Spam Blocking Information |
|
The Cybermagic of Whitelists
Before we start getting deep into the meat of this article it's important to explain some standard terminology to make sure the rest of this article makes sense.
A whitelist is a predefined list of IP addresses that are allowed to send email to and receive email from each other. Blacklists exclude known and suspected spammers. Whitelists can be used to exclude everyone except known IP addresses. Think of it like this. A whitelist is a like having a phonebook which is owned by a small group of people who only wish to speak directly to each other. They don't want just anybody ringing them. Not only that but the entire group need to approve new phone numbers before they appear in this exclusive phonebook. To send email to a whitelist you must be approved by the owner of the whitelist. This is a lot like the double optin systems used by legimiate ezines and mailing list owners. Whitelists are the nightclub bouncers of the virtual world - if you ain't on the list you ain't getting in. Simple but very effective. A real world example of a whitelist would be if two companies wanted to exchange email only with each other. These companies could implement a whitelist that contained the IP address for just the two email servers that want to send email to each other. That would mean that any email coming from an IP address not on the whitelist would be returned to sender. For companies they can ensure that employees are only dealing with work related email and not chatting with their friends. The benefits of whitelists are many but proper management of the whitelists is equally important. Misuse of whitelists will only lead to more headaches for everyone involved with missing email, irate customers and IT departments doing overtime just being the tip of the iceberg. This article was provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews and tests spam blockers for the business and end user.
|
RELATED ARTICLES
CAN-SPAM Basics I. BACKGROUND The Business Of Sending Spam You all tear your hair out in frustration every time you see your inbox crammed full of spam again. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself where you get so much spam? This isn't to suggest that spam is your fault but... if everybody hates spam so much then... why is there so much of it? Kill The Messenger (Service) You are familiar with the software applications that you run on your computer, but you may not be familiar with the dozens of programs running in the background on your computer. These programs, called "services" handle tasks like event logging, spooling files to the printer, and networking. One of these services, the Messenger Service, can be reconnoitered by spammers. Take Back Control of Your Inbox: Eliminate Annoying and Potentially Harmful E-mails Are you tired of spam stealing your time, your money, your bandwidth and your hard disc space? How You Can Avoid The New Dangers Of Spam Until recently, spam has been an annoyance, a definite load on your email system and network, a waste of productive time and money, but we are about to find that the cost could get much higher. E-mail SPAM: Whats The Big Deal? It absolutely amazes me how many people over-react to receiving e-mail SPAM. Spammer Stole My Email Address? Do you get bounced, or rejected emails sent by someone else, with YOUR email address in the From line? Does it mean your computer was hacked, or a spammer has stolen your email address? Relax... this is the work of a spammer, but it does NOT indicate any security breach on your computer. Spam with Typos: Why Do They All Have Spelling Errors? A friend asked me: I don't get it. Why do spammers have such a hard time spelling things properly? I get mail trying to sell me "viagggra", increase my "brest" size, or save me money accessing "pr0n" sites or buying "seks toys". Even more puzzling, there are plenty of spam messages where it takes me a few minutes to even figure out what the subject actually is, with subjects like "sa vem oneyo n vviiiaaagra" or similar. What's the story? Why can't these people use a spell checking program?? Get Your News Releases Through the Spam Filters in 11 Easy Steps In today's spam-filled email world, it's sometimes VERY difficult to get your news releases and PR pitches to the media person you are trying to reach. These tips hold true for personal emails, too, so even if you don't do P.R., this article offers some important email tips. Stop Spam: How To Escape The Spam Hell-Hole If you're anything like me, you're pretty sick of it, and just want it to stop. What? Spam, of course. This article gives you a solution to radically, and quickly, reduce the amount of spam messages you receive to a bare minimum. The War on Spam: Google Fights Back Google is engaged in a war. It is a war on spam. With new strategies and filters ready to put into place, the search engine is adding new firepower to its arsenal almost daily. Webmasters and SEO Consultants alike are terrified; fearing what the future holds for them. But for those of us that believe in the cause, the future isn't scary. In fact, the future looks very bright. What SPAM Means: Stupid People Annoying Me English, German, Italian - It's All SPAM To Me Managing Spam in 2005 In 1998, nearly 10% of all email traffic on the internet was SPAM. By 2003 that number had climbed to 50%, and the