http://www.tosd.com.au Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:29:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 http://www.tosd.com.au/2008/08/spam/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=spam http://www.tosd.com.au/2008/08/spam/#comments Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:13:54 +0000 tosd http://tosd.com.au/blog/?p=364 In doing a little research for this article I found that the most depressing thing were the statistics on the upsurge of SPAM emails. So I will spare you from repeating the obvious. Sadly, we are all too well aware that SPAM is a problem. Instead, here are some practical suggestions . . .

• Try as far as is possible to protect your Email address at it’s source. By this I mean that if you publish your email address on your web site, make sure that it is masked (encrypted) from “SpamBots”. These are spiders that visit uninvited for the sole purpose of scraping off any email addresses they find. You can’t stop them visiting but you can determine what they do or don’t find! Email addresses are now encoded (masked) as a matter of course on all new web sites created by TOSD. If you would like to do this yourself visit www.addressmunger.com
• If you have email addresses out there that have been collecting way too much Spam then it may be time to consider changing them. Yes, I know it is a hassle, but think of the relief! You should also ensure that Spam Assassin or similar has been enabled on your hosting account. These server based spam filters are very effective. If you are unsure how to check this drop me a line and I will be happy to assist.
• Consider whether you are happy with the anti-spam capabilities of the email client (application) you are currently using on your PC. Don’t know what they are? Make a point of finding out. It can be well worth the effort. Any good email client should at least have spam filtering capabilities that “learn” over time. For this to work you need to mark Emails in the initial stages as spam(junk), or not spam. The resulting database is then used to filter future incoming Email.  “The Bat!” is a good email client that  has an added feature called the Mail Dispatcher. This is a pop up window that displays the headers of all incoming mail and gives you the opportunity of deleting it from the server before they are downloaded to your PC. Mozilla Thunderbird is also another Email client with good security features that include Junk Mail filtering and Anti-Phishing protection (Phishing is the name used to describe Emails that purport to look like they are from legitimate trusted companies e.g. banks, and often try to extract private information).

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