This video is extremely well done and can help change the email mindset which seems to overwhelm most people.

E-mail Marketing is fast becoming an essential channel for all website owners, and the tool that powers this channel can make or break your efforts. Choosing a reliable autoresponder software that has all features such as sequential autoresponse, timed mailings, bounced management, etc. is usually found in subscription-based service or expensive software.

The Omnistar Mailer email mailing list manager is a serious contender that meets (and exceeds) all of that for a very good price. Based on the popular PHP and MySQL combo, this web-based mailing list software is flexible and customizable. Follow me as I take you step by step to install and test it.

The Omnistar Mailer can be purchased online at www.omnistarmailer.com and can downloaded instantly. It comes with a 30-day money back guarantee and free installation. Being the propeller head that I am, I decided to get my hands dirty.

The download, unzipping and uploading was fairly fast and simple, and soon, I'm greeted with the install screen. Here's where you might benefit from using their install service. Theres' some file permissions which needed to be sorted out before you can proceed with the install. After filling in all the necessary details (don't worry if you don't know some of them, just give the nice support people there your hosting signup details) and the installation took care of itself. Note: Omnistar is careful here to warn you to use a NEW MySQL database.

I liked this article so much I felt compelled to acknowledge once again just how ignorant people actually are about spam. Let's first divide the posts into groups. For the referenced article "Click Here"

1. The Questioned:  The person who thinks they should have a free email address and filtering should be Enterprise level and they should behave any way they want. Love the post from the person who said I get 1000’s of emails a day.  Personally if this is true your activity on the web is certainly questionable.

2. The Silly: “Is it legal, if I write an anti spam eraser that goes back to the source and simply removes the spam from their hard drive(s)?”

3. The Lost: “I have gone so far as to chase down the owners of blocks of addresses and emailed them about spammers and the email was returned.” Ever hear of spoofing? One can spoof a email address, IP address and even a MAC address. Ever hear of a zombie?

4. The Confused:  “I use a bounce program. Every spam email gets sent back ten times. It’s reduced my spam by at least 50% which is a real relief. The big problem now is bogus addresses. About 20% of my spam now comes from non-existent addresses.” You are as much the problem as the solution. You have assumed you have the target in the first place. You only aggravate the situation by thinking you are fighting back. If it were a real source on the bounce then they are now certain they have a good email address. After all you have made sure they know. Also a good read of the RFC’s concerning backscatter specifically will point out the error in your ways.

5. The Knowledgeable: “I’m an IT Director at a small hospital with a mature domain name (12 years old). SPAM accounts for over 99% of all e-mail handled by my system - and that’s a calculation, NOT an estimate. I spend about $12,000 per year managing SPAM.”  What can you say the person who wrote this has a firm grip of the magnitude of the problem, and the costs associated to good spam filtering.

6. The Diluted: People who believe something on their desktop is the solution. Please it is over! The best this can do is decide whether to keep it or trash it. The transaction is over when it reached the server. The point where you want to stop it is deciding whether to accept or delete it on the server. 

Any install of MailScanner on a server configured correctly can get the top 90% of spam. It is that number between 90% and 99.9% which is hard to reach. What is so amazing is some novice on a desktop seems to think they have the solution to a problem which is so complex there is simply no single answer to. There are millions of professionals fighting this problem every single day, yet they have the solution. Also they do not seem to understand that the person they are defending against are as good at their job.

Has anyone complained once to your postman that it should be their job to filter your mail? Have you stopped those stupid phone sales calls when you are at home trying to relax? With everything on the web even things that are free, people think it is a right to be protected in a world that is honestly quite dangerous. Your protection ended when you connected that cable directly to the web really. If you want to be really secure just unplug it.

Google on Tuesday began marketing new online tools for protecting email from spam and other problems as it continued to encroach on the terrain of software king Microsoft.

Google unveiled email security services built with technology from Postini, a start-up the California Internet titan bought last year for 625 million dollars. The software protects, filters, encrypts and archives email, and is compatible with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Novell Groupwise.

Google said subscription pricing for email security starts at three dollars a year per user to "accommodate the budget of any business." Premium online services that include virus protection and saving messages is priced at 25 dollars annually per user.

"As threats rise in volume and complexity, and compliance requirements pile up, IT is struggling to find the resources to keep up," said Google director of product management Scott Petry. "Now, Google can take care of this for you."

We were somewhat confused with smartermail forum on the topic of ClamAV updating in SmarterMail. Here are my observations. This solution is only based on my personal observation, which cured 4 different smartmail servers with the problem of not showing the ClamAv updates correctly. One could see they were being downloaded to the server.

They are located in the default install path: C:\Program Files\SmarterTools\SmarterMail\Service\Clam\share\clamav the date in the admin interface was the same date as the file 'daily.cvd'. I renamed the file to daily.cvd.bak and restarted smartermail service and a new file was created and the interface reflected the new date.

Part 2 Spam E-Mail Fitering:

At this point to show the magnitude of spam we are eliminating. The screen shot is at the last step in the MTA, it is a fair sampling of how much is being eliminated even at this last step in the process after going through three levels above this. So while the numbers indicate a fair amount of spam before delivery to the mail domain. The screen shot is only one of our end point mail servers and is only a 46 hour sampling.

What is becoming hard to comprehend is the vast number of viruses. We have three different companies anti-virus scanners ahead of the end point mail server and you can see that the number still being eliminated at this the fourth level.  We have found that no single bit of anti-virus software on its own is acceptable. We use Avast, Symantec, Nod32, and Clam-D and find similar numbers at each level of the process. For the experts these scanners are not on the same machines in the MTA hub they are all passing through separate layers of the mail processing. 

At the bottom of the graph you can see how well grey-listing works with 956,710 senders being blocked in a 46 hour period. While 40,710 valid senders were approved.

At this layer we are very confident that spam high is garbage and is directed to the bit bucket. Spam Medium is simply stamped in the subject so the end user is assured not to lose anything even remotely questionable. The domain admin can change our default settings and chose to leave this in a junk folder on the server if they want another layer of filtering.

However our MTA MX hub already allow quarantine for 14 days for questionable emails so this layer is really the last or shake out layer before mail delivery. We are using the best technologies on available to protect our enterprise clients email and offer the best possible service level available at any cost. Yet we include this with every account hosted with us. If you are looking for $3.95 month hosting you will not find it. However, if you want serious enterprise level mail filtering you will certainly find we are committed to preventing spam from reaching your in-box. 

The war on spam wears on and a question from one of our users sparked this blog post. "What makes your spam filtering so dam great"?

Many hosts install spam assassin perhaps a bit of clam-av virus filtering and call it done. Maybe they enable grey-listing and then brag about the service level.

Now comes, the end user who understands almost nothing about any of this. They accept the market hype and take it as the gospel. They want to know nothing, they just do not want the spam filling up their in boxes. They feel this is something which should just happen. Which is why many hosts & ISP's just install spam assassin and say you have e-mail filtering. 

Yet other hosts & ISP's have this idea that just buying a Barracuda Firewall is the answer. After all someone told them Barracuda makes the best mail filtering device available. So booyah they are an instant expert. The success of the Barracuda firewall product, and the continual increase in spam are probably the reasons for an increase in email backscatter. Sadly, too many Barracuda Spam Firewall customers still enable auto-replies for spams that get blocked. This is not necessarily the fault of Barracuda firewall, but more of the administrators do not understand the impact of their actions. 

