Best Way To Control Spam

SPAM affects us all… Whoever you are and whatever you do … you are always haunted by it. Spam is a daily nuisance for all of us. It doesn't matter whether you're employed or unemployed. There are different ways in which we can fight SPAM some of those are given below for combating SPAM that too for free.

1. Let the Personal e-mail address be PERSONAL: I know its obvious but not many follo9w it and then get into the trauma of SPAM. Do not enter any competitions, signup forms or surveys with your personal e-mail address .Its better to prevent it either than curing it after you are listed on 1000’s of e-mail list’s.
   
   
2. Use Free Mail Service: Get yourself a free e-mail from yahoo or hotmail and make sure you get a spam holder account, you can use this mail address anywhere, you can then check for the legitimate and spam mails and then delete the rubbish.
   
   
3. Use Disposable e-mail address: You could also try a disposable e-mail address from Spam Gourmet. Once you've registered your forwarding email address (your personal email address) with them you can then create self-destructing email addresses that stop working after receiving a specific number of emails.
   
   
4. Using SPAM free Filter: You can opt for a SPAM free filter, there are many available online choose one that is free…. The reason being simple even after following all the correct steps you tend to get junk mail in your inbox….
   
   
5. Newsgroup and forums : Don’t leave your e-mail id on any newsgroup or forums, spammers like it. They don’t care whether it is free, paid or private forums spammers have their harvester program hunting for mail id’s. Instead of posting it like username @site.com post it as usernameATsite.com

Techniques used by Spammers

1. Simple Subject Line: Spammers use a one-word subject line. Usually there is nothing more than a link in the body of the email, which allow many emails to slide by the server undetected.
   
   
2. Spoofing: This is email in which the sender's name is fictitious. Some spammers spoof real companies, names you recognize, or people you know; many spammers try to spoof or imitate people you know right from your address box. According to MSNBC, Amazon.com is currently fighting lawsuits against three unidentified defendants who used spoofing with Amazon's trademark to fool the clients into doing business with them.
   
   
3. Social Engineering: A common tactic is using a personal, and even touching subject lines to get a person to open spammer email. “Hello,” “I miss you,” and “Your document is attached” are common subject lines and handiwork of social engineers.
   
   
4. Using “bots” to gather email addresses: Spammers commonly send out automated robots or 'bots' to get email addresses from chat boards, messages lists, etc.
   
   
5. Using third-party servers: This allows spammers to hide their identity and Internet Protocol addresses.
   
   
6. Web beacons: Emails sent by spammers to that contain an image and sometimes an invisible image to the recipient. If a user interacts with the image, it alerts the spammer that the address is active.
   
   
7. Phishing: Phishing is usually combined with spoofing. A spoofer will imitate companies and use forms inside of emails to gather personal information about the use.

!!!!!!!STAY SPAM FREE!!!!!!!

Spam is one of the major pitfalls of the social web. Take a look at this …. 10 out of 12 email messages are spam and 1 in 39 emails contain a virus… whoof. As messaging and communication applications proliferate throughout the web, thousands of unwanted messages keep streaming in every day. Deciding on the best method of spam prevention on your blogs, forums, or even contact forms can be difficult.

• One method to fight SPAM can be to log the incoming message with the user's IP address and a timestamp of the post. Then, when a user attempts to post multiple comments, you can check to see if the user has posted more than once within a specified window of time, for example 40 or 50 seconds, or if the current was the last poster. This is not a fullproof method because spammers can use proxies too … also robots have ample of time to spam…

• Next method for fighting spam is to build a blacklist of common spam keywords and to disallow posts that contain the words. We can creatae a set of key words and check to see if an incoming string contains them. Spammers have evolved defenses against this method by posting variations of the words. They replace letters with numbers, symbols, and other such characters to create a broad selection of keyword variations.

• Also a most common spam protection technique on the web today is CAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart as given in Wiki. The technique is a useful tool for blocking robots that attempt to visit your site to post spam messages or create fake accounts with fake information. CAPTCHA tests can be audio files, but are more commonly images presenting a series of characters and numbers that you have to enter into a form which has been asked to be filled by the site you are visting. CAPTCHA works well for its intended use, but there are minor drawbacks. A CAPTCHA requires (yet another) field for users to fill in after entering usernames, passwords, and security questions. There is understandably an annoyance factor accompanying their use also users who are disabled can’t make use of the CAPTCHA fields.