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By Eng.Abdullah Jarbou
Most of us get spam every day. Some of us get a little, and some of us get a lot, but if you have an e-mail account it is always there. For example, this morning, here's one that came to my inbox:
Subject: Adobe
Suppose we tell you that you could really lose up to 82% of your unwanted body fat and keep it off in just a few months, would you be interested? We certainly hope so! Please visit our web site - Click here!
Obviously this is spam, although it was filtered through the Anti-Spam filters but I opened it because the subject line made it unknowable whether it was spam or not.
Spam is incredibly annoying, especially in large quantities. If you have a public e-mail address you can receive hundreds of spam messages for every legitimate message that arrives. Even with good filters, some of the spam makes it through. And filters can sometimes delete messages that you really do want to receive. In another word, Spam is free speech run amok.
How do they know my email address?
Where does all of this spam e-mail come from?
Why is there so much of it?
Is there any way to stop it?
In this article, we will answer these questions and many others as we take a dive into the sea of spam.
To understand how to stop spam, you should learn first some of the tricks and tactics that spammers use to get your email address, these include:
1- Dictionary attacks:
The spammer takes a "dictionary" of common words and names, combines them, and sends email addressed to all different variations such as mohammed@example.com, john@example.com.
Spammers typically do this at leading email providers that have a large base of users such as Yahoo and Hotmail.
2- Email spoofing:
The spammer trick of choice these days, email spoofing, uses a faked email header that makes an email message look like the message came from someone or somewhere other than the spammer. It's fairly easy to make an email appear that it's sent from your own address or a seemingly credible source. Spammers use spoofing to get you to open and respond to their mail. Remember, you should never respond to unsolicited email - instead, report it by clicking the "Block Sender" button in KAUmail webpage.
3- Spoofing KAUmail:
Many spammers try to spoof or imitate KAUmail in the hope that you will submit your personal account information. Please be aware that KAUmail will never ask you to email your personal information such as KAUmail ID, password, social security number, credit card numbers, etc.
If you receive an email appearing to be from KAUmail asking for this type of information, it's spam. Please report this email abuse by clicking the "Block Sender" button.
4- Social engineering:
This ploy tricks users into opening the spam message by pretending to know the person or trying to lure the person with a "personal" subject line. Typical subject lines include "Hi! how are you?," "Urgent and Confidential," "We need to meet," or "I have money for you. Avoid this trick by never responding to unsolicited email, report it by clicking the "Block Sender" button, and save the sender address in your “BlackList Sender” in your “Spam Settings”.
5- Mining message boards and chat rooms:
Do not post your email address in public places -- treat it like you would your phone number. If your email address appears on a message board, in a chat room, or any public place, spammers can use automated robots, or "bots," to search the Internet and grab your email address.
6- Open proxy, third-party servers:
Open proxies are third-party servers that allow spammers to send mail while hiding their true identities and Internet locations (IP addresses). Many spammers use these open proxy servers to help maintaining anonymity.
7- Web beacons:
An email may contain an image that is invisible to the recipient -- this is sometimes called an "invisible GIF" or "web beacon." Once the email is opened, the spammer is alerted that your address is "live." KAUmail advises that you don't open email messages if they appear to be spam.
To report a message as spam without opening it, tick the box to the left of the message and then click the "Move" button at the tail of the page to move this message to the spam folder. Furthermore, you can alter your webmail settings to block all the HTML images to avoid being victimized by this spammer trick.
8- Inserting random strings of text and characters:
To try and get through Anti-Spam filters, spammers may insert random strings of text throughout the email to make the spam appear unique from other email. Sometimes they do this with email subject by adding spaces and characters like this: V_I_A_G_R_A. You can help fight this type of spam by not opening or responding to it and by reporting email abuse via the "Block Sender" button.
9- Chain Letters:
Many of us receive chain letters that invite you to forward the message on to your friends. Sometime it tells you that you will get five cents for every email that you forward to. These are hoaxes created to promote spam. Never forward these emails thinking you will receive money for each recipient of their email.
10- Spamming Companies
If you would like to send a lot of spam, then there are a number of companies set up to send "bulk e-mail." The largest of these companies are able to send billions of spam e-mail messages a day. They increasingly operate out of foreign countries to avoid U.S. laws and lawsuits trying to block spam.
For example, here's a paid ad that appeared on Google :
The company is offering to send 500,000 e-mails for $99 and says, "Imagine emailing 500,000 recipients and 1 out of every 1,000 orders your product, that's 500 new orders!"
Similarly, if you type "bulk e-mail" as a search term in Google, you get this assortment of paid ads:
All of these vendors are claiming that they are "spam-free." That is, they claim that they use e-mail lists where the recipients have specifically requested to receive bulk e-mail. This is often referred to "opt-in" e-mail. You may have ordered a product or filled out an online form that had a checkbox at the bottom that said, "Please unclick this check box if you would not like to receive e-mail from our partners," or something to that effect. You either did not see that checkbox because it was way at the bottom of the form, or you misread it. If your name gets onto the wrong opt-in lists, then you will receive a great deal of spam.
In addition to adjusting the settings on your KAUmail account, here are some other spam-fighting tips:
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Protect your email address - treat it like your phone number.
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Use an email service that offers spam-fighting tools, like KAUmail.
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Never send your password, credit card numbers, or other personal information in an email. KAUmail will never ask you to send this type of information.
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Don't post your email address in public places (e.g., newsgroups, message boards, chat rooms) where spammers mine for email addresses.
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Never respond to unsolicited email - this can alert the sender that your email address is valid.
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Never click on a URL or web site listed in spam - this will also alert the sender that your email address is valid.
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Never forward spam chain letters.
Like any other reputed email service provider, KAUmail was aware with all the spam problems and dangerous, so it was keep taking all the available solutions to combat the spam until it comes up now with the new Anti-Spam solution; which include the following features:
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Aware with all the spammer tactics and tricks.
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Scan the entire message's part including the header, subject, sender address, and the message content for the spamming expression.
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Artificial intelligent to auto-learn the newest spammer expression, by allowing the administrator to add any new expression to its list so it can be used within its routine check.
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Auto download the latest spammer rules which have been added by the Anti-Spam development houses on the internet.
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The users can adjust their own spam settings which include:
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The Anti-Spam detecting level.
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Selecting the Spam Treatment method.
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Specifying the spam tag.
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Using the Bayesian Filtering (Auto-Learn)
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Maintaining the personnel Black/white list for the sender addresses, and for the allowed recipients.
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The ability to include the spam report within the spam message.
For more information about KAUmail Anti-Spam service, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) from the left pane of this page.
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