Most people send a limited number of messages to people who they have a relationship with. Spammers however send millions of messages to people who they have no relationship with. A real email message will keep retrying if the server isn't ready and will generally play by they rules. Spammers will try to circumvent the rules to try to deliver as many messages to as many people as possible. They try the back door before they try the front door and if the back door rejects them they move on. This is why grey-listing is important and blocks much of this behavior since most spam is not sent out using RFC compliant MTAs; the spamming software will not try again later.

While grey-listing is important, it like spam assassin can only answer part of the mail filtering scheme. Understand that the war on spam is waged against people who make their living off making it to your in-box. This typically makes no standard canned code or device on its own merit enough to prevent the well armed spammer from be successful.

To make matters worse many desktops around the world are nothing more than the instruments of spammers with mal-ware being inserted turning their machines into zombies, Sophos estimates half a million zombie PCs are operating worldwide. Given this conservative estimate of the volume of these zombie machines, it only seems logical that a desktop user cannot continue to assume that these things are all on the administrators who handle their mail.

The point of the article is why our mail filtering is better than other providers. Our intent is to offer a truly flexible efficient package, which supports features like MailScanner Spam Assassin, Razor, DCC, Pyzor, Grey-listing and Dynamic Bayesian indexing from our pool. We believe that putting as many features as possible directly in the hands of the domain email administrator is the right approach to take and we stand by that.

While we are focused on the windows platform for our mail servers due to the fact that SmarterMail is one of the best email server packages available. We also understand that Linux servers are currently better suited to the tools available for mail filtering. We work day and night to provide the best mix, while capitalizing on the strengths of each and ignoring any weakness each platform might have. Our email filtering is performed by collection of clustered servers with a single purpose, filtering the unwanted email while still allowing the valid email to quickly transit the MTA.

Email and Alias Forwarding!

Why is it being blocked to AOL and ComCast Accounts?

The Problem defined below is the same for Comcast and AOL!

1. You setup an auto forwarder from your domain to your AOL email account (you@yourdomain.com -> you@aol.com).
2. Your customers send emails to you@yourdomain.com and the emails gets forwarded to you@aol.com
3. One day you receive some spam at you@yourdomain.com, which was auto forwarded directly to you@aol.com.
4. You open your you@aol.com mail box and see the spam, so click to Mark it as SPAM and add it to your AOL spam filter .
5. AOL's spam filter does not register the originator of the email as the spammer - instead, it registers the last place the email came from as the spammer. And in this case and the last place the email came from is our email server which hosts you@yourdomain.com.
6. AOL will then blacklist the entire mail server, so that no one can send email to any AOL email accounts.

You need to login to your email admin and go through your email accounts and take off any forwarding that forwards email to AOL or Comcast account. Also check to make sure your email Alias is not forwarding to AOL or ComCast email account.

It is stated to be an inconvenience by many users. The fact that this means you only need to add another account in your mail client (i.e.) Outlook, Outlook Express, or whatever client you use. If your mail client does not support checking multiple accounts you should have quit using it long ago.

Our blocking is necessary in order to protect all of our valuable customers from being blacklisted by AOL by the action of one or two users who think that blocking spam using Comcast or AOL filtering is the right approach. Though the concept is unproductive by using that mark as spam button, they are only shooting off their own foot, and any legitimate mail that server may be sending.

AOL & ComCast certainly does nothing to investigate the source of the spam and would rather shut down a server than take a minute to check it out. It's unfortunate but is in everyone's best interests.

Greylisting is a new weapon to use against spam in this great war being waged upon it. With this new shielding method, by which you may block out huge amounts of spam, you are sure to please your email clients!

In name, as well as operation, greylisting is related to whitelisting and blacklisting. What happen is that each time a given mailbox receives an email from an unknown contact (ip), that mail is rejected with a "try again later"-message (This happens at the SMTP layer and is transparent to the end user). This, in the short run, means that all mail gets delayed at least until the sender tries again - but this is where spam loses out! Most spam is not sent out using RFC compliant MTAs; the spamming software will not try again later. {More}

Evan Harris
Greylisting FAQ (Texas A&M University)
Greycasting: a distributed heavy duty greylisting implementation
The Next Step in the Spam Control War: Greylisting

The term "backscatter" is also used to describe a side-effect of email spam, viruses and worms. In this context, an alternate, more distinguishing term ("outscatter") is also used, since the traffic isn't directed to the original destination, but to a third party instead. Since a 2002 Klez variant, a large proportion of malignant email is sent with a forged sender address, but some mail servers do not take this into account. They generate bounce messages for spam or viruses - which of course go to an innocent party.

Since these messages were not solicited by the recipients, are substantially similar to each other, and are delivered in bulk quantities, they themselves can qualify as unsolicited bulk email or spam. As such, systems that generate e-mail backscatter can end up being listed on various DNSBLs and be in violation of ISPs Terms-of-Service for being abusive.

Due to controversial aspects of its design, the stock (unpatched) qmail mailserver is more likely than most to produce such bounces. For instance, qmail's "wildcard" delivery mechanism and security design prevents it from rejecting messages during SMTP transactions. When email addressed to nonexistent recipients can't be rejected at the SMTP connection, the only alternative is to auto-reply to the sender address, which causes email backscatter if the sender address is valid and forged.

• Postfix - backscatter page
• SpamLinks - Backscatter
• RFC 3834: Recommendations for Automatic Responses to Electronic Mail.
• Moronic Mail Autoresponders (A FAQ From Hell)
• Why are auto responders bad?
• A DNSBL of Backscatter sources.
• Dontbouncespam.org Why you shouldn't bounce spam

IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!

Appeal court quashes earlier e360 compensation ruling.

Anti-spam operation Spamhaus, previously ordered to pay $11 million to mass-mailing firm e360 Insight after refusing to contest a case accusing it of falsely labelling those behind e360 as spammers, has had the fine thrown out in an appeal court.

The case was first brought last autumn, and after initially challenging the charges Spamhaus withdrew from the case, as the US court in which it was brought had no jurisdiction over the organisation's UK-based operation. e360 was thus granted a default ruling in its favour, with the $11.7 million fine called for based on its own uncontested evaluation of the damage caused by Spamhaus filtering out its mails. The spam fighting organisation was also ordered to apologise publicly and to remove e360 from its 'ROKSO' list of known spammers in perpetuity - another ruling whose legality has been questioned by the appeal court.

The appeal court ruling still grants 360 the case, due to Spamhaus' refusal to contest it, but has passed the settlement award back to the lower court to be analysed more closely. Spamhaus continues to include e360 on its list of spammers, and has suggested e360 brings the case to a UK court, where its activities would fall under stricter anti-spam laws. Attempts by e360 to have Spamhaus's domain registration revoked have been ignored by US courts.

A Wired.com blogger looks into the case in more detail here, and carries a full copy of the latest ruling (in PDF format) here.

France is hoping to shut down spammers more quickly through a system that makes it easier for users to notify ISPs (Internet service providers) when unsolicited e-mails are coming from their network.

The French government funded the development of an open-source toolbar for Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook and Mozilla Corp.'s Thunderbird e-mail programs that people can use to report suspected spam, said John Graham-Cumming, an Englishman who built the software for the project, called Signal Spam. See article.

