SPAM Internals

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Author: Richie Cunningham

Article source: http://www.articlealley.com/. Used with author's permission.

People who work through emails find their inboxes flooding and overflowing with unwanted and unsolicited mail on a daily basis. This not only wastes a lot of time but also effects productivity due to loss of concentration. If someone starts reading SPAM… god help…! There have been times when users deleted important emails from their inboxes due to accidental deletion or just due to the inbox filling up beyond its capacity. SPAM not only intrudes on an individual's privacy but also causes untold professional losses.

Despite the efforts of an e-mail user of asking the senders of SPAM mails and unsolicited messages to stop wasting their time, SPAM tends to stick and does not go away by itself. However, the good news is that today you can fight spam. With a wide array of techniques available today, one could defend the inbox by SPAM filters. These techniques may include blocking addresses or by tracking words that are generally a part of the unsolicited messages. The following could be a few ideas to keep your inbox SPAM free.

Heuristic filtering:
This filter checks all incoming mail against a set of keywords and phrases to weed out SPAM. The more the words occur, the more the chances that the email is a SPAM.

Bayesian filtering:
In this method, the user needs to categorize the emails as SPAM or not SPAM. The filter then assigns probability values to these emails and measures the frequency of the mails occurrence. The higher the score, more chances that the mail is redirected to the SPAM or the trash folder.

Blacklist & White-list:
In this method of blocking, the user can have a list of email addresses that are trustworthy and can redirect these emails direct to the inbox. This is called the White List. Similarly, a user can make a list of all addresses and domain names that bother his inbox through unsolicited messages and redirect them to the trash folder. This is a Black List. The lists could be kept on the mail server or on the local computer.

Fingerprint technique:
In this technique the SAPM software reduces the email to a numerical fingerprint and compares all incoming email against known SPAM fingerprints. This is a very effective method and has been used with great success.

SPAM cannot be eliminated completely, but using SPAM filtering applications would greatly reduce your workload and increase efficiency by decreasing the number of mails received daily.

Iboxdiet.com offers a free 250MB email mail box along with a robust spam filter that can enable you to use your e-mail efficiently. Unlike most traditional spam filters, inboxdiet.com work with all email clients and can block phishing emails, spam, and viruses before they reach their email client.