Google is engaged in a war. It is a war on spam. With new strategies and filters ready to put into place, the search engine is adding new firepower to its arsenal almost daily. Webmasters and SEO Consultants alike are terrified; fearing what the future holds for them. But for those of us that believe in the cause, the future isn’t scary. In fact, the future looks very bright.

My ten year old son is fascinated with war. He has a dozen buckets full of army men, and makes everything a battlefield—the kitchen, my bedroom, and even the bathroom. He has a new bicycle helmet that’s army green. For Halloween, when other kids were Spiderman and Batman, he was a soldier. He constantly plays computer games like Soldiers of WWII and Battlefield 1942; he even turns brooms and mops into weapons to combat the invisible enemy. War is all he talks about. He loves movies like Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, and Platoon. He knows more about both World Wars and Vietnam then I’ll ever hope to, or care to, know. His obsession with war got me thinking about how it applied to what I do every day. What does SEO and war have in common? More to the point, how does Google implement strategies that declare war on spam?

SEO is a constant struggle to get our clients’ websites to the top. We combat lousy SEO companies that give us a bad name, flagrant ads that claim they can do what we do for only $29 by submitting your site to a thousand search engines, and other little annoyances that pop up every day. Even still, my small battles are really nothing when you compare it to the war that Google is waging. Google’s number one goal is to bring the visitor the most relevant results possible in a search engine. This means filtering and sorting through all the junk out there, so that you, the visitor, doesn’t have to.

"It’s an arms race," Steve Linford, director of the London-based SpamHaus Project, said. "The more we lock (spammers) down, the more techniques they try to get around us." The SpamHaus Project is a nonprofit organization that posts information about the groups behind the majority of unsolicited e-mail, and maintains a "black hole" list of domains from which spammers operate. Spam accounted for at least one in four email messages a business received in 2002. The U.S. Attorney General’s website has an entire page on the subject. “Almost 45 percent of all email is now spam and that number is growing each year. Nearly three trillion spam messages are sent each year - 13 times the total snail mail delivered by the U.S. Postal service. The average wired American is hit with nearly 2,200 spam messages annually - this after most ISPs have filtered 80-90 percent of the junk messages. Some reports indicate that these numbers could increase by five times in the near future.”

Market research firm, Gartner Inc., estimates that their company of over 10,000 employees suffers more than $13 million worth of lost productivity because of internally generated spam. This is just email spam. Throw in the spam on the internet, and it’s a huge productivity drain. It causes companies financial losses because they have to purchase more high tech software like spam blockers and spy-ware removers, and it’s a strain on system servers and bandwidth.

Google defines Internet Spam as any unwanted information or propaganda that may have been received through deceptive measures on the part of the sender. To a search engine, spam is hyperlinked pages that are intent on misleading the search engine. It is estimated that 80% of search results for any keyword phrases entered into a search engine are considered spam.

During World War II, the term propaganda earned the negative connotation because of intended deceptions used to dispirit those on the front lines by Nazi Germany. Soldiers and citizens were constantly bombarded with this new psychological weapon. Most propaganda in Germany was produced by the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, or PROMI. Joseph Goebbels was placed in charge of this ministry shortly after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. Hitler was impressed by the power of Allied propaganda during World War I and believed that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and revolts in the German home front and Navy in 1918. Nazis had no moral qualms about spreading propaganda which they themselves knew to the false and indeed spreading deliberately false information was part of a doctrine known as the “Big Lie”, the theory he wrote about in his book, Mein Kampf. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that people came to believe that Germany was defeated in the First World War in the field due to a propaganda technique used by Jews who were influential in the German press.

“British and Allied fliers were depicted as cowardly murderers and Americans in particular as gangsters in the style of Al Capone. At the same time, German propaganda sought to alienate Americans and British from each other, and both these Western belligerents from the Soviets.” –World War 2 Propaganda (www.world-war-2.info) The propaganda was effective to a degree; however, it was repudiated by the Allied Powers’ own positive and truthful doctrine.

