Anti Spam - SpamUnit

Another reason to keep your email address secure comes from Slashdot. A Slashdot columnist points out that even an email address that you think is “secure” can end up on spam lists - and in the most unlikely ways. Seemingly, some companies do not protect their email address data well enough - spam virus software can harvest e-mail addresses from these systems and then inundate the innocent users with spam emails. The fact that a spam filter can block the mails isn’t the point - it’s that seemingly “secure” and reputable companies occasionally fall foul of these techniques.

Many people have multiple email addresses and don’t use their personal address when there’s a possibility of spam protection failing, or spam senders gaining that address. Instead, they use a “dummy” address for these purposes. It seems like sound advice, particularly when stopping spam from reaching your inbox can be a losing battle once it’s in the hand of spammers.

Most companies comply with the various data protection laws, but it’s better to be safe than sorry where spam prevention and virus protection are concerned. A free e mail address for signing online forms can be a worthwhile time investment.

Read full story at SlashDot

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Wikipedia users have compiled a comparative list of features of many email programs: see wikipedia for a full list. This list is particularly important for choosing an email client based on spam filtering and spam protection services. It also provides a list of which clients are free.

If you want to see whether your email client supports in-client spam protection, or whether it supports server-side spam filtering (such as an Exchange spam filter), this is an ideal list to use. Some clients have their own in-built spam filters, while others plug into SpamAssassin or other spam blockers. Some also offer phishing filtering.

Also extremely important is how each client deals with HTML email. HTML can be used in emails to include images or special links that spammers use to deceive users, or to breach spam blocking software. Each client may deal with HTML in a different way, so it’s worth looking int exactly how they render HTML email messages.

Of course, while plenty of email clients have their own protection, many users still use spam list technology to guarantee a greater incidence of blocking spam from reaching their inboxes. Still, with numerous freeware packages on the market, as well as professional solutions, it’s worth researching your choice of client.

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It’s not only home users who suffer from the spam problem. Corporations are increasingly worried about the effect spam has on their business. Numerous studies have shown that dealing with spam, and trying to prevent spam, are on the rise - but the activities of illegal spammers still spell disaster for some companies, even those who use spam hardware and spam gateways.

This is because falsified header information can result in innocent IPs and addresses being blocked. BorderWare estimate that over 80% of email traffic from individual organisations is falsified, so that spammers can link their work away from themselves to make tracing them more difficult. Obviously, then, this is an outbound problem, and one that spam law is more likely to fix than simply spam filtering. Shared IPs also cause this problem.

Spam filtering programs that work on IP reputation alone are msot likely to block companies for these infractions, although more advanced spam protection software works in numerous ways, not just restricting itself to IPs. However, this shows that the war on spam is more important than ever. For bigger companies, real-time, subscription-based spam list services can help determine where spam is really originating from and what spam blocking measures to take.

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