While it is a novel idea it as other solutions lacks understanding of two of the root problems. One of the biggest problems with this approach is it assumes that end users have any idea at all what they are doing. We are a web host and commonly see our users forward all the mail from their domain to their ISP email account. When they mark something as spam using an approach like this they typically end up reporting their own email server.

The last issue is with regard to spoofing the source email address. Until someone comes up with a viable solution to truly determine a source to determine if it is valid all these approaches are flawed from the start.

If you forward your mail and click the Report as Spam button you are blocking your own mail server.

Instead of blaming your provider for the problem perhaps just do a search. You will find out that now Comcast has gone right to the top with lame email servers they are only matched by AOL.

Due to strict spam policies with Comcast and AOL and blacklisting our mail servers as a result of clients forwarding their email, we have been forced to change our policy with regard to email.

We have been left with no other course of action than to block forwarding to these domains server wide. Mail will no longer be allowed to be forwarded to any ISP that will easily blacklist a server with no way for the end user to whitelist an email address or domain name. This is to prevent issues with companies like AOL or ComCast blacklisting our servers without cause.

We have been being listed at ComCast for spamming without any method to determine why. It appears many users forward their mail to ComCast then use the ComCast interface to view their mail. This in itself seems odd but whatever. 

Then they use their ComCast Mail interface to try to report spam. Guess what you are really reporting as spam? Think about it, if you have forwarded your mail? Thats right you are reporting the server that forwarded the mail to you. Think about it the next time that you are not recieving your mail.

Since ComCast is amoung the list of providers who do not allow whitelisting per user you are blocking the your own mail server for all ComCast subscribers.

Is it possible to restore email deleted by a client from a backup?

Yes, you can move the grp files back into the folder, delete the mailbox.cfg file and then stop and restart the SmarterMail service. One thing that will happen is that for all the times on the emails will be lost and reset to midnight.  However, the dates of the emails will still be correct.

An anti-spam organization filed a federal lawsuit Thursday targeting so-called spam harvesters, who facilitate the mass distribution of junk e-mail by trolling the Internet and collecting millions of e-mail addresses.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria by a Utah company called Unspam Technologies Inc. The company runs a Web site called Project Honey Pot dedicated to tracking spam harvesters worldwide.

Project Honey Pot has collected thousands of Internet addresses that it has linked to spam harvesters, but it so far has been unable to link those addresses to an actual person.

The lawsuit names a variety of John Does as defendants, and the plaintiffs hope that the legal process will allow them to track the actual people who are harvesting the e-mail addresses, said lead attorney Jon Praed with the Arlington-based Internet Law Group.

Collecting e-mail addresses is not by itself illegal, but Praed said the plaintiffs will be able to link the harvesting to spam e-mails, which are illegal under federal and state laws. Those laws allow individuals who receive unwanted spam to seek civil damages.

Praed said legitimate businesses are afraid to post e-mail addresses on their Web sites for fear that automated Web crawlers will find the addresses, record them and sell them to spammers who will inundate them with junk e-mail.

Praed said the lawsuit will "focus on the worst of the worst," using information that Project Honey Pot has already collected and analyzed.

We recently spent quite a long time before deciding on our filtering solution. We required a number of things that it appears the big boys do not seem to understand.  Like the biggest and simpliest we have stated time and time again. If your email solution does not offer you a method of white-listing just leave!  We have stated this many times with AOL! Comcast and now even ATT have joined the list of "LAME" ISP's who simply do not understand the importance of this simple requirement for their users.

Anyone who seeks a new provider should ask! Do you use BrightMail or GoodMail? You should ask if they can offer another alternative? These propreitary applications have some issues which ComCast has reported as a glitch, give me a break, this is simply not the problem.

Server response to MAIL FROM:

550-64.4.207.8 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net 550 Blocked for abuse. Please send blacklist removal requests to blacklist_comcastnet@cable.comcast.com - Be sure to include your mail server IP ADDRESS.

Great Article and Frustating ISP comments about ComCast.

Have some Fun here.

The point here is simple when big companies throw large dollars at a solution without alternative methods of adjustment for their clients, they are making a serious blunder.

Almost 70 percent of all electronic mail from Asia is "spam", or unsolicited advertisements, an anti-virus firm said Friday.

The Philippines had the worst record with spam making up 88 percent of all emails, Symantec Corp. said in excerpts of its Internet Threat Security Report released here.

The average percentage of emails sent from the Asia-Pacific region that were spam was 69 percent, the report added.

Although the Philippines had the highest proportion of spam, China was the largest source of spam by sheer volume, the report said.

Thirty-seven percent of all spam detected from Asia-Pacific originated from China.

Symantec said in a statement that it could not provide the total number of e-mails monitored but that the results was based on data from over two million "decoy accounts" attracting email from 20 different countries.

The SEC is serious in its effort to combat stock spam -- bulk e-mail messages pushing unknown stocks in get-rich-quick schemes. On Thursday, the federal agency suspended trading for 10 days in 35 stocks highlighted in spam campaigns.

By most accounts, spam now represents roughly 90 percent of all e-mail sent or received on the Internet, with stock-pushing spam accounting for as much as a third of all unsolicited commercial e-mail -- as many as 100 million e-mails each week, according to the SEC.

The kinds of e-mail that the SEC is pursuing usually push a company that has only a relatively small number of shares available to the public. The e-mails are readily recognizable with subject lines such as "Ready to Explode," "Ride the Bull," and the unsubtle "Fast Money."

Those spam victims who do buy the stock often find the value dropping quickly after the spammers have seen a spike in prices and sold their shares. The SEC said this could account for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

As one of several examples, the SEC cited Apparel Manufacturing Associates, Inc., which trades as APPM. It closed on a Friday in December of 2006 at $0.06 a share, with 3,500 shares traded.

After a weekend spam campaign, touting "huge news expected out of APPM," it spiked to $0.19 a share on Monday, with nearly 500,000 shares trading, before collapsing back down to $0.10 about a week later.

Google Inc.'s free e-mail service will shed the final remnants of its invitation-only restrictions Wednesday, extending the reach of an increasingly popular product that has emerged as a vital cog in the online search leader's expansion efforts.

Invitations will no longer be required to join the nearly 3-year-old "Gmail" service in the United States, Canada, Mexico and a swath of Asian and South American countries where the Mountain View-based company previously limited the number of users.

With those restrictions now lifted, Gmail will be open to all comers worldwide for the first time since Google unveiled the service on April Fool's Day in 2004.

The decision to lift all invitation requirements on Gmail signals Google finally believes it has adequate computing capacity to accommodate the generous amount of free storage provided by the e-mail service after investing heavily in additional data centers. Gmail offers each account at least 2.8 gigabytes of storage — enough to fill about 1.4 million pages.

The RFC's do define the first three digits of error codes but the software or mail server itself can define anything after the first three digits for their own use. Perhaps the time is coming that people can be given some uniform codes they can understand. Though the problems are bigger than they may appear at first glance. We have put together some basic codes as a guideline to help everyone have some idea as to what the error might mean.

500: Syntax error, command unrecognized
This may include errors such as command line too long.
 

501: Syntax error in parameters or arguments - Indicates possible poor (noisy dialup) or an intermittent drop in network line connection that caused your mail client to send erroneous command to the mail server.
 