Now, the term propaganda has come to mean, “information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause, such as a doctrine in a war.” It’s ironic that Google used this word when it defined Internet Spam.

Google trademarked the term “TrustRank” and is working on a new spam removing model that they explain in what forum posters are referring to as the Stanford White Paper. “Web spam pages use various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings in a search engine’s results. While human experts can identify spam, it is too expensive to manually evaluate a large number of pages. Instead, we propose techniques to semi-automatically separate reputable, good pages from spam. We first select a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once we manually identify the reputable seed pages, we use the link structure of the web to discover other pages that are likely to be good. In this paper we discuss possible ways to implement the seed selection and the discovery of good pages. We present results of experiments run on the World Wide Web indexed by AltaVista and evaluate the performance of our techniques. Our results show that we can effectively filter out spam from a significant fraction of the web, based on a good seed set of less than 200 sites.” This comes from a 12 page abstract, called “Combating Spam with TrustRank”, on Stanford University’s website that outlines the methodology of TrustRank.

In summary, TrustRank is a way to cut down on spam and filter out content that is not relevant to the searcher in order to bring them results they really want, by branding good sites with a high trust rating, and by stamping the spam sites as untrustworthy, including any site that links to these delineated sites. Google’s abstract says, “Human editors help search engines combat search engine spam, but reviewing all content is impractical. TrustRank places a core vote of trust on a seed set of reviewed sites to help search engines identify pages that would be considered useful from pages that would be considered spam. This trust is attenuated to other sites through links from the seed sites.” Google’s famous PageRank seems to have lost meaning, as sites are easily able to produce back links or purchase them, which defeats the purpose of PageRank. In my opinion, TrustRank makes more sense. It makes a webmaster more careful with whom he or she links to in the first place, making back links harder to get, but well worth the reward once they are earned.

Another way Google is fighting Internet spam is called the “Sandbox Effect”. The Sandbox Effect is essentially a delay of a few months once a site is spidered before it is indexed. Sometimes, a new site may initially receive a high ranking in the search engines, and then drop into search engine obscurity. They may receive no page rank, and can be virtually invisible in the search engines for up to 120 days. While this may seem like a penalty to new website owners, especially if they are unaware of the new filters or how they work and why, it is Google’s way of fighting spam. Their methodology is that in the “sandbox” (named such for the analogy of a bunch of new kids playing in the sandbox together away from the grownups), spammers won’t see the results of their efforts in the search engine, and may possibly be fooled into thinking they’ve either been caught, or their efforts have been futile. Google hopes the spammers will then simply give up and go away. In war, we call this technique flanking, hoping to catch the enemy off guard by coming around behind their line, causing them to panic or withdraw. The desired result of the Sandbox Effect is that the spammers most likely will do both: panic and withdraw; or better yet, surrender. Flanking is one of the most effective plan of attack, and the most difficult to achieve, as it requires finesse, secrecy, and being able to know your enemy’s moves before they do.

As in any war, it can be long, bloody, and both sides can sustain heavy casualties. While spammers are filtered out, some legitimate websites can be annihilated as well, due to inadequate SEO, mistakes in their pages (like broken links), or just simple ignorance to the way search engines work. It is the responsibility of your five-star General to guide you and develop your strategy. Your SEO consultant can lead you through the minefield of search engine optimization techniques without triggering any of the mines, and keeping you safe. If you inadvertently set off a mine, you lose your hard earned ranking, the traffic that goes with it, and the resulting sales from that traffic. You will then fall into the multitudes of spam casualties; possibly earning a Google ban forever. Will the casual observer see these casualties? No. On the surface, everything feels peaceful. In fact, the war only helps the average citizens and their relevant search results, and in the end, brings a better search environment for all. This is, after all, what Google really wants. Peace.

Jennifer E. Sullivan is an Internet Business Consultant who specializes in search engine optimization and web marketing. Her emphasis is on small to medium business marketing. She has written several web marketing articles, including "Hiring an SEO Consultant: 10 Reasons Why You Should", "Let’s Not Forget About the Little Guy", and "PageRank for Websites: Is There More To the Web?". You can find more information on her services at First Class SEO, http://www.firstclass-seo.com.

