Super Spammers

They are like cockroaches these people. They have become much more sophisticated in their tactics. As spam filters get smarter they have to find new tricks to get around them. One of the ways they can get by the filters is with a string of words that make no sense. This overwhelms the spam filters making it harder for them to determine if a message is spam.
“Nonsense messages”Also called “Selfless Spam” or “Word Salad”. This is an email that is usually babble, which leads to nothing. The purpose is to confuse spam filters, which makes them less effective and a way to slip in like a cockroach. It doesn’t benefit them directly, but all spammers, by messing with the filtering of spam itself.

“Web Bugs or Beacons”Then we have those that aren’t selfless at all. HTML formatted spam may contain "web beacons" or "web bugs" embedded in them. These tiny transparent images are about (1 pixel). They can also be the same color as the background. These tiny images are linked to content on the spammer's server, so when you view the email, your computer sends a request back to that server letting the spammer know that he has a "live" email address along with your IP address, & the exact time you viewed the content.

Two ways to protect yourself:
Configure your email client not to download images whose URLs are embedded in HTML messages or using a text-based mail client. Newer email programs are set to block these images by default. That's why you find that you get messages with the images missing.

Turn off the preview pane in each folder view that you set up. You can do this by going to View in Outlook, then reading pane, click off.

As usual, only open emails from people you know of and if it looks funny then delete it.
There are many spam programs you can use, most internet security antivirus packages come with a spam filter built in but you may have to configure it. Also, there are a some, 3rd party anti-spam programs out there as well.

Computer Repair Lakeland, FL

www.MyComputerGirl.com

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Email Headers

Who is that email really from? Not always who you think.

First thing to do is never reply or unsubscribe to spam for if not careful you may end up with tons more because they have just verified that the email they are sending to is a valid email address.

Okay, you will need to determine if the message originated from the actual sender before replying to an email you don’t recognize in the event that they were not actually sent from the indicated party. Simply looking at the address in the "From:" line is not always an accurate indication of the sender. You will need to look at the full or extended header of the message. To do this you must first determine what you use for email then click on the link below and it will give you a play by play on how to read the header information for your specific email program.

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html


Computer Repair Lakeland, FL

www.MyComputerGirl.com

863-521-1079

      

The Spam Jam

The Spam Jam on Your Hourglass
Although spammers love to say "Just hit the Delete key," it totally misses the point.
By the time the spam hits the fan (well, when it hits all our mailboxes), so many costs have been incurred by so many people other than the spammer that it is either naïve or an utter act of denial to pretend that those costs can be undone with the pressing of one key.
Spam is about the numbers, so go figure: Here's why hitting the Delete key isn't really a workable solution. The U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that the United States has approximately 25 million businesses. If only 1 percent of those 25 million decides to send you just one single unsolicited e-mail per year, you average 685 spams per day in your inbox. If it takes an average of 10 seconds per message to open a message, determine that it is spam, and hit Delete, you spend two hours per day disposing of e-mailyou never asked to receive.
*Brought to you by Etips for Dummies

Computer Repair Lakeland, FL

www.MyComputerGirl.com

863-521-1079