502: Command not implemented - Indicates that your ISP mail server did not recognized a command sent.
 

503: Server encountered bad sequence of commands - Indicates (probable) that your ISP mail server did not recognized a command sent that is erroneous. Some temporary event prevents the successful sending of the message or an intermittent drop in network line connection that caused your mail client to send erroneous command and sending in the future may be successful.
 

504: Command parameter not implemented - Indicates that your ISP mail server did not recognized a command sent.

521: The domain does not accept mail or closing transmission channel You must be pop-authenticated before you can use this SMTP server and you must use your mail address for the Sender/From field.
 

530: Access denied (???a Sendmailism)

550: Requested actions not taken, mailbox unavailable - Indicates that your recipient's email address was not recognized by your ISP mail server or (mailbox not found or cannot access it).
 

550: Relaying prohibited or Not local host… not a gateway or Unable to relay for, or user’s mailbox unavailable - Sending an email to recipients outside of your domain are not allowed or your mail server does not know that you have access to use it for relaying messages and authentication is required. Or to prevent the sending of SPAM some mail servers will not allow (relay) send mail to any e-mail using another company’s network and computer resources.

550: This address is not allowed or Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable - Seems like the setting of the “From Address” are incorrect and/or an attempted was made to deliver but there was a non fatal error and it will be retried and/or some change to the message destination must be made for successful delivery.
 

551: User not local, please try <forward-path> or Invalid Address: Relay request denied - Indicates that the recipient's email address have changed and your ISP mail server is forwarding it back to you and/or your ISP SMTP mail server does not accept email when neither the sender nor the recipient is a local user--this feature was implemented to protect the mail server from being used by spammers to relay their messages by using another company’s network and computer resources.
 

552: Requested mail actions aborted: exceeded storage allocation - ISP mail server indicates, probable overloading from too many messages.
 

553: Denied. Requested action not taken: mailbox name not allowed or bad command format - (E.g., mailbox syntax incorrect)  Some mail servers have the option to reduce the number of concurrent connection and also the number of messages sent per connection. If you have a lot of messages queued up (being sent) for a domain, it could go over the maximum number of messages per connection and/or some change to the message and/or destination must be made for successful delivery.
 

554: Transaction failed or Permanent Failure - A permanent failure is one which is not likely to be resolved by resending the message in its current form and some change to the message and/or destination must be made for successful delivery.

554: Transaction failed or Permanent Failure - The server sending your mail server does not have a reverse DNS entry.
      1. Helo command rejected: Access denied;
      2. Recipent user is "Over Quota"
      3. You do not have permission to send to this recipient.

557: Too many duplicate messages: Resource temporarily unavailable - Indicates (probable) that there is some kind of anti-spam system on the mail server.

Many people still believe that anti-spam and anti-virus is best handled client side. We have used our share of client tools too. There simply is no reason to question whether or not server side filtering is the right approach. There are many reasons why sever side is better including the sampling base size. The task can be daunting even for a savvy mail administrator.

Spammers have become sharper, there is money at stake. Providers have alot invested with proper firewalls that remove viruses on the fly and check for spoof and prevent the mail server from coming under any number of attacks. Certain mail servers specifically Merak Mail do a great job and have many levels of filtering mail yet still manage to perform at lightning speed. The newest in v 8.9.1 is the addition of realtime baysian indexing. The sampling of mail to index on a server in itself should be enough even for a novice to understand this method is something they simply cannot acheive client side.

While it is true many 3rd party mail servers claim to have all the features for filtering mail. A good example is smartermail. As a mail server it is a fantasic product but their filtering leaves alot to be desired. There are a couple of solutions which can fix the problems of smartermail and though the product by declude claims to fix those weaknesses. The issue I have observed is making the server misbehave. It seriously cuts the number of users the system has the resources to support. The best way for anyone to really filter mail correctly besides the Merak Mail is to use a MX or Gateway server.

Placing MX servers in front of your mail servers and filtering before it even makes it to the mail server. This has become the preferred method for enterprise mail. There is no magic pill with some client side software bit, which will kill all spam. 

The point here is that desktop software really cannot compete when it comes to filtering mail. Understand and appreciate all that your spam goes through to get to your desktop in the first place. It does not hurt to have some desktop anti-spam, anti-virus software. However it simply is never going to compare to all your emails already go through.

I am constantly presented with some issue, how I do block this or that? It seems that not many people know how to experiment so I will take a couple of examples for Merak Mail server as to how to stop the dynamically generated images and sources that seem to make it past some filters.

Ok so you can see we are using "regular expression" in the "body".

If you view the source of the email you will find a string that will put an end to these annoying emails one by one. Since they are the most offensive emails on the web and costing everyone in time and money.

While bulk e-mailers have, in the past, sent unwanted messages from a single server, increasingly the spam emanates from networks of compromised PCs, known as bot nets. The level of junk e-mail has increased almost in lock step with the number of compromised systems used for spam.

What is most alarming is that new clients--Internet addresses that we have never seen before and which could be new infections--have tripled since June," said Hart, who posted a chart tracking the growth on his Web site this week.

Bots and bot nets have rapidly emerged as one of the major threats on the Internet. Tens of thousands of compromised PCs are frequently counted among a single bot net's unwilling members, with some bot nets boasting as many as a million systems. Traditionally, the networks have been used to install adware on victims' machines or level denial-of-service attacks at online companies as part of an extortion scheme.

Now, spammers are frequently counted among the operators or the clients of bot nets. Last May, a spammer only identified as "PharmaMaster" used a bot net to target anti-spam provider Blue Security and its Internet service providers with a massive denial-of-service attack that blocked access to the companies for hours and, in the case of Blue Security, days. Because of the attack, the company exited the anti-spam business.

Many bot herders--as the criminals that infect computers with bot software are named--sell or rent bot nets to others to use, and spammers increasingly seem to be among their customers.

Some Internet users have noticed an indirect effect of the surge in bulk e-mail. Spammers usually put another person's e-mail address in sender's field of the message. Because many spam and antivirus filters send back a rejection message to the sender, the actual owner of the e-mail address will be inundated with replies.

Security researchers that use honey pots--heavily monitored computers that are allowed to be infected by malicious software to spy on the attackers--have also confirmed the connection between bot nets and spam, said Thorsten Holz, a graduate student and the founder of the German Honeynet Project.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said in a statement 10.11.2006 that it does not have the ability or authority to comply with a proposed court order that it suspend the Internet service of The Spamhaus Project Ltd. Spamhaus is a volunteer-run antispam service.

In a proposed order last Friday, Judge Charles Kocoras of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois called on the organizations responsible for registering the Spamhaus.org Internet address to suspend the organization's Internet service. Both ICANN -- the nonprofit organization set up to manage the domain name system of the Internet -- and Toronto-based Tucows Inc., the Spamhaus.org registrar, are named in the order.

The court threatened to shut down Spamhaus for ignoring an $11.7 million judgment against it. The proposed order followed a Sept. 13 ruling in which Spamhaus was required to pay damages and stop listing an e-mail marketing company called E360Insight LLC in its database of known spammers.

ICANN said that in most cases, only the Internet registrar with whom the registrant has a contractual relationship can suspend an individual domain name.