The temptation among internet marketers to SPAM is greater than ever. By now, most people know that SPAM isn’t the popular food from Hormel but a pseudonym for "unsolicited commercial email," also known as UCE.

SPAM is a definite no-no. It’s also the quickest way to destroy your online reputation.

Unlike conventional mail, unsolicited email can provoke a hostile, negative, and destructive reaction. There are individuals on the Web who will contact your Internet Service Provider, harass you, "bomb" your server with countless emails and do everything possible to either shut you down or generally make your online life miserable.

There have been instances where marketers have sent SPAM to recipients with great results. The benefits are only short-term, however.

"Netiquette" allows for the selective transmission of emails to recipients who have expressed an interest in specific subjects or topics related to what you offer because they have "opted-in" to an email directory or source.

Purchasing email addresses from an "opt-in" source is considered to be acceptable but should still be approached carefully. Make sure the lists are up to date, highly qualified and originate from a "double opt-in source.".

There are other methods available that are appropriate to the Internet and do not risk the wrath of SPAM. Banner advertising and ads on ezines, or electronic magazines or newsletters, are cost-effective and highly targetted.

Geoff Caplan is a professional online marketing consultant and copywriter with eleven years of continuous experience. His diversified background includes search engine marketing, e-commerce strategy and online public relations. He has lectured extensively on subjects related to online marketing and has worked for some of the Web’s highest traffic brands, including eDiets and myTravelUSA.

Why do so many people think I need to take Viagra? I guess it’s for the same reason others believe I want to re-finance my home, invest in a new stock and sell my business.

Like you, I routinely receive more junk emails than legitimate ones. Do I look stupid or do they really think I want the latest virus by opening any attachment which accompanies an unsolicited email? Aren’t there laws against spamming and why don’t they work? Perhaps these are questions for other articles. What you need to know now is that I have found a way to keep unwanted emails from ever seeing your inbox.

For the past year I have been using a program called “Boxtrapper”. Until this time I had been relying on various spam filters that used keywords or other factors to determine if an email was spam. The success rate for this type of filtering varied as spammers eventually found ways around the “formula” being used by the filter. For example, the word “Valium” may be flagged as a spam indicator while the misspelled version, “Va Lium”, would get by unnoticed. This is just one of many examples of how spammers manipulate words to beat filtering. The biggest problem is when spammers “spoof” the header information in an email so it’s nearly impossible to trace who sent the message. I have even seen instances of people receiving spam emails that appear to have come from themselves!

When you try to beat the spammers on this level you quickly find yourself running in circles and sadly realizing this is an ineffective way to guard against every spam email. A friend suggested I try “Boxtrapper” because it had eliminated ALL spam from his inbox. Since I have many email accounts, I decided to try it on my personal address and test its effectiveness. Immediately I could see the difference.

The reason “Boxtrapper” is so effective is because of it’s “opt-in” design. Basically, no email can reach you unless the sender has confirmed they are legitimate. Once they have been confirmed, their email address is added to a “whitelist”. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “blacklist”, which is used to filter out names. In this case a whitelist is maintained to show who is allowed to email you.

To better understand how “Boxtrapper” works, I will explain what happens when a legitimate email from a friend comes your way. First, when a friend sends you an email, he will automatically receive an email reply (known as an “auto response”). This email will tell him to simply hit his “Reply” button and resend in order to be added to your list of accepted senders. You can fully customize the auto response message so it reads exactly how you prefer.

For example, this is how my auto response reads:

————————————————————

Hello,

Since I get way too much spam, I have enabled a feature on my email account which requires verification that you are the real sender.

To complete this verification, simply reply to this message and leave the subject line intact.

Once you are added to my "whitelist" of accepted senders I will receive your message and you will not have to complete another verification.

