SPAM - Unsolicited Commercial Email
In case you haven't heard the term 'SPAM' before, it is the name given to Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or Junk Mail.
This is email sent to your address that you have neither asked for, nor necessarily want! It is generally of a commercial nature attempting to get you to go to a web site or sell you something. Much of it is related to Pornography and can at times be explicit and offensive.
SPAMMERS have developed many ways to 'harvest' email addresses to send their Junk mail to. They will collect them from web sites, news groups, mail lists and dictionaries. Unfortunately, if you have a common name you will be an easy target as they just send mail to that name at every domain in the world.
Their emails rarely have a legitimate return address and they go to great lengths to hide where they were sent from. Many will include an 'unsubscribe' link which is a further trick to get confirmation that your email address actually exists and place you on more SPAMMERS mailing lists.
We have little regard for these SPAMMERS who make money from the fact that you maintain an email address!
Our attempts to stop SPAM!
We have instigated a number of procedures to reduce the level of SPAM to our customers. Much of this goes on in the background and you would be totally unaware that we have stopped many SPAMMERS reaching you. We could easily increase the level of blocking by applying stronger rules, however, this increases what we term 'collateral damage' - that is the automatic blocking of legitimate email that the mail server thinks could be SPAM.
The difficulty is in defining a set of rules that allows a computer to make a determination of whether to accept or deny the message. These rules are written based on what we know about the common operations or message layouts of SPAM.
As an example, we could instantly stop over 90% of SPAM reaching our customers by enforcing a rule that ensures SPAMMERS can't hide their whereabouts (which they do). However, because a large number of mail servers in Australia are poorly or incorrectly configured - particularly the majority of government ones - this rule would stop their email getting through to you!
Our filtering process
Filtering is not based on one single criteria - many checks are performed on all aspects of the message. Email addresses, where it originates as well as the nature and content of the message itself.
At the core of our filter is a system called 'Spam Assassin'. This program checks all incoming email and gives it a rating - based on a set of rules. If it receives a certain number of points it is 'stamped' as possible SPAM.
This high level of labelling, will give you the opportunity to filter the message on arrival. You can instruct your mail program through "Message Rules" or "Mail Filters" to immediately and automatically Trash the message.
As accurate as this system is, it will never identify 100% of the SPAM that arrives. It can also mark legitimate email incorrectly as SPAM. You need to be aware of this point if you continue on to create filters for your mail.
Setting up filters
The following details will guide you to setting up your email program to filter SPAM/Junk Mail from your Inbox.
Our filter process will attempt to label SPAM by adding a score to the email. This score is represented as a series of dots at the end of the Subject. Assuming the message gets a positive score (is SPAM), it will append ':.....:' to the end of the of the Subject - the more dots, the more confident that is is SPAM.
You can now have your email programme make a decision about how to process this email. You can have it deleted or preferably moved to a SPAM folder. As the filter can make mistakes, this allow you to recover messages if they are wrongly scored.
Outlook Express
- In Outlook Express, select the TOOLS menu, then MESSAGE RULES and MAIL.
- Place a Tick next to "WHERE THE SUBJECT LINE CONTAINS SPECIFIC WORDS";
- And a Tick next to "MOVE IT TO THE SPECIFIED FOLDER";
- Underneath the checkboxes, click on the underlined "SPECIFIC WORDS" and type a colon and 5 dots in the top box (:.....) and select ADD;
- Click on the underlined "SPECIFIED FOLDER" and select "NEW FOLDER", give it a name such as 'SPAM' and select OK and OK;
- Click OK again and Select APPLY NOW and OK
Outlook
- In Outlook, select the TOOLS menu, then RULES WIZARD;
- Then in the Wizard, select NEW and START FROM A BLANK RULE, then NEXT;
- In the top section, place a Tick next to WITH SPECIFIC WORDS IN THE SUBJECT, and in the Bottom Section, click on the underlined SPECIFIC WORDS;
- Enter a colon and 5 dots (:.....), select ADD and OK, then NEXT;
- In the top section, place a Tick next to MOVE IT TO THE SPECIFIED FOLDER, and then in the Bottom section click on the Underlined SPECIFIED FOLDER;
- Click on NEW, name it something like 'SPAM' or 'JUNK', then select OK, OK again and NEXT;
- Here you can put in exceptions to the rule, which we will skip at this stage unless you are confident you know how to do, select NEXT;
- Specify a name for the rule (eg JunkFilter), select FINISH and OK.
Eudora
- In Eudora, select the TOOLS menu and FILTERS;
- Select NEW at the bottom of the window;
- In the HEADER field, type in: X-Spam-Level:
- Next to the first CONTAINS heading (directly under the X-Spam listing), type in 5 dots (.....) later this can be adjusted up or down in the number of dots to ensure a better 'hit rate' on SPAM;
- Under the ACTIONS window, select the first "NONE" box and a drop-down menu will appear, select TRANSFER TO;
- Another field with IN will appear next to this, select it and another drop down menu will appear, select NEW and type in a name such as 'SPAM' or 'JUNK', and select OK;
- Close the Window by clicking on the cross in the top right hand box of it, and select YES to 'Save Changes'.
SquirrelMail
- In SquirrelMail, select FOLDERS;
- Create a 'Spam' folder as a subdirectory of 'INBOX' and Click CREATE;
- Select OPTIONS and then MESSAGE FILTERS;
- Click NEW;
- Set Matches to Subject;
- Type a colon and 5 dots (:.....) into Contains;
- Set Move To to .Spam;
- Click SUBMIT;
Netscape
- In Netscape MESSENGER, and select the EDIT Menu, then MESSAGE FILTERS;
- Select NEW and name it something like 'SPAM';
- Click on ADVANCED and type in the New Header: X-Spam-Level:
- Select ADD and OK;
- In the first drop-down box where it has "subject" select this and scroll down to add the X-SPAM-LEVEL header;
- After the field "CONTAINS", type in 5 dots (.....) later this can be adjusted up or down in the number of dots to ensure a better 'hit rate' on SPAM;
- Leave the "Move to Folder" and to the right select NEW FOLDER, name it something like 'Junk' or 'Spam', and click OK;
- Click OK and OK again - you are done.