"Even if ICANN were properly brought before the court in this matter, which ICANN has not been, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so," the organization said.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered Wednesday that Spamhaus must pay $11,715,000 in damages to e360insight and its chief, David Linhardt, who sued the U.K.-based organization earlier this year over blacklisting.

The court also barred Spamhaus from causing any e-mail sent by e360insight or Linhardt to be "blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in anyway" and ordered Spamhaus to publish an apology stating that Linhardt and his company are not spammers, according to a copy of the order.

"This ruling confirms e360insight's position that Spamhaus.org is a fanatical, vigilante organization that operates in the United States with blatant disregard for U.S. law," Linhardt wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com on Thursday. One would hardly think that a ruling by the state of Illionis, which was a default judgment hardly proves anything at all. So please Linhardt give the world a break.

Spamhaus appears unfazed by the ruling. In a statement on its Web site, Spamhaus dismissed the judgment as invalid and charges that the court was "bamboozled by spammers." Spamhaus didn't mount a defense in the case; the ruling was a default judgment in absence of counterarguments.

Default judgments obtained in U.S. county, state or federal courts have no validity in the U.K. and cannot be enforced under the British legal system," Spamhaus said on its Web site. "As spamming is illegal in the U.K., an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to U.K. law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place."

Linhardt and his company are indeed spammers and remain on the Spamhaus blocklist, Spamhaus said. Posting a note that e360insignt was inaccurately labeled as a spammer would be a lie, Spamhaus said. If Linhardt wants a ruling that counts, he needs to refile his case in the U.K., according to Spamhaus.  ROKSO  e360insight is the preferred service provider for Brian Haberstroh

If the US had any lawmakers with the brains and the heart to make proper laws. People who spam should be running from the law, rather than twisting it in the name of what they refer to as legitmate business practice. SpamHaus lists are quite legitmate from my personal experience and other companies who depend on these lists also believe so.

McAfee has rolled out a Spam Aptitude Test, which may not get college-bound seniors into the university of their choice, but rather make them and the public at large more aware of how to avoid an inbox full of spam.

For those who enjoy a challenge, the security software maker has created a spam test. As part of the test, users scroll through eight questions, with each asking the user to determine which of two Web sites would be the most likely to resell or redistribute their email information and other personal details.

The test allows users to access the privacy policy pages of each site, rather than rely solely on the Web site's design. Users who miss all eight questions in the test face the dire warning: "You're at Risk!" "Watch out!" "Your inbox might explode!" On the flip side, those who ace the test are "Safety Gurus." And "spammy e-mails don't even stand a chance of penetrating (their) inbox."  My score was 7 out of 8 correct. Be sure to read the fine print remember they are experts.

Last month, Blue Frog, the anti-spam service offered by Blue Security, was forced to roll over and accept defeat after suffering a retaliatory attack from a spammer.

Blue Security championed a DIY-style anti-spam campaign in which the company's half a million customers were encouraged to send replies to the spam they received. The idea was that the resulting traffic would overload the spammers' servers and hamper their email-sending activity severely. Indeed, some spam companies did agree to stop mailing Blue Security's customers.

Last month, however, the company's website, along with those of many of its partners, was hit by a denial-of-service attack, which is believed to have originated from a particular Russian spammer. In addition to the DoS attack the company was threatened with a second attack that the attacker claimed would include a computer virus unless the company ceased its activity. The company felt that it had no choice than to close its anti-spam operations.

Now, however, two software developers are attempting to recreate a more robust, open source version of Blue Security's anti-spam service. The developers announced their intentions in a CastleCops forum, and are searching for interested parties to participate in the project and lend support.

The project is named the Okopipi Project, Okopipi being the Amazon Indian name for the blue poison dart frog found in Suriname, South America.

According to the project's founders, 'The rules of engagement would be the same as Blue Frog. One spam equals one opt-out request. No DDoS. We [will] use bandwidth throttling [that is] sufficiently low to not overwhelm the site. It proved effective before. We see no need to change this. All actions will be approved by a steering committee.'

Comments and suggestions have been invited on the fledgling project - for full details, or to sign up to development and general discussion mailing lists, see http://www.okopipi.org/.

Eran Reshef had an idea in the battle against spam e-mail that seemed to be working: he fought spam with spam. Today, he'll give up the fight.

Reshef's Silicon Valley company, Blue Security Inc., simply asked the spammers to stop sending junk e-mail to his clients. But because those sort of requests tend to be ignored, Blue Security took them to a new level: it bombarded the spammers with requests from all 522,000 of its customers at the same time.

That led to a flood of Internet traffic so heavy that it disrupted the spammers' ability to send e-mails to other victims -- a crippling effect that caused a handful of known spammers to comply with the requests.

Then, earlier this month, a Russia-based spammer counterattacked, Reshef said. Using tens of thousands of hijacked computers, the spammer flooded Blue Security with so much Internet traffic that it blocked legitimate visitors from going to Bluesecurity.com, as well as to other Web sites. The spammer also sent another message: Cease operations or Blue Security customers will soon find themselves targeted with virus-filled attacks.

"It's clear to us that [quitting] would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don't have the authority to start," Reshef said. "Our users never signed up for this kind of thing."  Full article

The event comes on the heels of national uproar over what seemed to be AOL's plan to phase out their free EnhancedWhitelist in favor of Goodmail's fee-based authentication service. AOL was quick to make a subsequent announcement that the EnhancedWhitelist would remain.

But MoveOn.org, among others, doesn't buy that it's not still on the agenda. Calling the proposed system anything from "email tax" to "extortion," the traditionally left-wing organization united the most unlikely of opponents from Gun Owners of America to Cleanpeace.org, from RightMarch.com to the Democratic National Committee.

It's like looking out the window to see Charlton Heston holding hands with Alec Baldwin. MoveOn.org has collected over 350,000 individual signatures to its DearAOL petition, and garnered support from over 600 businesses and organizations. In total, says MoveOn's Adam Green, the list of petitioners counts 15 million people.

That type of opposition was enough to land AOL and Goodmail in front of the California legislature earlier this week to explain the situation. After the hearing, MoveOn and a host of other opponents lambasted Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras for reversing what had been the chief selling point for the partnership for the past couple of months.

On Wednesday, MoveOn sent out notices to those on its email list pointing out the seeming contradictions and using them as evidence of AOL's loss of trustworthiness. But AOL members were not receiving those messages. Anyone who tried to forward the message on to AOL accounts had their messages bounced back with notice of permanent failure of delivery. MoveOn, who has accused AOL of lying throughout the ordeal, was quick to send out notice:

"AOL was caught red-handed censoring email, and now the public knows their credibility is gone," said Adam Green, a spokesperson for MoveOn.org Civic Action.

"Think about it. AOL's first reaction was to tell reporters that the DearAOL.com Coalition were spammers, and their second reaction was to unblock our emails. They can't both be true - why would AOL unblock the email of spammers? AOL was caught censoring email, then they were caught lying about our coalition, and in the end AOL proved they cannot be trusted to preserve the free and open Internet."  "Full Article"

The SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) email protocol is fundamentally flawed because it was never designed to be secure in the first place and lacks any authentication of the source of an email.  Simply put, SMTP is based on the honor system, with no way to confirm the authenticity of the sender let alone track the sender.  What this means is that anyone can send email as any assumed identity from anywhere in the world.  I can say I'm the CEO of your company or I can say I'm the Pope when I send you an email and there is no way to confirm or deny it's legitimacy. 

