enough spam. The lowest levels generally leave your legitimate emails alone but the drawback is that more spam gets through. If you’re not satisfied with the efficiency, bump up the level to medium and see if that provides the right balance or not. The highest setting will catch the most spam but it may also compromise your legitimate emails.

The anti-spam program that you chose should be efficient at blocking spam and not marking legitimate messages as spam. I’ve had good luck with both Trend Micro PC-Cillin Internet Security and ParetoLogic Spam Controls. I’ve also used iHateSpam and a few other products. Each has its own way of identifying and dealing with junk mail.

For example, spam control in the PC-Cillin product is just one feature of many. This product is a suite that offers other protections such as virus and spyware protection. The anti-spam feature is an added enhancement. ParetoLogic Spam Controls is dedicated to spam and only spam. It is unique in that it uses pattern classifications rather than keywords to identify spam. By analyzing the content for known patterns, false positives are virtually eliminated. 

Because spammers are continually changing their methods, today’s most efficient spam protection will be obsolete in weeks, if not days. That’s why creating your own spam filter using keywords and message rules doesn’t work. Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s impossible for the average computer user to keep up. Instead, select an anti-spam program that is updated regularly with the latest spam definitions. 

Are there different ways to prevent spam?

Yes! I have learned about spam the hard way and will share my lessons learned with you. Just a few years ago, much of my work day dealt with deleting hundreds of spam messages a day. Now, I rarely give spam a second thought as my inbox generally contains only wanted messages. How did I go from hundreds of spam messages a day to one or two a month?

First, I changed email addresses. Once your email address gets on a list and that list is circulated amongst spammers, it becomes exceedingly difficult to clear your name. But, changing email addresses alone won’t prevent spam. Unless you change your Web surfing habits and actively protect your email address, you’ll soon find yourself dreaming up a new email address and informing all of your friends that you have yet another new address.

Here are some steps that you can take to prevent spam:

• Never post your email address on websites, bulletin boards, or forums. If you do, your email address will quickly be harvested by automatic Web robots whose main purpose is to seek out email addresses for spammers. If you must do so, have a graphic made and post the graphic or use a format that drops the @ sign such as:

yourname < at > ISP <dot> com

• Limit the amount of free newsletters that you sign up for. Signing up for free newsletters means that you just “opted in” and have agreed to receiving newsletters from the supplier. Pick carefully so that you only sign up for those that you really want.
• Watch out what you are signing up for when registering with websites. Many registration forms have preselected checkboxes that automatically opt you in for receiving future communications, or even the sharing of your information with “partners.” Make sure to clear these checkboxes.
• Use a disposable email address. Sign up for a free email account such as a Hotmail or Yahoo account and use it when registering for websites or making purchases. This way, if the address becomes a target of spam, you can let it go and create a new one.
• Use a self-destructing email address. I signed up with Spam Gourmet a few years ago and highly recommend this service to anyone who likes to tryout lots of newsletters or websites. You get a basic email address that you customize per Web site. As you customize it, you get to specify how many emails you will accept before the address self destructs. Once that number has been reached, you’ll never receive another related message again. If you decide that you want to continue using that address, you can allow it. This lets you try out a newsletter without compromising your email address.
• Protect your primary email address and share it only with colleagues, family, and friends. Use disposable and self-destructing email addresses for everything else.
• When sending messages to multiple recipients, use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) feature and educate others to do the same. This prevents email addresses from being visible to others. After all, you never know who’s forwarding emails with your email address on display.

Use anti-spam software. Despite your best efforts, spammers may still find you. Anti-spam software will filter out the junk so you don’t have to deal with it.

How does Antispam Software know an email is not something I need?

Anti-spam programs are smart but they’re not intuitive. For example, you may very well need a new mortgage, Viagra, or debt counseling. Of course, you’ll probably approach your own bank, doctor, or financial planner for these services rather than sign up based on a spam message, right? Promise me you will because by responding to spam, it encourages spammers. They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work.

My computer is protected with anti-spam technology. This has dramatically reduced the amount of unwanted junk that used to flood my inbox. But, every now and then, I will miss an expected message. For example, I’m going to look in my Junk Mail folder right now. I bet I’ll find something in there that I might have wanted. Let’s see what it might be.

Here’s one: “Deadline this week.” This email is from two months ago reminding me of a deadline for an assignment. Obviously, that deadline is long past and it would have been helpful to have actually received the email. Fortunately, I don’t rely on email reminders for managing my deadlines so it’s not a big deal. Everything else in the folder is irrelevant: coupons for products, updates from my cell phone provider informing me of new ways I can pay them, invitations to attend charity parties, and so forth.