problem had gotten so bad that Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) Wiki Reek-y Havoc The Vandals are coming! And this time they're after your wallets. Bayesian Spam Filters Explained In a word Bayesian spam filters are "intelligent". Bayesian spam filters are intelligent in so far as they're capable of comparing two sets of information and acting on the result. This is in direct contrast to the vast majority of other spam filters who use pre-built rules to decide which e-mail is spam and which is not. Your Dolphin E-mail Caught In Spam Tuna Net? Let me ask a couple of questions: Why Is Spam Such a Problem? Spam can be a lot more damaging than you might think. Obviously, they are the most annoying thing that you can receive through your inbox, but it goes deeper than that. If you are like the millions of other internet email users, you know that sending and receiving email is a free service that comes with your internet service. Dealing With SPAM - An E-mail Address Strategy With SPAM being such a problem it might seem the right thing to do is never give anyone your email address. As a strategy that's not bad but it misses one rather important point; the purpose of having an email address is to be able to exchange emails, both with friends and also as a means to receive eZines from online forums and information sites. In theory any one of these sources could share your email address with a spammer (perhaps by listing it on a public site) and before you know it your email box is full of emails you don't want and can't stop... note, we do not do this, your address is safe with us. Therefore what you need would seem to be a list of separate email addresses, all of which are yours, that you allocate out to the different email lists and online forums you have. That way if one of the addresses gets picked up by the spammers you can just drop and block that one address (and perhaps the list it was subscribed to) and continue in your low or no-SPAM world. So how do we do this? What we're going to do is use one "real" email account (ideally with a hard to guess name) and then a set of forwarded email addresses, all of which are different, but all point back to the real email address. Typically your ISP (Internet Service Provider) provides a small number of email-boxes for you (normally called "POP3" mailboxes). Choose one of these to be your "real" email address and point your email client to it (follow the instruction in your email client such as Outlook Express and ISP to do this). Then we need to register a domain name which will allow us to have lots of forwarded email addresses. 123-Reg.com are an example of a company that provides an inexpensive high-quality service to do this, so we'll use them as an example. Create an account, it's free to do this, and give them your real email address. Then you should register a domain name with them; obviously you need to think of a domain name which you would like as part of your "public face." Choosing a name you like can take a little thought, but don't take too long, domain names are being registered at the rate of one every two seconds, so get in to secure yours as soon as you can! The cost is very low, with .uk domains at around UK�3 / US$5 per year and .com/.net around UK�9 / US$15 per year (note, you should register for at least two years). Using the email forwarding option from the 123-reg.com control panel, set the catch-all address as your real email address. Then any emails sent to any name at your domain will be forwarded on to you automatically. Here's a worked example for Brenda Wyatt. Brenda's ISP supplied POP3 email address is [email protected] She creates an account at 123-reg.com and registers the domain "WyattMail.net" She sets up email forwarding via the 123-reg control panel to forward all emails received to @wyattmail.net to [email protected]. Now when Brenda signs up to a forum or email list she gives an email address which is individual to that list. Let's say she registers with Amazon, she could register as '[email protected]'. They will send emails to that address which will be forwarded to her [email protected] email address and she can read them as she wishes. The nice thing about this system is that Brenda hasn't had to go anywhere else to register the email address '[email protected]', 123-reg just sees the wyattemail.net part and sends it on for her. So what happens if she finds one of her email addresses is being targeted by spammers? Let's assume this happens to her "[email protected]" email address. She then goes to 123-reg.com, logs in and goes to the control panel. She selects the email forwarding page, adds a fresh line with '[email protected]' in it, clicks the 'return to sender' checkbox and clicks 'update'. Now any email to this address will be returned to whence it came. Nice, eh? �2005 Paul Quirk & Mark Quirk. Article taken from CareOfWindowsXP.com. What To Do When You Get Spam When you go to your mailbox and find pieces of junk mail mixed in with important correspondence, you throw it out. It is a mild nuisance and you probably don't even give it a second thought. Unfortunately, most people do the same when spam arrives in their inbox. They just delete it. How Can I Stop Getting Spam? Are you getting too much spam? We all are, but if you're a webmaster the word spam takes on a whole new meaning. |
home | site map |
© 2005 |