View and vote on the article here: Yet Another Spam Article
Yet Another Spam Article| Category | | | Summary | - "SPAM.... Can anyone tell what SPAM is?" - asked the sad-looking teacher to the echoing walls of a classroom filed with surprised students.
- "SPAM...." - said a voice that came from a small student in the back of the room with |
| | Body | No one expected that BOMB, and when it was still falling above us, no one really cared about it... some even saying it was just a fashion and that those "criminals" would get caught and thrown to jail. But nothing was done, people were too worried about studies saying that in 14 years the net would be a total anarchy ruled by chaos due to the enormous and ascending quantity of viruses out there. They said viruses and worms and the new major threats like Trojans would be the Internet's perdition. Yes everyone was terrified, with the idea that their next-door neighbor could be programming a virus or using Trojans to do nasty things, that people would just open their e-mail boxes with the intent to locate a worm and delete it from the inbox to secure their computers. Among the regular e-mails?? - said the student now elevating his head making it possible for the teacher to see his shiny blue eyes - ?were some innocent surprises: the first released prototypes of SPAM created by still ineffective SPAMBots.
People would be surprised at e-mails offering free loans and tips on how to enlarge one's penis that?.? - the teacher now looking at the kid with a repressive look on his face and clearly marking a X in her notebook - ??that people would open them, not out of curiosity but to understand their purpose and use the services offered by them. Yes people would understand that they were JUST publicity, but unlike the failed attempt of mail publicity, they worked (before they were a plague) and people would innocently open those nice e-mails, read them, evaluate their offers and if they were curious or in the need of a similar thing they would visit the publicized websites and companies, people would then take a look at their offers and buy/use/benefit from them. Often these people would be presented with a small survey, so small that it would only contain one question: 'how did you get to know this offer and this site? Friend, E-mail, Internet, TV, Newspapers, Radio, Other?', and people would answer the e-mail option this way making a crucial and deadly mistake, endangering the internet and it's users, priding people of their privacy and rights. This little survey would only assure that the companies would have been successful in advertising for a product/company, thus increasing the number of SPAM. Not only that but visiting the company sites and by viewing many ad-banners, a little something called Spyware would be installed and run in the victim's computer that would search for any stored e-mails in the computer.
With these e-mails they would send SPAM to them and use SPAMBots to send e-mail of the same server, meaning more and more and even more SPAM on the Internet. This is a vicious circle and so this would go on and on until humongous amounts of SPAM circled the Internet. Without knowing, and by opening SPAM, they were compromising the Internet and creating the new threat.? - The teacher now had already sat down and started writing in her notebook when she told the student to go on - ?Well, this pre-impact phase of SPAM went on for sometime until SPAM was so annoying, it became to big to continue unnoticed. People had their e-mail all over the Internet, posted in forums, messages, databases, mailing lists, newsgroups, etc that these companies had a free and huge source of money just lying there.
SPAM became the annoying plague to MSN, Yahoo, and other famous e-mail provider's users. People would get flooded with e-mails advertising for effective ways to avoid mortgaging a house or offering free nude celebrity videos upon the completion of a register in a pornographic site. Yes they were stressing times where e-mails were often returned and the new versions of e-mail filters were coming out. Now after millions of dollars spent and several bills approved SPAM is nothing more than a plague Nowadays there are 2 types of e-mail users: those who can avoid SPAM in a successful way and those who cannot. The ones who can are just a few who know the tricks behind hiding one's e-mail from SPAMBots. Either ways SPAM is nowadays not only an average user's annoyance, no, nowadays the same companies that send SPAM are suffering from clogged e-mail boxes filled with SPAM. Nowadays SPAM is costing 20 000 dollars a year to those companies. The same e-mails that once sent penis enlargement e-mails.
SPAM has become so wild and so out of control that the spell turned against the wizard. SPAMBots are now so efficient and so advanced that even the newest filters cant help. The plague is so spread (and yet fomented) that it is helpless not to receive at least one piece of the company's engineering and programming. It is a plague, just like AIDS, growing and evolving to its needs, avoiding our every effort to neutralize it. But unlike AIDS the problem is not in the plague itself, but in the ways it uses to spread itself.? - The teacher dropped her pen and simply stared awaiting the rest of the student's speech - ?SPAM is created by SPAMBots! That we can't avoid nor prevent so SPAM will always be sent but we can decrease the amount of SPAM sent, and even avoid SPAM to come our way.? - The teacher straightened her chair with anxiety - ?A useful and great way to prevent from our e-mail to get discovered by SPAMBots is to eliminate Spyware (Which can also be avoided but that would enlarge my story in many, many lines and it would become boring, maybe in my next one). This can easily be done by downloading 2 little babies: 1) Spybot - Search & Destroy 2) Adaware. With those 2 things Spyware will cease to exist in your computer and not only e-mails will not be found but many other things like passwords, etc.
Another great but not so useful way to avoid Spyware is to avoid registering in as many mailing lists, communities, newsgroups, etc or at least giving them a fake e-mail. This way the internet will no longer contain less references to your e-mail, thus avoiding SPAMBots to find your e-mail and SPAM to be sent there. BUT, if you need, for any personal reasons, for your e-mail to be available then there is a simple way. SPAMBots always look up e-mails like this '*@*.*' (which means to look in the internet basically any e-mail there). So to avoid this simply state your e-mail as being: 'something [at] something [dot] something' (for example spam [at] yahoo [dot] com). This way SPAMBots will not find your e-mail.
That was avoiding SPAM to be sent to your e-mail. But what about when it is sent? Can it still be sent? Will it still be sent? Yes and yes. Can it be filtered? Yes. How? Simply by doing these X steps. 1) First you must find a POP3 proxy (they usually filter the most known SPAM messages and other e-mails according certain standards. You should then set your mail program to use it. 2) If you use an internet e-mail provider then try to find if it has a junk mail filter (like hotmail) and set it to a level where you will NOT only receive e-mails from your contacts. Avoid that level because you will not receive password confirmation e-mails, newsletter e-mails, etc. 3) Download a SPAM filtering program and set it to be used on your computer. You can choose the standards you want. 4) In the program or in the mail providers website try to create a filter (or in the program case create a filtering standard) which filters all e-mails which in the subject contain your nick or a defaced part of your nick. Lets say your nick is 'PapaParleone' then make the filter eliminates e-mails containing it in the subject and e-mails containing 'PapaParleon' e (with the space on the last letter) in the subject.
I bet that this way your account (even if it is an e-mail account) will get little or no SPAM each month. I don't.? - the teacher rubbed her neck to release stress when she opened her mouth ready to say something:
- ?WHAT THE F|_|C|< ?! YOU'RE IN DETENTION MR.!!!?.
This article was written by: PaPaParleone |
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: Prothis)
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