Internet Content Filtering

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

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In a word Bayesian spam filters are “intelligent”. Bayesian spam filters are intelligent in so far as they’re capable of comparing two sets of information and acting on the result. This is in direct contrast to the vast majority of other spam filters who use pre-built rules to decide which e-mail is spam and which is not.

Bayesian spam filters can take one group of legitimate e-mail and another group of spam and compare the values and data of each. The definition of legitimate e-mail that it creates at the end of this comparison session is what it uses going forward to scan your inbox for spam.

FYI Bayesian spam filters are named after Thomas Bayes an 18 century cleric who created something known as Bayes Theorem. In summary Bayes Theorem is as follows: ..”in statistical inference to update estimates of the probability that different hypotheses are true, based on observations and a knowledge of how likely those observations are, given each hypothesis.” In plain English it looks for obvious repeating patterns to form an “opinion” on something. In spam filter terms that “opinion” becomes a rule which keeps you spam free (or pretty close

The really neat thing about Bayesian filters is that they’re capable of learning. For example if they decided to block an e-mail because the filter perceived it as junk but the user marked it as valid mail the Bayesian filter then knows not to block that type of e-mail in the future. So, in time, this type of spam filter learns enough to block spam far more effectively. AOL have embraced this type of spam filter with the launch of AOL 9.0 and AOL Communicator- if the big dog wants it then it must be worthwhile?

So what Bayesian spam filtering options are available to you? Well quite a few to be honest and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by some of the names involved The first one on the list is AOL with their AOL Communicator product. The spam filtering features in AOL Communicator and AOL 9 are, to be honest, impressive. Think what you will of the provider themselves AOL Communicator is an excellent product and is suitable for use by both PC and Mac OSX users.

Next up we have Eudora. The nice folks at Qualcomm have designed an excellent e-mail client that also has built in Bayesian spam filtering. I’ve used Eudora in the past and it’s a neat little package. Again the benefits here are advanced integrated spam filtering with your e-mail automatically. Mac OSX and OS9 users are in luck with Eudora providing support for both.

If you’d like to know more about spam filters or just spam in general please do drop by http://www.spam-site.com for more information.

About the Author

Niall Roche is the content author and owner of www.spam-site.com which reviews and tests spam blockers.

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

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The Internet is magnificent in its resources for families. Educational resources abound. Kids can easily find help for their homework blues without venturing to the library. Kids can chat with friends from far away for free; friends who, probably just a few years ago, they would never hear from again. And, of course, there s plenty of entertainment to satisfy the whole family once the chores and homework are complete.

However, the Internet can often be an inappropriate place for kids to surf unsupervised. Plenty of content is only appropriate for mature audiences. And, sadly, there are bad seeds , those who the children never should talk to.

Help keep your children away from these unsuitable materials. Many search engines and directories have filters and options that only return pages that have passed a particular profanity or kid-safe filter. These types of filters vary from web site to web site, but may do one of the following:

* Only allow you to search a selection of links picked by the site s editors to be kid-safe or free of profanity.

* Not show links containing profane words, these being words designated by a site to be profane. This list may not contain all possible profane words or combinations.

* Show links containing profane words but block out the profane words with asterisks, dollar signs, or other symbols. Again, the blocked-out words are those the site deems profane and might not include all such words.

Unfortunately, no filter can be 100% accurate.

Here are some search engines that have filters you can enable to try to weed out inappropriate content.

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/

Above and to the right of the search query box you can find the link labeled Family Filter . Turn on this filter to cause AltaVista to filter out inappropriate content. Be sure to read the linked-to FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) before using this filter. Again, no family filter is 100% accurate, but it s better than nothing.

Ask Jeeves For Kids
http://www.ajkids.com/

You can provide kids with their very own search butler. Ask Jeeves for Kids is a special version of the popular Ask Jeeves web site geared towards the younger set. It is used the same way as the normal Ask Jeeves just ask a question and click the Ask button.

You will notice the site design is quite different from the main Ask Jeeves. The page is colorful and includes fonts more suited for kids. There are links to games, study tools, news resources, and message boards. Be sure to check out Jeeves hat as you move your mouse over each resource

According to the Parents page, Ask Jeeves For Kids only searches for G-Rated information. However, they do warn that since web sites change, there is no guarantee that adult content cannot slip through the cracks. Still, they do a good job at trying to filter out information, so if you have children surfing the net, you may want to point them over to this popular resource.

