Internet Content Filtering

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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Coping With Spam Filters
by Laurie Rogers Copyright July 2002

If you haven’t yet heard about the chaos that Spam Filters
are currently causing for publishers, then I am about to tell
you EVERYTHING you’ll need to know on this subject. Many
of our fellow publishers disregard the fact that Spam Filters
DO in fact exist. For some reason just do NOT want to face
the fact that, they are DESTROYING their businesses.

I write a column on Spam for DEMC small business ezine, so
I do consider myself to be well educated on this subject. If
you have any questions about what I am about to tell you,
feel free to contact me at: http://www.OptinFrenzy.com

Now let’s begin.

Spam Filters are EVERYWHERE online whether we like it or
not they are. And they are becoming more dominant in all
aspects of the internet, through ISP’s, webhosts and the
chances are, one person in three is using some type of a
filtering device. They are inexpensive to purchase and so
it makes it fairly EASY for the average “Joe” to buy one.

And chances are that your ISP or web host probably uses
them and you are NOT even aware of it. Personally, I do
advise that you contact them to ask them about it and
ask them to REMOVE them from your account immediately.
Now, here is why I suggest that you do this, Spam Filters
are NOT 100% fool proof, in fact they have a tendency to
block out your LEGITIMATE email. Anyone who tells YOU
otherwise is in some serious DENIAL.

I’ve personally taken the time to test almost EVERY Spam
Filtering program that there is currently available online.
And what I saw was absolutely mortifying to say the least.
I ran over 100 different types of emails and newsletters all
through each system and 9 times out of ten, it resulted in
being marked as spam. Needless to say, by the end of the
day I was NOT impressed with my discovery.

Most of these programs are designed to target newsletters
specifically, because they have the words “subscribe” and
“unsubscribe” black marked. Meaning, that any peices of
email that contain those two words are “marked” as being
“SPAM”. This is especially predominant in Spam Killer which
is now owned by McAfee. They also LURE publishers into
what they refer to as being “Spam Traps” (which they do
openly admit -right on their web site), so they can create
more filters DAILY based on ezine/email content. And YES,
I did say DAILY!

Now that I’ve probably scared the wits out of you, here
are a few things that you can do and they will require a
bit of added work on your part.

1.) Make your ezine available in 3 different forms, if it at
all possible. Email it directly to your subscribers, put it on
an autoresponder and make it available online. My good
friend jL Scott (owner of iCop) does this and it covers all
of the bases to ENSURE your readers get your ezine. It’ll
also give you an idea of HOW many people actually read
your ezine.

2.) Ask your readers, IF they have had ANY problems in
receiving your ezine. If they have, start keeping a log of
these instances, if your ezine has been marked as being
spam through their email client ask them for a copy of it
for your records. You MAY want to TRY contacting their
ISP and try talking to them about it, ensure that YOU
maintain your “professionalism” in doing so, as this could
create problems for your subscriber. Advise ALL of your
subscribers to contact their ISP’s and ask them if they
are in fact using filters on their email.

3.) Keep financial loss records that you’ve encountered
because of Spam Filters. And remember everything is of
a monetary value including your ezine.

Although there is no fool proof method of avoiding Spam
Filters, there is currently a pending law suit against the
creators of these programs. So if you do have a case or
have proof that you have been filtered, falsely accused
etc. I recommend that you go and file a report asap at:
http://www.e-crucible.org

Article by Laurie Rogers Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved

About the Author

Laurie Rogers is co-author of the Ezine Resource Guide,
http://www.zineadz.com/erg.html She is the owner of Optin
Frenzy - a paid list building program for ezine publishers
http://www.optinfrenzy.com You can obtain more of Laurie’s
articles at: mailto:ezinearticles@optinfrenzy.com

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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So What Makes a Good Spam Filter Anyway?
By Alan Hearnshaw

Spam Filters. Most of us know we need one. Some of know we need a better one, but how many stop to think what actually makes a good spam filter in the first place?

This is not just a rhetorical question. It is a question that many users and many developers - do not ask, and consequently, goes unanswered.

Maybe this could be better answered by defining here the qualities of the perfect spam filter. We ll call our perfect spam filter the SpamSplatter 3000 . Here are some of the defining qualities of SpamSplatter 3000

1. It requires zero interaction from the user.
2. It produces zero false positives (good messages identified as bad) and zero false negatives (bad messages identified as good).
3. It is transparent that is, you only ever see good messages and never need even be aware that spam exists.

