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The majority of email is unwanted.
These unsolicited advertising, pornographic, and political messages
now account for nearly 3 out of every 4 emails.
After hijacking legitimate email servers to send their messages,
spammers fake their sender address, making it difficult to trace the
activity back to them. Such messages often direct you to a website,
which can be quickly taken off the Internet when needed. If most
email is spam, the majority of spam is fraud. From offers for
prescription drugs to great loan deals, giving up your credit card
number to a spammer may result in nothing more than an unauthorized
spending spree using your money. Yet enough people fall for these
scams each year to keep the spammers thriving.
Stopping spam is not easy. Most email programs have a rudimentary
email filter, the Blocked Senders List in Outlook Express for
example. Spam filtering programs are available at most software
stores. These basic products have significant limitations. Filter
out emails containing the word Viagra, and you will still receive
mail about Via!#gra. Block emails about mortgage rates and you are
sure to miss the email from your son-in-law about the great mortgage
rate on their new house.
In 2004, Congress passed the CAN-SPAM act, giving the Federal Trade
Commission and the Department of Justice authority to go after
spammers within the reach of U.S. law. Unfortunately, it’s a big
planet.
The Power of Blacklists
Though it is a difficult battle,
the email industry is trying to fight spam too. There are several
Internet organizations, such as Spamhaus and the Mail Abuse
Prevention System, which maintain lists of IP addresses known to
support spamming. Many mail servers consult these lists in real time
and either refuse to accept mail from known spammers or filter it
into junk email folders. Unlike clumsy filters, these lists employ a
combination of sophisticated monitors and human watchdogs to
identify and “blacklist” the systems actually sending the spam.
Our Recommendations
Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange is famous
as a collaborative tool for sharing calendars, contact information,
emails, task lists, shared folders, and more. Even when away from
your own computer, you have web access to all of your email and
other Exchange data. In the fight against spam, Exchange blocks
unwanted email at the gateway, using both blacklists and a
sophisticated algorithm for determining unwanted messages. With
powerful controls, Exchange allows the implementation and sequencing
of multi-blacklist provider rules and then checks every configured
blacklist before rerouting your email. This results in a very low
false-positive rate.
Norton
Corporate Anti-Virus
While your company may not require
the sophisticated calendar and data sharing abilities of MS Exchange, it is absolutely critical to have the best in anti-virus
protection. Norton Enterprise Edition provides that protection
and ads to it a layer of spam filtering among the best in the
business.
Norton’s multi-layered spam
prevention includes a heuristics antispam engine, blacklists, and custom filtering rules.
Norton includes a whitelist of authorized email addresses from
which messages can be delivered, regardless of content. Best of all,
Norton Enterprise Edition 10.0 automatically detects and repairs the
effects of spyware, adware, viruses, and other malware.
Which
Anti-Spam Solution is Best for You?
If your company email is
inundated with unwanted email, wasting your employees’ time as
they sort through pharmaceutical and pornographic messages, Shiloh
Service can assist you in implementing sound and affordable
anti-spam solutions. CALL 724-863-0190 TODAY. Just hit
“0” and ask to speak to your account manager.
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