————————————————————–

You can also enter the email addresses of all your friends, family, and business contacts ahead of time so they never receive the initial auto response. If you subscribe to newsletters or receive monthly statements from your bank you can add their return addresses into your whitelist so you never miss a message. If anyone else happens to email you, all they have to do is reply to the auto response and they are added to your whitelist. At any given time you are able to view a list of emails awaiting verification (known as a “queue”). You can manually allow emails through to your Inbox or wait until they are verified.

Now the big question – what happens to all the spam? Since spammers are not going to verify they received your auto response, all spam email will be caught in your queue of emails awaiting verification and never proceed to your inbox. This means the only emails you are going to receive are those by approved senders. You will soon find that most emails awaiting verification are unsolicited, junk emails.

Since enabling “Boxtrapper” on one of my personal email addresses it has completely eliminated all incoming spam. I know many who use this feature and they are extremely pleased with not having to waste time sorting through and deleting unsolicited emails. While most spam filters use complex formulas to find out if an email is garbage, “Boxtrapper” is able to quickly determine if the sender is real. So, how can you start making this feature work for you?

Because “Boxtrapper” is not sold in stores or a program you can readily download and install on your computer, it’s one of the best kept secrets on the web. This feature is normally bundled with other email services provided by either your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or website host (most likely, the latter). By the way, I don’t have any stock in “Boxtrapper”. For some reason, they never sent me an email asking me to invest.

Copyright 2005 Anthony Vita

Anthony Vita started his own successful web hosting business, Web Feat, Inc, in 1997. Since then, Anthony has been helping businesses and individuals worldwide to achieve an online presence. Contact Anthony today by email: avita@webfeathost.com or the web: http://www.webfeathost.com

News last week that Internet service provider Verizon settled its lawsuit against Detroit-based spam king Al Ralsky was of little comfort. Ralsky agreed to pay a fine and stop spamming Verizon customers, but he still has plenty of other targets. And there are still hundreds of other spammers who have never visited a courtroom and are all too eager to fill our inboxes with business propositions from deposed Nigerian dictators. Fortunately, the rise of junk e-mail has fueled a vast anti-spam industry, with ISPs and software makers all competing to solve the Net’s most intractable problem.

The ISPs are beating the anti-spam drum the loudest right now, because spam drives away new customers and clogs up their servers. Most providers combine several approaches. They subscribe to "RBLs," or real-time blacklists, administered by anti-spam groups like the London-based Spamhaus.org, which maintains constantly updated databases of the worst transgressors and instructs subscribers to block their mail.

Six of the largest 10 ISPs, including MSN and Earthlink, also subscribe to the service of Brightmail. The San Francisco-based company has a team of researchers who constantly monitor dummy e-mail accounts and send out profiles of the latest Net scams, so that ISPs can filter them out before they reach your in-box. (Microsoft’s Hotmail, one of the worst spam magnets on the Net, just signed up.) The problem is that companies like Brightmail, fearing the possibility that their dragnet will block an authentic e-mail, are forced to be conservative. And spammers can easily configure their custom-designed software to respond with "spoilers," spaces or bits of code placed within messages that fool the filters. Though Brightmail estimates it catches more than 90 percent of spam, spam watchdog groups think the number is closer to half.

That leaves ISPs trying to add anti-spam tools directly to their e-mail programs. Recently released AOL 8 can color-code your messages into three categories: known and unknown senders, and known bulk e-mailers. There’s also a button that lets you report spam directly to AOL. MSN 8 does all this a little better, using machine intelligence designed in Microsoft’s research lab to spot spam and send it to a junk folder.

Users looking for another level of protection can try software solutions, which attempt to block spam on your desktop. Software site Download.com lists more than 200 such programs, many free of charge. Most are "rules-based," meaning they filter e-mail looking for certain words ("herbal Viagra") or programming patterns (excessive HTML graphics in the body of the message).

Anti spam software reviews

Among the best programs we’ve tested or heard about: IhateSpam ($29.95) works directly with Outlook or Outlook Express. Exploiting the power of peer-to-peer networks, it reports spam that the software missed to other users of the program. Mailwasher (free, but donation requested), another clever program, bounces back spam to the sender as "undeliverable," trying to fool spammers into thinking they have a bum address. In our tests, it caught 90 percent of unwanted e-mail. Spam Assassin (also free) takes the same tack, and has a great name, but it can be a tad overaggressive, blacklisting the occasional authentic e-mail.