That s it. Not much of a shopping list is it?
Of course, SpamSplatter 3000 hasn t been invented yet (and if it does, I want a piece of the action), but it does give us a frame of reference when looking for the best filter we can find.

Let s take each point in turn:

It requires zero interaction from the user
There are two kinds of filters that come near to this ideal currently: Bayesian Filters and Community Filters.
Bayesian filters strip messages down to small word bites , or tokens and maintain a database containing lists of good and bad tokens. When a new message is encountered, the filter strips this message down to tokens, compares it to the database, and applies a formula based on the British scientist Alan Bayes formula for probability calculation.
Over time, the Bayesian filter learns the characteristics of spam messages.

Community Filters simply work on a voting system whereby every user that receives a spam message votes it as spam. This information is stored on a central server and when enough votes are received the message is banned from all users in the community.

As can be seen, the user interaction from these types of filters is mainly limited to two button operation correcting wrongly identified messages and the more accurate the filter, the less those buttons are used.

OK, so that s pretty good. Not exactly zero interaction, but if the filter is accurate enough, then it should be pretty near. That brings us to point two:

It produces zero false positives or negatives
This is the area in which most spam filter development is concentrating and things are getting pretty good nowadays. It is not at all unusual to see an efficient modern filter achieve accuracy of 96% or better. It is, of course, far better to have a false negative than a false positive if you are ever going to tear yourself away from the killed mail folder!

Of course, by definition, community filters cannot reach 100% accuracy as someone has to be getting the spam to be voting it as such!
Theoretically, a Bayesian filter may be able to eventually get quite close to 100% accuracy, so at least there is hope there.
Content based filters (those that look for certain words, phrases or other indicators in a message to identify it as spam), will almost certainly not get much higher accuracy figures than the best of them can achieve today. Adapting to changing spam requires new filters to be created on an ongoing basis.

And finally, we come to the holy grail of spam filtering:

It is transparent
Strangely enough, not enough work seems to be done in trying to achieve this goal. Some of the best filters on the market today identify spam with impressive accuracy and then simply place them in a killed mail folder for your later perusal.
Now, forgive me if I m missing something here, but isn t the point to save you having to wade through the junk mail? Isn t that what you bought the filter for? With the SpamSplatter 3000 , you don t need to do that.

As we haven t achieved 100% accuracy yet (and probably never will), the only way to free us from checking the killed mail folder is a challenge/response system. This is where a message is automatically sent back to the sender requiring them to take some action for their message to actually be delivered.

Some systems tend to go overboard with the challenge/response system. These systems - often called Whitelist systems - block messages from anyone that isn t in the user s friends list. Guaranteed 100% effective, but too drastic a measure for most users.

Now, it seems that the most intelligent use of this system would be to send challenges only to messages that were flagged as questionable . Good message can be delivered, definite spam can be deleted and questionable ones would earn themselves a challenge message.

So, to sum up, let s rewrite the qualities of our perfect filter and get a shopping list of what to look for while we wait for the SpamSplatter 3000 to arrive:

1. Simple, minimal setup and maintenance.
2. Extremely low rate of false positives and as few false negatives as possible.
3. A transparent fail-safe mechanism whereby the victims of those false positives can force the message through to you.

It s simple really. Now, who s going to build me this SpamSplatter 3000 ?

Alan Hearnshaw is the owner of http://www.WhichSpamFilter.com, a site which provides weekly in-depth spam filter reviews, user help and guidance and a community forum.
alan@whichspamfilter.com

About the Author

Alan Hearnshaw is a computer programmer and the owner of http://www.WhichSpamFilter.com, a site which provides weekly in-depth spam filter reviews, user help and guidance and a community forum.

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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The Misconceptions of Spam Filters
by Laurie Rogers Copyright July 2002

Unfortunately there are a lot of people online that all have
many misconceptions regarding Spam Filters. Today I’m
going to answer some questions that people have asked
me about my “Spam column” for DEMC Small Business
Ezine regarding them. With regards to spam filters, one
can never have enough knowledge, so I do hope that this
article will clear up any misconceptions that you may have.

1. Don’t spam filters ONLY apply to those who have NOT
opted in?

This is indeed a very sad misconception, Spam Filters do
affect EVERYONE who sends and receives email in some
way or another. Whether you publish a FREE ezine OR a
PAID ezine, it does not matter, if it is being sent by email
it affects YOU. The biggest problem with filters is that they
have NO way to detect that the email message is in fact
“Optin”, they actually base it on your headers.

