How To Identify Spam

Written by Lewis Leake


Most of us have opened our email program and found, alongside correspondence from people that we know, offers for products from commercial web sites. Some of these emails we expect. We have asked to be notified of sales and other opportunities or joined a mailing list offered byrepparttar company.

Many times, however,repparttar 141348 offers are from companies that we have never done business with and may have never even heard of. This is Spam, unsolicited bulk email, and can quickly lead to a massive overload of your inbox.

Identifying Spam as soon as it occurs isrepparttar 141349 first step to preventing it from happening again. Once your email address is in circulation with these companies, you are well on your way to a very nasty problem. Advertising from legitimate companies is one form. The rest are for illegal services, pornographic material, questionable products, and fraudulent schemes. It is invasive and many times illegal. Spam isrepparttar 141350 worst form of junk mail and a typical reason why many people have to change their email addresses.

In best cases,repparttar 141351 clue can be found inrepparttar 141352 subject line. If you are offered quick money or a chance to find your long lost high school classmate, you can probably guess that it is Spam.

You may be amazed that, as you read your email, that these companies claim a right to send you this email because you have a relationship with one of their “partners” or “affiliates”. All that this may mean is that they bought your email address from another company with dubious privacy policies. It is still Spam.

Spammers will try to trick you. Unfortunately for us, Spammers only need a response rate, by some estimates, of 0.0001% in order to be profitable. This means that they will use practically any measure to get you to open it before hittingrepparttar 141353 delete button. You may receive an email from Grandma or one asking for help inrepparttar 141354 subject line. Before you know it, you are reading their advertisement, if only out of curiosity.

Evict the Spammers from Your Inbox

Written by Paul Judge, CTO, CipherTrust, Inc.


Block Spam and Other Email Threats From Entering Your Gateway Spam, commonly defined as unsolicited commercial email, is a powerful advertising channel for many products and services. As a result, spamming has become a profitable business, driven byrepparttar low cost of sending email compared to other direct marketing techniques. The high return on investment for spammers has resulted in an overwhelming volume of unwanted messages in personal and business email boxes. Consider this: Conducting a direct mail campaign costs an average of $1.39 per person, meaning that a response rate of 1 in 14 is necessary just to break even on a product with a $20 gross profit. Sellingrepparttar 139678 same item via unsolicited spam email costs only $0.0004 per person, meaning that a response rate of 1 in 50,000 getsrepparttar 139679 seller back to break-even; anything above that is gravy. With profit margins like these, it’s easy to see why spammers will try anything to get past anti spam technology to deliver their messages to your inbox.

Types of Spam Threats The recent onset of fraudulent spam variants such as phishing and spoofing pose an even greater risk thanrepparttar 139680 spam volume clogging email servers. Spammers use techniques such as phishing and spoofing to fool users into opening messages that, at first glance, appear innocuous.

Phishing Phishing is a specific type of spam message that solicits personal information fromrepparttar 139681 recipient. Phishers use social engineering techniques to fool end users into believing thatrepparttar 139682 message originated from a trusted sender, making these attacks especially dangerous because they often con victims into divulging social security numbers, bank account information or credit card numbers. In one six-month period from November 2003 to May 2004, phishing attacks increased in frequency by 4000%, andrepparttar 139683 trend continues upward.

An example of phishing is an email that appears to come from a bank requesting that users log into their account to update or correct personal information. Whenrepparttar 139684 users follow a link embedded inrepparttar 139685 email, they are redirected to a site that looks and behaves likerepparttar 139686 expected bank website. However, unbeknownst torepparttar 139687 soon-to-be identity theft victims,repparttar 139688 site is actually controlled byrepparttar 139689 scam artists who sentrepparttar 139690 email; any and all information entered byrepparttar 139691 victim can now be used in a variety of ways, none of them good.

Spoofing Spoofing is a deceptive form of spam that hidesrepparttar 139692 domain ofrepparttar 139693 spammer orrepparttar 139694 spam’s origination point. Spammers often hijackrepparttar 139695 domains of well-known businesses or government entities to make spam filters thinkrepparttar 139696 communication is coming from a legitimate source.

Today’s spammers are more crafty than ever before and have begun blending elements of both phishing and spoofing into their messages, further spinning their web of deception. The toxic combination of spoofing and phishing presents a major threat that can trick most anyone into providing personal information to a stranger.

Toothless Legislation On January 1, 2004, President Bush signed into lawrepparttar 139697 “Controllingrepparttar 139698 Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003,” or “CAN-SPAM” Act. While well intentioned, CAN-SPAM has done little or nothing to curbrepparttar 139699 flow of unwanted email. In fact, an estimated 97% of all spam email sent in 2004 violatedrepparttar 139700 Act, andrepparttar 139701 United States still dwarfs other nations in terms ofrepparttar 139702 origin of spam, with CipherTrust research revealing that an astonishing 56.77% of all spam comes from U.S.-based IP addresses. While CAN-SPAM was designed to decreaserepparttar 139703 overall volume of spam,repparttar 139704 exact opposite has happened: in 2004, spam accounted for approximately 77% of all email traffic, and phishing attacks continue to increase exponentially, with studies showing an increase of 4000% from November 2003 to May 2004.

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