The only way to level the playing field against spam is to upgrade the SMTP protocol beyond the honor system and make spoofing & Forging headers nearly impossible. We will call the new protocol as SMTP v2 and the existing SMTP protocol as SMTP v1.  Unlike some who are suggesting a new SMTP protocol all together which could never be implemented easily, SMTP v2 should be backward compatible to the existing protocol to facilitate a seamless migration. George Ou "Written 2003"

AOL, Yahoo and Goodmail again are the primary targets here! Since they offer no new way of determining spoofed or forged headers which is a fact they will have to admit. If you offer nothing new except charging money, how then have you realistically changed anything? The fact is without changing the protocol or adding something people would be willing to pay for, what is the point? Since they are charging the sender for an express lane for spam this does not seem like a valid approach to anti-spam.

Microsoft Corp. is releasing new versions of its software packages for safeguarding and archiving e-mails and other corporate messages.

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, which was known as FrontBridge Technologies before Microsoft acquired that company, comprise of four products that can help companies do things like minimize spam and viruses and archive messages for legal and regulatory requirements.

The revamped product line will be available April 1 in most countries.

The products are offered as a service over the Internet, rather than as software that companies have to install. Web-based offerings are growing in popularity because they can be cheaper and easier for customers to deploy and less cumbersome for software makers to update. Microsoft, which makes most of its money from desktop-bound software like Windows and Office, is trying to make inroads into that field.

Redmond-based Microsoft says the products, which will be sold directly to businesses, are meant to complement other security safeguards that companies have on their premises.

On Tuesday, an unlikely coalition of more than 50 groups, representing some 15 million people, launched a campaign to fight AOL's new pay-to-send email scheme.

In addition to Free Press and Electronic Frontier Foundation, coalition members include Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, MoveOn.org, Gun Owners of America, the Association of Cancer Online Resources, the Humane Society, the AFL-CIO, RightMarch and others.

Cumulatively, these groups count more than 3 million AOL subscribers as members, or in excess of 15 percent of AOL's customer base.

While the organizations occupy almost every corner of the political landscape, we're united in opposition to AOL's plan to make large group e-mailers pay to bypass the email company's Swiss cheese spam filters and get guaranteed delivery to the inboxes of AOL customers.

AOL's Spam on Spam

AOL's pay-to-send plan is the latest media snake-oil scheme, designed to give users the impression of improved service while serving no one but the company’s bottom line.

In fact, the AOL pay-to-send plan could make spam worse. As AOL turns its attention to revenue generating email it has a cash inducement to let its free-to-send service grow increasingly unreliable.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham presents his company's new regime as a boon to end-users, stating -- misleadingly -- that a certification system will protect user inboxes from spam. This isn't true. AOL subscribers will receive certified email in addition to the regular traffic that clutters most inboxes.

"We continue to provide exceptional service to all email senders who conform to our antispam guidelines," Graham writes in a rebuttal to our campaign. "In fact, CertifiedEmail serves as a valuable, new standard and threshold for the delivery of legitimate email that will serve as a guidepost for other email senders to follow and adhere to."

Nice try, Nicholas. AOL hasn't solved the spam problem at all; they've merely created a second tier for delivery, one favoring those who can afford to pay AOL's express rate. The other tier -- which has been increasingly compromised by AOL's inability to distinguish honest email from spam -- will remain in place. It may get worse, even, as AOL tries to "incentivise" more users to move from the free lane to their toll road.

Think that deleting that incriminating e-mail in your G-Mail account will save you from the feds? Think again. In a case that shows Google’s true colours, the leading search company has accepted an order from US Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte to divuldge all deleted e-mails to court from Peter Baker. Every e-mail from this shareholder of Dolphin Development will now be poured over and analyzed by the Federal Trade Commision’s lawyers who are attempting to track down some money that may or may not be in Peter Baker’s possession. These records also include deleted e-mails, stored off-site by Google.

Read more:
C|Net
Elizabeth Laporte

Nearly four out of five online banking customers now ignore emails that purport to be from their bank, according to data commissioned by RSA.

The annual study, conducted by market researchers Infosurv, found that lack of trust in such emails had risen from 70 per cent ion 2004 to 79 per cent. Nearly two thirds of those questioned hadn't seen any drop oin the number of phishing emails they received.

The research also found that people want to have their online banking monitored, with nearly nine out of ten people saying they would be happy to be monitored while online and 59 per cent of respondents feeling that the bank should contact them if it suspects suspicious activity on their accounts.

Consumers seem to feel comfortable with the notion of their financial institution monitoring their online activity and contacting them when something suspicious is detected, just as they have become accustomed to for years in the credit card space.

Although the banking community has been making noises about introducing stronger identity management systems early progress has been slow and the survey shows little support for some products.

Less than half of those questioned felt comfortable using a hardware token to access their accounts, although nearly three quarters want some form of stronger security.

The company's original plan would have required all bulk e-mailers to pay a small fee — ranging from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per message — to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters.

AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., said the system would reduce help reduce spam because only legitimate groups would be likely to pay the fee.

But on Monday, a consortium of nonprofit groups, including the AFL-CIO labor union and political group MoveOn.org Civic Action, blasted plans to charge for the service, claiming it would stifle communication from organizations that couldn't afford to pay.

On Friday, the DearAOL.com Coalition again criticized AOL's latest move, saying it would "create a two-tiered Internet with one standard of e-mail reliability for the big guy and an inferior standard for the little guy."

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the service offered to nonprofit groups would have the same reliability as the commercial service. AOL plans to contract with a third-party e-mail accreditation service within the next two months, he said.

Call it anything you want it changes the way the web functions and adds a hook that simply not necessary. It seems that putting a white-list and black-list feature to all AOL users is clearly a better approach. 

Also they clearly cannot tell a spoofed or forged header any better than anyone else. So there is no new black magic being applied here. We know this as we have signed up to AOL's list and can confirm the emails never transited our email servers. No problem we are keeping the server transcripts in case they are ever necessary in a court case. Yeah the headers would indicate they have. Yet the server logs tell the truth and are valid in any court. Offering a service which cannot give the truth about the true path a mail is transiting is nothing new.

We wish to express our serious concern with AOL's adoption of Goodmail's CertifiedEmail, which is a threat to the free and open Internet.

This system would create a two-tiered Internet in which affluent mass emailers could pay AOL a fee that amounts to an "email tax" for every email sent, in return for a guarantee that such messages would bypass spam filters and go directly to AOL members' inboxes. Those who did not pay the "email tax" would increasingly be left behind with unreliable service. Your customers expect that your first obligation is to deliver all of their wanted mail, and this plan is a step away from that obligation.

AOL's "email tax" is the first step down a slippery slope that will harm the Internet itself. The Internet is a revolutionary force for free speech, civic organizing, and economic innovation precisely because it is open and accessible to all Internet users equally. On a free and open Internet, small ideas can become big ideas overnight. As Internet advocacy groups, charities, non-profits, businesses, civic organizing groups, and email experts, we ask you to reconsider your pay-to-send proposal and to keep the Internet free.

http://www.dearaol.com/

I did not know anything or even care about Goodmail one way or the other until the earlier article. Then I went and read their poorly written rebut.