Should you use a third party list server, your chances of
being filtered are even greater, because of that reason.
And this is how ALL filtering is based: By looking at the
headers in your email message, by using a point system
based on the contents in your subject line as well as the
body.

This can also be done by subscribing to a blacklist service
that will provide them with a list of domains or hosts that
have been identified as being used by spammers -such as
http://www.spamhaus.org or http://mail-abuse.org/ AOL,
Verizon and Accessus are widely known for using services
such as these. It should also be known that spam filtering
programs MAY also subscribe to these services, some do
and some do not.

2. I heard that spam filters don’t apply to autoresponders,
is this true?

Actually they do, because if you send email using a third
party list server, and put your FROM email address in the
field rather than a FROM address on the third party’s list
server - the spam filter will read it as being a “falsified”
email address or header. Because REAL spammers do
it all of the time.

3. Spam Filters do not target HTML ezines because they
can’t read the code properly, is this true?

Yes in fact they do, some more so than text ezines, this is
because HTML ezines are considered to be more virus
prone. And NOT all list servers and email clients “clean”
their email before it is sent. Meaning, even if you do not
have a virus on your computer, your ezine can still pick
one up during the process of sending through your list
server. This has been known to happen on “high traffic”
list servers as well as FREE list servers, such as Yahoo
Groups.

3. Aren’t spam filters ONLY used by large ISP’s?

Although it is very true that the majority of larger ISP’s use
Spam Filters (such as: AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Mindspring,
Verizon, Accessus, Sympatico etc.) you will find a lot of
smaller ISP’s use them as well. For instance, my ISP has
only 900 customers and they do use them, although I’ve
made it quite clear they are unacceptable on my account.
The most “popular program’ that ISP’s use is called Spam
Assassin.

I hope this article has cleared up any misconceptions that
you may have had regarding Spam Filters. You can learn
more detailed information about Spam filters by visiting:
http://spamassassin.org ests.html

Article by Laurie Rogers Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved

About the Author

Laurie Rogers is co-author of the Ezine Resource Guide, you
can check it out at: http://www.zineadz.com/erg.html She
is the owner of Optin Frenzy a list building program for ezine
publishers http://www.optinfrenzy.com You can also obtain
Laurie’s articles at: mailto:ezinearticles@optinfrenzy.com

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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The Internet is one of the greatest inventions of all time. Parental Internet Control will protect our loved ones from internet filth like pornography and hate material just a click away. The fact that every stranger in the world has access to your child, right in your own home is scary enough. exercising some kind of Internet Control will protect the people you love from the tens of thousands of troubling sites on the Internet.

Although nothing can replace a well-informed parent that takes an active part in their children’s online activities, Internet Filtering Software provides a strong, additional layer of defense which gives parents an added measure of control and further peace of mind.

With a lot of Internet filtering software choices available, researching and choosing the Internet filter that’s right for your family can be complex and time-consuming, and that s where we can help.

At www.parental-web-control.com you’ll find articles, and side-by-side comparisons and comprehensive reviews on Internet Filtering Software that will help you make a fast, informed decision.

What makes a great Internet filter software solution?

Though the perfect Internet Filter does not exist in today’s marketplace, there are a number of great solutions depending on what the family needs are. Here is a list of attributes of good filtering software.

Easy to Use How easy it to install the product?, Is it easily set up, and easy to use? Is it easy to find the functions you are looking for? Is it easy to customize the filter settings?

Effective at filtering Does the web filtering software strike a good balance between filtering objectionable material and non object ional - not filter too much? The ability to customize sensitivity of filtering by each individual family member is important as well.

Activity reports Parents should be able to see what their individual family member has been doing on the computer. This would include viewing where they have been on the Internet, what has been going on in chat rooms, and activity based on other functions within the Internet filtering application.

Foreign language filtering One of the tricks that teenagers have found to bypass Internet filters is to type in the foreign language equivalent of certain keywords. By typing in the French, Spanish, or German versions of the word “sex” or “girl” for example, you can easily bypass many filters to view objectionable content.

Individual profiles Can you create a profile for each family member with different filtering rules?

Notification capabilities Can you be notified at work or at home that un-authorized access or blocking is occurring?

Negligible response times Does the Internet filter allow you to access the Internet without noticeable slowdown?

Remote management Can you change settings, change rules, and change profiles from work or while on vacation without the installed software? The correct use of Internet filters in harmony with parental controls can make the Internet a safe and wonderful experience for the family.

About the Author

Please visit to http://www.parental-web-control.com for more articles with side-by-side comparisons and comprehensive reviews on Internet Filtering Software that will help you make a fast, informed decisions.