I have my anti-spam filter set to “medium.” I can adjust this up or down. If I was concerned about missing important messages, I’d lower it but more spam would land in my inbox. If too much spam works its way past the filter, I can increase the filtering level to high. However, more legitimate messages might be marked as spam and routed to the Junk Mail folder. I’ve found that the medium level of this particular program is the right balance for my needs. You’ll have to find the right balance for your own needs using your particular anti-spam program. This involves a bit of trial and error and monitoring of the Junk Mail folder at first. Once you’re comfortable with the results and have achieved the right balance for you, you can relax and check the Junk Mail folder less often.

Anti-Spam Software

If anyone hates spam, I hate spam! I’m not alone in this. In fact, there’s even an anti-spam program named “I hate spam.”At one point, my inbox was regularly flooded with hundreds of junk email messages per day. Part of this was due to the fact that my email address was posted on the company’s website where it was quickly harvested by spammers. In addition, the company hosting this particular website and its related email features offered limited spam filtering. Dealing with hundreds of spam messages each day put a real damper on my productivity. And let’s not even talk about what happened when I went on a two week vacation. Let me put it this way: the lettering of the delete key on my keyboard rubbed off completely due to overuse.

At first, I tried filtering out spam on my own using the Message Rules feature in my email client. Every time I received a junk email, I’d add keywords to my message rules such as: Viagra, sex, XXX, porn, mortgage, debt counseling, enlargement, and so on. While this worked on a small scale, it took a great deal of effort on my part and it barely made a dent in the flood of spam. In addition, unless I was careful, it affected my legitimate emails.

For example, what if I listed my house for sale and my real estate agent sent me an email with the following message: We have a buyer who has pre-qualified for a mortgage. Call me right away! I’m at the Sussex office today.

According to my message rules, it would be deleted! This example represents a legitimate email containing the words “mortgage” and “sex” (Sussex) but I would never have seen it using my rough spam filtering system.

Anti-spam programs helped me solve my problem. These programs are far more sophisticated than I’ll ever be (at least in the realm of spam control). Most use algorithm analysis and learning engines to determine whether a message is legitimate or spam. Content-based anti-spam programs look at the contents of a message and compare their findings to a database. Since spammers are notorious for changing their tricks to work around spam filtering, these algorithms and databases are constantly updated.

In addition to content filtering, most anti-spam programs also let users mark messages as spam (part of the learning engine) as well as trust or block senders. For example, a “whitelist” of trusted senders is a list that you create. If I were to place the real estate agent in the whitelist, I would receive any message sent regardless of content. Likewise, I could block a sender and never receive a single message from that “blacklisted” sender ever again.  

Anti-spam software isn’t perfect. Sometimes, legitimate email messages are marked as spam and routed to the “junk mail” folder. While it is possible to browse the junk mail folder and look at all of the spam in search of legitimate emails, I don’t really see the point. If I wanted to look at all of that spam, I wouldn’t have invested in an anti-spam solution! The fact is that I don’t want to look at emails hawking Viagra and debt relief counseling. That’s why it’s critical to choose an anti-spam program that is efficient and good at accurately filtering spam. Look for a program that has adjustable filtering levels. It takes a little bit of tweaking to find the right balance. However, with an efficient anti-spam program, white and black lists, and the appropriate filtering level, your spam problems will be a thing of the past.   

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So, you’ve reformatted the hard disk or partition containing your emails?

I can’t say I’ve done that yet but I do know that your emails are likely just fine.

Reformatting media such as hard disks, Memory sticks, flash drives, and floppy disks doesn’t actually destroy the data. All reformatting does is clean up the tables and indexes containing the addresses and references to the data. The data remains on the disk - until new data comes along and replaces it.

When you reformat a media device, it “looks” like the device is empty. After all, all of your software and data is gone. However, if you had a tool that can look at the actual contents of the media device, you would see that the data remains. I’ve tested this myself by reformatting a Memory Stick and then looking at the Memory Stick in three different ways. First, I looked at it in my digital camera where it was as empty as could be. No pictures. No video files. Nothing. Next, I inserted it into my computer where it showed up as the H: drive. Once again, no pictures or video files. Just a blank Memory Stick awaiting new data. Finally, I scanned it with a data recovery tool (ParetoLogic’s Data Recovery Pro) and what did I see? All of my recently deleted photos along with photos I took months ago.

While my example illustrates data recovery on a reformatted Memory Stick, the same principles are at work when it comes to reformatted hard disks and email messages. By using a data recovery utility, you can recover data from your reformatted hard disk. I recommend the Data Recovery Pro tool in this case because it is able to recover virtually any file type including Outlook PST/OST files and Outlook Express DBX files. It is also able to restore entire partitions.

I also recommend that you do so right away before installing new software or adding new data to your system because once data is overwritten by new data, then it’s gone for good.

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