McAfee’s Spamkiller ($40) gets a thumbs down because it overcharges and generates complaints to the spammer’s e-mail account and ISP. Since spammers often hijack other people’s accounts, this has the ironic effect of sending the complaint to an innocent user. Anti-spam spam?

Mary works in US for a media company, occasionally writing for the biggest Anti spam news portal, and drinking too much coffee.

Spam is everywhere. It’s the “in-box lunch meat” nobody likes, wants or looks forward too. Unfortunately, many folks enjoy “eating” this product because if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any. Read on…

The federal government’s ill-conceived CAN-SPAM Act did little more than make a few legislators feel better about themselves. Did this legislation stop spam? No. Did it at least slow down the flow of spam? Nope.

You can’t eliminate a problem by treating the symptoms. If you want to eradicate a problem, you must make its environment one that will not support it.

There’s a new plan recently hatched by some well-intentioned folks at Blue Security that several of my clients have asked about. On the surface, it sounds like a good idea but, in my humble opinion, the model is fatally flawed. Here’s the scoop…

1. You sign up for their "list" which is basically a "do not spam me list" and that gives them the authorization to act on your behalf.

2. You then have to send EACH spam message to them for inclusion on their list.

3. They then send the spammer a "stop order" (which, if they can even find the spammer, will be ignored).

4. They then flood the spammer with basically a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack hoping to bring down the spammer’s server.

This all sounds great until you think about it rationally…

1. Spammers use "open relays" and hundreds of addresses to prevent you from finding their originating location.

2. The "stop order" they send is just their way of fulfilling the letter of the law under the CAN-Spam act.

3. The part I have the biggest problem with is they then effectively BECOME A SPAMMER by sending thousands of messages in a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). This is the same thing hackers do when they bring down a website by sending so much traffic to a server it basically shuts down.

4. Most spam is sent from your neighbor’s PC. I spend a great amount of my time cleaning “bad guys” from client’s computers. There are MILLIONS of "zombie computers" that are infected with auto-dialers and trojans that are being used without the owner’s knowledge to send spam. Don’t believe me? Just run Counter Spy on grandma’s PC and tell me what you find!

5. How long do you really think it will be until the spammers turn the tables on Blue Security and initiate their own DDoS attack? It will be interesting to watch.

Other fight-back tactics against spammers have failed in the past. Last year, Lycos Europe rolled out a screensaver that conducted DDoS attacks against known spammers. Within days, however, Lycos buckled under pressure from security groups, which called it vigilantism, and ISPs who worried that attacks originating from their members would make them liable to legal action on the part of spammers.

Spam will NEVER go away until you attack its real source engine. If you don’t order anything from a spammer and don’t even click on his link to open the message, the monetary incentive for spam is removed. Spammers operate under the same economic rules as the rest of us…supply and demand.

Take away the demand and you eliminate the supply. Simple.

Allan Gunnneson is the CEO of Gunner Web Group (http://www.gunnnerweb.com), a website design and marketing company based in Kansas.

Online reprint rights granted as long as the article is published in its entirety, including links (http://www.gunnerweb.com).

Copyright © Gunner Web Group, 2005

Do you get bounced, or rejected emails sent by someone else, with YOUR email address in the From line? Does it mean your computer was hacked, or a spammer has stolen your email address? Relax… this is the work of a spammer, but it does NOT indicate any security breach on your computer.

Why do spammers use MY email address?

Spammers generally don’t like to poke their misshapen little heads out from under the rocks where they live, so they try to divert attention from themselves by making it look like someone else sent that "enlarge your body part" message.

It’s trivially easy to spoof the From address in an email. In fact, most email software will allow you to change the From or the Reply-to address to whatever you want. Spammers use high-volume mail merge software that picks a From address at random from their database of addresses, and sometimes even the recipient address is forged.