GoodMail Quote FACT: Small business and non-profits will not have to pay for something that used to be free.
First of all, no one has to pay. The service is optional. First class email has not suffered with the introduction of priority and Express Mail. With CertifiedEmail there is literally no change in the ability of Internet users to participate however they desire, nor will any user incur any new charges. Optional offerings, such as CertifiedEmail, allow ISPs to provide better and better services to those who chose them, and in turn provide a higher degree of safety to their members.   

This was taken right from their site and one has to question their own ability to proof read. I have read all their points and it sounds so much like the garbage brought to you by the ad-aware companies. I never had any intent in bringing goodmail in the fight it is they who are joining this fight which honestly they could have stood outside of easily as they are focusing on a completely different line of business than AOL and Yahoo.

This all reminds me of the days when Piss tests were optional. Thats right no one can force you to take the test, just do not apply for the job. You have your rights so what is the problem? In the case of any of these companies they do and can do what ever they want. Why on earth anyone cares whether AOL goes broke with this logic is beyond me. As for Yahoo well the name says it all. AOL can spout this stuff for years, and no matter how long they talk is just babble and another way to make a buck! By not simply putting a white-listing ability to their users is nothing short of ransom.

Remember the famous email rumor that made the rounds in the 1990s: "Congress is trying to tax your Internet connection, write in now!"

Well what wasn't true in the 1990s is apparently coming true in 2006, only the beneficiaries won't be Uncle Sam -- it will be Yahoo, AOL, and a company ironically called Goodmail. Yahoo and AOL have announced that they will guarantee access to your email inbox for email senders who pay $.0025 per message. They will override their own spam filters and webbug-strippers, and deliver the mail directly with a "certified" notice. In the process, they will treat more of your email as spam, and email you're expecting won't be delivered.

The justification is that if people have to pay to send email, they won't send junk email. Apparently AOL and Yahoo believe that if we "tax" speech then only desirable speech happens. We all know how well that works for postal mail -- that's why no one gets any "free" AOL starter disks, right?

More seriously, as we discuss below, this isn't really an anti-spam measure as much as a "pay to speak" email measure, and it won't end spam or phishing. Prominent anti-spammer Richard Cox of Spamhaus agrees: "an e-mail charge will destroy the spirit of the Internet."

Full Article

After dealing with many issues about user passwords and clients saying; I did not do this, or that, how is your mail server doing this? Well let's first say the obvious, a mail server simply is not smart enough to do anything on it's own. It will not selectively pick a user to mess with.

After spending three hours messing about with a user saying all I ever use is the web interface to make sure I never get a virus, and I am absolutely certain that no one has my password. I have never given it to anyone!! It was quite clear that the person was doing little to help the situation. He was more concerned with proving that the mail server was messing with him, and he finally had the proof.

After hours of digging through the logs of every single transaction the mail server had made over several day's it was quite clear he was incorrect and someone had got his logon and password. They had clearly attained it in a cyber cafe where he been on holiday.

I asked the fellow have you ever heard of a key logger? I knew we were in trouble when his reply was what is that? It is clear that you are sending emails from the US and France minutes appart. So someone has that logon and password. Rather than spending even more time explaining how they work. I would suggest a rule for anyone traveling. Change your password each time you use an unknown network! Paranoid perhaps, but then your link to your identity has to be protected. It is more logical than thinking your own mail server is messing with you.

The best approach when planning a vacation trip. Change that password regularly. It is totally impossible to know the security of a publically open network like a Cyber Cafe or even a Hotel or Motel. You know better than leaving cash in your Motel or Hotel room right! It should be logical to not leave your passwords laying around. A keylogger can have this information in a matter of second and using your ID to make you a major spammer on the web. Or worse yet intercepting confidental company information. There are people everywhere, that work to make the best of your information.

Having to deal with a million different problems with regard one AOL problem or another, we as many are simply overwhelmed once again with AOL policies. I ask a very simple question what kind of company creates a policy so stringent that even their own users are now being forced to seek a proper mail system? Most proper mail servers offer a means which allow a specific user to whitelist any one they wish to accept delivery from. I have to ask this very basic question. Again, what makes you at AOL think you can impliment something which your own users cannot control?

We have personally got to the point where our own users are making posts that state we are sorry but AOL addresses are no longer acceptable. I found this a bit strong at first but then gave it some consideration. I think the statement is brilliant, administrators world wide dealing with AOL policies have done little to curb spam nor will it. I think that if they are so stupid as to not offer their clients a proper web interface for white-listing a a specific sender then they get everything they deserve. In fact I think the approach of banning AOL addresses might not be such a bad approach at least untill they get the message. Not putting this in the hands of their own users is costing everyone millions in lost time and stupid email requests that are extemely time consuming.

To think that all this time spent by sending support requests to AOL and dealing with their policy could have all been avoided by building a proper interface. Perhaps they could have done this before imposing the policy. It seems logical that if they want to ban servers that are correctly configured. Then I think banning AOL as a acceptable address might just be the right approach. I think that if everyone took this position over night they would have a interface that offered white and black listings to their clients based on their needs.

80% of spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe can be traced via aliases and addresses, redirects, hosting locations of sites and domains, to a hard-core group of around 200 known spam operations ("spam gangs"), almost all of whom are listed in the ROKSO database. These spam operations consist of an estimated 500-600 professional spammers with ever-changing aliases and domains. The vast majority of those listed here operate illegally and move from network to network (and country to country) seeking out "spam-friendly" Internet Service Providers ("ISPs") known for lax enforcing of anti-spam policies.

"The big list"  "Worst Spammers"  "Worst Networks"   "Worst Countries"

See More From "Tumbleweed Communcations"

Typically, a Directory Harvest attack will target a specific domain with emails to many millions of combinations of email address at that domain, such as: adamsmith@domain.com; adam.smith@domain.com, adam_smith@domain.com, smitha@domain.com etc. Often the domain owner is targeted either for malicious reasons specific to that organisation, or because the business type of the domain owner is incorrectly identified by the attacker. 

One of the best things you can do is removing the catch all account. It is one of the best ways to avoid these types of attacks. If you use an alias correctly these types of attacks only refuse the email. Though it does little to reduce the traffic that might be clogging your mail system it certainly reduces the number of deliverable emails.

These are two good articles. Dark-Traffic  Dark-Mail Rising

What is this page about?

This page is generated to attempt to slow down Spam bots from collecting e-mail addresses off the web via spam programs. The purpose of this page is to try and fill the Spam bots with worthless non-existing emails which will force them to clean out their list which will clear all the emails including all the real emails it's collected.

How does this page work?

This page produces 50 random non-existing emails each time it is loaded. The spam bot will collect all of these emails and after it has completed the list, there is a link followed after which the bot will follow hence collecting more nonsense emails. This is iWEBTOOL's attempt to FIGHT Spam.

How can I help iWEBTOOL fight spam?

If you would like to help us fight spam then simply just add a link wherever you can.
You can try adding links onto:

- Forums/Message Boards
- Your Website
- Guest books
- Blogs

FIGHT SPAM NOW

Three people accused of sending massive amounts of spam face possible prison sentences after being indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. state of Arizona and accused of violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and other charges, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

Named in the indictment are Jennifer R. Clason, Jeffrey A. Kilbride, and James R. Schaffer. The three are accused of sending spam that advertised pornographic Web sites, said the DOJ in a statement. They could make money from commissions that the Web sites paid in return for directing traffic to their sites, the statement said.

