Spamming: The Basic Things You Should Know

On controlling spam, an anti-spam firewall application will, to an extent, help in keeping viruses at bay. There is, however, no firewall that is 100% hacker proof - there are too many ways in which viruses can be embedded in a software download or regular data, for a firewall to detect and catch them all. However there are some relatively effective firewall programs available on the market, and some of them are actually free for your personal use.

At the bare minimum a home personal computer that is connected to a cable modem or a full time connection needs to have and run a personal firewall software program, as well as anti-spyware and some type of anti-viral program.

Spam harm

To understand just how big a problem spam has become, it will help to realize the sheer volume of unsolicited junk mail is sent out every day. More than 50% of all the trillions of email that is mailed out is spam. This spam clogs up and wastes bandwidth, especially with the recent advent of image-based spam. It places a huge strain on servers and wastes a huge amount of time and money to deliver millions upon millions of unsolicited emails to the inboxes of recipients.

Email is the most common vehicle of choice for spreading viruses, and for hackers to get into your computer system. There is an increasing amount of this type of spam being mailed out of late. These small programs can be used in myriad harmful ways, including crashing your own system, crashing that of the parties you email or keystroke logging to gather your personal information.

A 2006 study by Consumer Reports estimated that in two years, Americans spent more than $7 billion on repairs and parts replacement resulting from viruses, malware and spyware. This does not take into account the cost to the Internet Providers who have to pay for all the bandwidth taken up by the spammers junk, or the cost in time, money and productivity to businesses that have to sort through all the spam.

The whitelists spam protection

Whitelists are quite possibly the single most effective form of spam protection available on the market today. They are as close as you can get to totally eliminating spam from your inbox.

When an email from an unknown source is received, the system will respond automatically, sending a "challenge" back to the sender. This challenge may require the sender to answer certain questions, or decipher an image that displays a series of letters and numbers. This image can only be deciphered by a human, and not by spamming software. Once this is successfully done, the email is allowed to go through the system to the inbox. The sender is also added to the whitelist. The challenge-response methodology uses a combination of human judgment and software technology to determine which email to let through and which to block.

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