Spam is anonymous!- Is prevention possible?

Spam is anonymous, unsolicited bulk email.. However, this definition is not entirely correct and confuses some types of legitimate business correspondence with true spam.

Spam (unsolicited bulk advertising via email) made its first appearance in the mid 1990s, i.e. as soon as enough people were using email to make this a cost-effective form of advertising. By 1997, spam was regarded as being a problem, and the first Real-Time Black List (RBL) appeared in the same year.

Spam is usually illegal not only because of the means used to advertise the goods, but also because the goods and services being offered are illegal in themselves. Although spam written in English is the most common, it comes in all languages including Chinese, Korean and other Asian languages.

Spammers use dedicated programs and technologies to generate and transmit the billions of spam emails which are sent every day. This requires significant investment of both time and money.

Spammer activity can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Collecting and verifying recipient addresses; sorting the addresses into target groups
2. Creating platforms for mass mailing (servers and/or individual computers)
3. Writing mass mailing programs
4. Marketing spammer services
5. Developing texts for specific campaigns
6. Sending spam

Each step in the process is carried out independently of the others.

Spam reflects seasonal changes, with advertisements for Christmas items and car heaters being replaced by air conditioner advertising in summer. Spam falls into the following categories:

Ø Adult content
Ø Health
Ø IT
Ø Personal finance
Ø Education/training
Ø Political Spam

Adult content

This category of spam includes offers for products designed to increase or enhance sexual potency, links to porn sites or advertisements for pornography etc.

Health and Medicine

This category includes advertisements for weight loss, skin care, posture improvement, cures for baldness, dietary supplements, non-traditional medication etc. which can all be bought on-line.

IT

This category includes offers for low-priced hardware and software as well as services for web site owners such as hosting, domain registration, web site optimization and so forth.

Personal finance

Spam which falls into this category offers insurance, debt reduction services, loans with low interest rates etc.

Education/Training

This category includes offers for seminars, training, and on-line degrees.

Political spam

This category includes mudslinging or political threats from extremists and possible terrorists.

The Spammer Techniques

Ø Direct mailing - spam was sent directly to users

Ø Open Relay- any sender could send an email to any recipient

Ø Modem Pool - Dial-up connections are supported by dynamic IP addresses. Spammers can therefore use a new IP address for every mailing session.

Ø Proxy servers - spammers rapidly discovered that many ADSL modems had built-in socks servers or http proxy servers. Both are simply utilities that divide an Internet channel between multiple computers.

Ø Zombie or bot networks - Spammers use malware to install Trojans on users' machines, leaving them open to remote use.

The Spam Content

Ø Content Analysis - Spammers today expend significant resources on developing content which will evade content filters.

Ø Simple text and HTML - Originally, spam was simple: identical messages were sent to everyone on a mailing list.

Ø Personalized mail - Spammers then began to include a greeting based on the recipient's address.

Ø Random text strings and invisible text- Spammers now often place either text strings from legitimate business emails, or random text strings at the beginning or end of emails in order to evade content filters.

Ø Graphics - Sending spam in graphics format makes it very hard to detect. Analysts are developing methods for extracting and analyzing text contained in graphics files.

Ø Paraphrasing texts - A single advertisement can be endlessly rephrased, making each individual message appear to be a legitimate email.

Prevention of Spam

The only solution to eradicate the spam is to put a spam filter on your email server.
Spamjadoo is the only antispam product that actively discourages spammers. Our ESP technology spreads a privacy layer around your mailbox that results in spammers taking you off their database and the amount of spam targeted at you reducing with time.. Other anti-spam products check the mail AFTER receiving it – this encourages spammers to try harder, which results in more spam, more traffic, more server loads.

The multiple checks that are run includes DHA, SPF, SMTP Auth, reverse DNS, blacklist/white list check, Senders Domain MX check, Blocking of specific attachments, and many more along with its proprietary ways to stop spam.

Spamjadoo is available as software solution which can be deployed on your desired servers or as Hardware Appliance , which can be plugged into your network.

For more details log on to www.spamjadoo.com.