Google
http://www.google.com/

Visit the Advanced Search link and take a look at the SafeSearch section. Click the Filter using SafeSearch radio button to cause Google to only returns sites that match Google s SafeSearch filter. This filter attempts to remove material containing pornography or sexual content, but it is not and cannot be 100% accurate. Click the link SafeSearch on this page for more information about this filter.

You can also click the Preferences link from the front page to set preferences on how you want Google to search through documents. From here you can enable the SafeSearch setting by default. These preferences are placed in the form of a cookie stored on your browser, so if you disable cookies your preference choices will not stick. Be sure to press the Save Preferences button when you are done with your choices or they will not stick.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/

Click on the Parental Controls link on the front page (located under the search bar), or turn on the Adult Filter from the advanced search page to enable the Lycos SearchGuard . This feature attempts to filter out sites containing inappropriate or offensive material such as adult, violent, hate and weapons-related content . Note that while no filter can be 100% effective this is a good start.

You may also want to visit the following family and kid-friendly Lycos sites:

Lycos Family Zone
http://familyzone.lycos.com/

Lycos Zone (For Kids)
http://lycoszone.lycos.com/

No matter which site you use, realize that no filter can be 100% accurate. All it takes is a little web browser knowledge to defeat cookie-based filters. Inappropriate sites can and sometimes will slip through the cracks . Thus, I recommend that you always supervise your kids Internet usage whenever possible. These filters, however, may make your supervision easier and your entire family s Internet experience more enjoyable without any surprises.

About the Author

This article was written by and copyright 2002 Andrew Malek, Internet Search Guru and author of Find Stuff On the Net, an e-book that can show even beginning computer users how to navigate the Internet without fear. Catch-up with your kids knowledge when it comes to using the net. For further information and free snippets of the book, visit http://www.findstuffonthenet.com/

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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How many times have you realized that your email simply doesn’t arrive to your list or you suspect something is going wrong because you don’t get the response you are waiting for?, this is more common today than yesterday and will be critical tomorrow.

It’s frustrating for us that our Content is not deliver to the end-user, this is true for you and all the people dependable on email technology, the results plainly don’t come, whatever they can be.

Have you seen those funny email arriving to your email container with odd characters that some times seem like the sender is telling you rude words? Don’t take it literally, is an effort from the advertisers to deliver their best proposition trying to bypass the filters… some of them will arrive, some of them are taken out from you and put inside the waste container of your ISP.

Is there some hope for the small entrepreneur in this jungle of spam filters, viruses, and junk information?

Deliver Quality Content To End-user And Promote Your Products Without Annoying Spam Filters: RSS Gives you the Chance To Deliver messages To End-user

It’s A Fact: At present this is the best way to beat spam filters, RSS is the fresh road to walk, getting rid of the problems that nowadays attack the email option, this allows you to send your messages to the users with 100% sureness they will arrive, we don’t know if RSS is the email killer, its too early to state and coin this phrase, anyway some gurus say its here to bury email, some others think is only an alternative way to keep in contact with the end-user … the only true is: You can deliver your messages spam free.

But its not costless, you need to work, and work constantly and with quality, if any of these variables fail, all your efforts go to the drainage piping. Why? If the end-user are no more interested in your content he/she can kiss you good bye easily with a finger, the small one on the delete key.

RSS is The Secret Weapon To Deliver Quality Content

RSS gives the power to the end-user, this means marketers must be concerned with the content they deliver, for most of the sellers this is a hard alternative, but at the end the online world will see a lot of websites full of worthy content, the users will come again and again, and if this happen to you, your days will be longer and profitable.

Deliver quality content is the advertisers and webmasters payment, this is not negative, Search Engines go in the same direction, if you want a good SE position it most be due to your content, content tends to be the only parameter in the near future. Make your homework and you’ll see positive results in short time. If this not convince you, remember, email is living the hard way and if things go in the same direction it will go out of sight, at least like a marketing alternative.

What all this means for the end-user?

The end user just now is the winner, he/she has the control, are able to access any kind of information in accordance to his/her interest: news, marketing options, leisure sites, knowledge pages, new content is notified automatically, can subscribe/unsubscribe with total freedom, no more need to travel to the websites and waste time looking for something new….

About the Author

C Zarza
20+ experience in the information technology world,
He has built financial system for several years
Background: Databases, Web , Finances …
czarzac@gmail.com
http://www.nesswords.com