Anti Spam Software

by: AimyD
Total views: 9 | Word Count: 501

Take a moment to think back when you couldn’t open an e-mail because you didn’t know the sender. Think back to when you were afraid to open your inbox at all because of the annoying ads that would pop- up all the time. Fortunately this has changed, for good.

Advertisers used to be able to bombard your inbox with ads for $ex or V!agra, (notice these are misspelled, this is how they appear in the e-mails) or any whatever they wanted you to click on and buy. Now with many e-mail accounts there are filters to keep these from pouring into your inbox. Accounts such as Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, are just a few that have these filters pre-set. If you have an account that is not pre set you can set it so you can open your e-mail safely, all you need is an anti spam software.

One anti spam method is known as blacklisting. This software identifies the IP address of the spam sender, and then communicates with the Internet Service Provider of the sender and instructs the ISP to block mail from that IP address to your email account. In theory this is a fool proof solution. The reality, however, is that there is a lot of money to be made in spamming, so forcing a spammer to switch his IP address frequently is not too high a price to pay to evade blocking. That said, this practice does, over time, start to close down doors to spammers and all but eliminates amateur spammers who do not have the capability to frequently switch their IP address.

Another method is known as profiling which involves learning the common characteristics of spammers and spam mail. This software looks for things like bugs, invalid message ID’s and other traits and uses these characteristics to evaluate incoming pieces of mail. Each piece of mail is then given a score depending upon how it fares against these criteria. The user is then given the option of how high or how low to set the bar with regard to which emails are let in. This method has been shown to be immensely effective against amateur spammers and many professional spammers. However, it relies upon a ready team of professionals to identify new traits used by spammers and to incorporate those traits into the profiling algorithms.

The most promising spam blocking software follows no rules. Rather, it constantly learns new techniques to fight spam by scanning the mail you’ve read and comparing it to the mail that you have rejected. This highly sophisticated software uses the data that it gleans from thousands of users to identify which items are spam and which are not. It then has the capability to adjust its standards to your particular preferences.

To keep your e-mail safe from spam, you should find good anti-spam software. Without this software you will be looking through your inbox for what you really wanted to receive, trying harder and harder to get rid of what you didn’t want to see.