The defendant’s operation was ranked as one of the 200 largest sources of spam on the Internet by The Spamhaus Project Ltd., a group that tracks and battles against spam. America Online Inc. received more than 600,000 complaints between late January and early June last year related to spam from the operation, said the DOJ. The actual number of users who received spam from the operation could be in the tens of millions, it said.

“Each of those people [in the Spamhaus listing] sends out several million spams a day,” said Suresh Ramasubramanian, who heads anti-spam operations at e-mail outsourcing company Outblaze Ltd.

He said the defendants’ operation worked by buying large amounts of Internet bandwidth from major service providers. With the purchase they’d also get large blocks of IP addresses and the defendants would then send spam to the Internet from a small portion of the addresses they had. Once the addresses were blocked in anti-spam systems they’d start using different addresses until such a time as the pattern was recognized and they were terminated by their ISP. They’d then go to a new service provider and start all over again.

Online criminals trying to pry passwords and other sensitive information out of companies have started using phony e-mails that look as if they were sent from powerful executives of the targeted organizations, experts said yesterday.

Known as "spear phishing," the technique is an ingenious wrinkle on the "phishing" e-mail scams that try to trick consumers into giving up bank-account information and other sensitive details that can be used in identity theft.

Businesses are typically reluctant to publicly disclose when they are the targets of online attacks, but online security company MessageLabs Inc. said in June that it has seen the tactic grow steadily during the year to the point where it now sees one to two spear-phishing campaigns a week.

Rather than posing as a bank or other online business, spear phishers send e-mails to employees at a company or government agency that appear to come from a powerful person within the organization, several security experts said.

Unlike basic phishing attacks, which are sent out indiscriminately, spear phishers target only one organization at a time. Once they trick employees into giving up passwords, they can install Trojan horse programs or other malicious software to ferret out corporate or government secrets.

Spear phishing can be devastatingly effective even among employees who are aware of online threats.

At the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., several internal tests found that cadets were all too willing to give sensitive information to an attacker posing as a high-ranking officer, said Aaron Ferguson, a visiting faculty member there.

"It's the 'colonel effect.' Anyone with the rank of colonel or higher, you execute the order first and ask questions later," he said.

Cadets in more recent tests have been somewhat more likely to report the messages as suspicious as awareness has grown, he said.

It absolutely amazes me that so many people are taken in by this level of scam. Any savvy web people who have been around awhile look at this stuff at a glance and say yeah right. Yet after Dateline did their report on it, I was more than a little nervous about the people who are scammed. It is clear there is one key factor in all of this that rings true. If it sounds too good to be true! RUN... Don't let these people toy with your personal greed. Without your hope of getting something for nothing, the scam simply does not work. Yet it has been years on the web and they are still there. Why? Simple because everyone still thinks they found something no one knows about. Doubt it ! Get real "Wake up!" Go out and breath some fresh air. Whatever it takes but please no one gives money away! Surely your parents clued you on this topic. Things change no doubt, but trust me NOT THIS!

The most familiar Nigerian scam is an e-mail offering lots of free money in exchange for helping someone with a name like Barrister Richard Okoya. The offer varies, but the theme is the same — help a downtrodden victim recover a large sum of money trapped in an overseas bank, and you will be rewarded handsomely.

DateLine Article

Anti Fraud Resources:

Comcast should be watching as they win hands down at Dirty Mail. Yahoo close on their heels. See the stats here. "Sender Base" This information is easy for both these ISP's to see and ignoring this with their head in the sand will not make the problem go away. Though a number of their customers may be be spammers. The fact is the larger number are nothing more than Zombie boxes or people who fail to clean their machines.

What is really hard to understand if this site gives out the ip's of those most offending. Why is it that their service is simply not dropped as a course of action? Though many of yahoo's are tagged as bulk it seems this does not mean they are clean. People are making money off it while this is short term. This is a period where finger pointing might actually help. I applaud both MS efforts to help in a recent article posted all over the web. But lets get serious If senderbase.org can point to the right targets all that needs to be done is stop them.

Though the numbers are falling really it is important to stay vigilent and make e-mail something people look forward to once again. It is the way it was once though it is hard to remember that time. Here are the stats from the IronPort Site.

I am not really sure how useful this information is to the desktop user. Knowing how high the numbers are might give you some comfort feeling you are not alone. Trust us that is a easy one you aren't. One must not forget these people have something to sell you, likely that warm fuzzy feeling that they will protect you. Though the graph is interesting.

CipherTrust's ZombieMeter^SM tracks worldwide zombie activity in real-time. With more than 1,500 enterprise customers, CipherTrust has a very broad, unique view of the Internet and potential threats as they happen across the globe. By monitoring global messaging activity and identifying behavioral patterns, CipherTrust can continue to provide predictive protection against threats before they emerge.

Spammers use home computers to send bulk emails by the millions. They take advantage of security weaknesses to install hidden software that turns consumer computers into mail or proxy servers. They route bulk email through these "spam zombies," obscuring its true origin.

As part of a worldwide effort to prevent these abuses, the FTC announces "Operation Spam Zombies." In partnership with 20 members of the London Action Plan and 16 additional government agencies from around the world, the Commission is sending letters to more than 3000 Internet service providers (ISPs) internationally, encouraging them to take the following zombie-prevention measures:

• block port 25 except for the outbound SMTP requirements of authenticated users of mail servers designed for client traffic. Explore implementing Authenticated SMTP on port 587 for clients who must operate outgoing mail servers.
• apply rate-limiting controls for email relays.
• identify computers that are sending atypical amounts of email, and take steps to determine if the computer is acting as a spam zombie. When necessary, quarantine the affected computer until the source of the problem is removed.
• give your customers plain-language advice on how to prevent their computers from being infected by worms, trojans, or other malware that turn PCs into spam zombies, and provide the appropriate tools and assistance.
• provide, or point your customers to, easy-to-use tools to remove zombie code if their computers have been infected, and provide the appropriate assistance.

In a later phase, the Operation plans to notify Internet providers worldwide that apparent spam zombies were identified on their systems, and urge them to implement measures to prevent that problem. "FTC Location"

People are all the time asking us to increase their single message size. Now lets talk for a second about your mail client. In this example I will use "Out Look". If you use POP3 protocol as most people do you are setting yourself up for a long term nightmare. We have people all the time saying that they should be able to send a 10 meg attachment. We agree! You should have whatever you want.

Well a single 10 meg attachment will not kill you. However doing this starts patterns that people tend to follow. After year of doing this you will find problems with this mail client that is full of these attachments. But I save my attachments else where not problem. Did you delete the email you certainly should as it has that 10 meg attachment in it and is now part of the .PST file that is part of your out look configuration.

So how do I manage the size of my .PST? Well here is a simple demo for managing it. Though none of this is even necessary if you simply use a free service we offer to our clients. Anyone using this to move MP3's or Warez goods will be banned. "Click Here"

The question has been asked many times how can I validate a email address? As you would expect the answer is deeper than just do a line of java script. Which one could use a java script to assure that at least the formatting is correct. A good simple sample code can be found here. "Click Here" 

If you want something that can actually Helo a email address to really know whether or not the address is bogus or not this will require a component. My personal favorite can be found here "Click Here".