| Spam fighters cede ground in escalating conflict
Computer security analysts who fight spam face the same thankless task as goalkeepers: They don't get much credit for the unsolicited e-mail they stop, only demerits for the ones that get through. But those few messages that wriggle past increasingly sophisticated filters constitute the greatest threats on the Internet. The messages range from relatively harmless pitches for human growth hormones to ones with malicious code attached that could steal passwords or documents from a machine. The sheer volume of spam still threatens to bring the Internet to a crisis point. Up to 90 percent of all e-mail traffic is spam, a figure that has crept upward in recent years. The forecast isn't good, either. "We see spam just going up to the point where Internet servers start having difficulty," said Steven Linford, chief executive officer of Spamhaus, a London nonprofit organization that generates a list used by technology companies and organizations running e-mail servers to block spam.
CA Anti-Spam 2007
CA Anti-Spam 2007 is an easy-to-use, seamlessly integrated spam filter for Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express that makes sure you get messages from contacts you know, while quarantining other messages for later review. Installation is straightforward and requires restarting your email client. To help you get started, when you start Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express for the first time after installation, the setup wizard initiates a scan to populate a list of your contacts. Then CA Anti-Spam scans for and creates a list of approved contacts. In addition, the setup wizard will ask you which features do you want to enable: CA Anti-Spam and Anti-Fraud and CA Anti-Spam Email Search. CA Anti-Spam and Anti-Fraud: this feature protects your computer against spam, phishing scams, and fraud.
Bot nets likely behind jump in spam
A significant rise in the global volume of spam in the past two months has security analysts worried that bot nets are increasingly being used by spammers to stymie network defenses erected to curtail bulk email. Estimates of the magnitude of the increase in junk email vary, but experts agree that an uncommon surge in spam is occurring. On the low side, Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus, has found that average spam volume has increased almost 30 percent for its 35,000 clients in the last two months. Others have seen much more significant jumps: Spam black list maintainer Total Quality Management Cubed has seen a 450 percent increase in spam in two months, and the amount of spam filtered out every week by security software maker Sunbelt Software has more than tripled compared to six months ago.
Anti-spam site to remain online
Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has given UK-based anti-spam organisation Spamhaus hope in its battle against closure. Icann, the organisation that essentially controls the running of the internet, says it does not have 'the ability or authority' to shut down Spamhaus. The existence of www.spamhaus.org was under threat after it lost a legal battle in the US with e360 Insight, an email marketing company. Back in June, e360 Insight filed a lawsuit after it had been put on a blacklist of known spammers created by Spamhaus. The court found in e360 Insight's favour and in September the company filed another motion claiming that Spamhaus had failed to comply to the previous ruling and requesting that the court suspend www.spamhaus.org. In a further hearing, e360 Insight proposed to the court that Icann should suspend Spamhaus' domain.
Spam filter update
Okay. When the spam filter zaps me for using the word "love," I know things have gotten really, really bad. I just spoke with Shelley, WORLD's IT diva. She assured me that the WMB spam filter is on the Emergency Fix List, right underneath some bugs that are affecting e-commerce at the World Magazine and God's World Publication sites.(Yes, WMB is brought to you by money-grubbing capitalists.) I know you've suffered long and often through our spam issues, but I ask for your patience just a little while longer. Our most intrepid bloggers have taken to fooling the spam filter by breaking up spam-flagged words with asterisks. Here's a partial list of words currently (and crazily) being flagged as spam (please help by posting any I've missed): Love, fun (or any form), read (or any word that contains it, such as thread), book, Iraq, John.
A Good First Impression Equals Stronger Opt-In Relationship
You wouldn't intentionally leave budget money sitting on the table or openly invite spam complaints that could hurt your delivery. That's what happens, though, when you fail to engage new subscribers as soon as they opt in to your list. As with old-line direct marketing, the best addresses on your mailing list are the newest ones, the owners of which are more likely to open and respond to your e-mail messages than even those who have been on your list for just three months. Why then does it take some marketers days, weeks, sometimes forever to send even a basic welcome message? This problem is bad enough when opt-in is done solely online. It gets worse when your program also collects e-mail addresses at point-of-purchase outlets in a store, at an event, on the phone, or in customer-service contacts.
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