The reason you get those bounce messages is because the spammers don’t really care if some of their emails are sent to addresses that are invalid or defunct. It’s all a numbers game to them. Some email servers are smart enough to look in the email headers and easily determine that the person in the From line (in this case, you) didn’t really send the message. But others do not, so you get dumped on.

It’s even worse when the spam *is* delivered to a valid address and that person blames YOU. In such a case, you can just explain that it was the work of an Evil Spammer who forged your address. If they give you flack, tell them to examine the Received lines in the email headers (most email programs let you view the headers if you poke around in the options) and they’ll see that the source of the message was not your service provider.

This article has been reprinted from: http://www.askbobrankin.com/spammer_using_my_email_address.html

BOB RANKIN …is a tech writer and computer programmer who enjoys exploring the Internet and sharing the fruit of his experience with others. His work has appeared in ComputerWorld, NetGuide, and NY Newsday. Bob is publisher of the Internet TOURBUS newsletter, author of several computer books, and creator of Lowfat Linux. For more helpful articles and free tech support, visit http://www.AskBobRankin.com

Spam can bring down your website faster than a speeding bullet, but what is spam? Originally, spam referred to unwanted emails. We all hate the tons of email we receive day after day trying to get us to buy that or click this. I can’t go a day without someone trying to steal my personal information so they can get into my bank account. Does everyone else get the fake paypal emails? They look just like paypal emails, but usually if you look at the links they have ip numbers instead of paypal.com in the address. Obviously, letters from Nigeria, fake paypal emails, and the host of other either crooked or just plain annoying emails can clearly be defined as spam. Of course, email newsletters that have been subscribed to are wanted and would not be spam. I love getting my daily webmaster newsletters. They are great for helping me stay on top of what is going on in the website development world.

Another type of spam, that believe it or not webmasters still employ, is hidden text. This is obviously a bad idea. Google’s guidelines clearly state "Avoid hidden text or hidden links". Now to be fair sometimes it’s hard to keep all hidden links off of your site if you are using Microsoft FrontPage or other similar editors. The newer 2003 version of FrontPage incorporates the split screen, which makes getting rid of hidden text much easier. The older versions tend to leave hidden links behind in the HTML code after you delete the text. I have recently found tons of hidden text links everywhere on my sites. So, if you have this problem I can feel your pain.

Everything that is a bad SEO practice isn’t necessarily spam. Just because Google changes it’s algorithm tomorrow doesn’t mean all practices banned were actually spam. Sometimes, I feel that many webmasters let search engines dictate what they call spam. For example, linking to your own site from another one of your sites. Is that spam? Some might say you are attempting to alter search engine results and thus you are a spammer. I do have the right to advertise my sites or other sites on my own website, after all. Currently, from other webmaster articles and from what I’ve seen personally, if your link text is the same everywhere then Google will not allow you those keywords. This has put an end to the Google bomb, but it’s unfortunate side effect is the penalization of webmasters adding a link to their own sites from another site. For example, say I have a site about TV DVDs and another one featuring a entertainment blog. It’s very simple to enter a link one time into a text file using an ssi include or other similar method that might say "Entertainment Blog" linking back to my blog site. This example populates all my sites at once and thus now I’ve given everybody interested in my DVD site a little ad to my blog site. Google might penalize the blog site, and so you lose hits from Google. Thankfully, so far Yahoo hasn’t taken this step. I guess we could blame the guys who started the Google bombing, but I for one disagree with Google on their method. My only choice in linking back to myself now is to forget adding a standard link in the menu, and put a link back to the blog site one page at a time with different link text and perhaps linking to different pages within the blog site.

Now pop-ups to me go into the category of spam. Anything that is not asked for by the visitor, like a pop-up or email should definitely be classified as spam. Of course, there aren’t any penalties for pop-ups from search engines.

Google apparently is targeting affiliate sites now as well. On one hand, I don’t blame Google for not wanting exact duplicates in their search results, but their basic rules should still apply. Taking out a site just because it has affiliate links is really not a fair practice. Someone who takes months and perhaps even years of their time to create, maintain, and promote a site, deserves to make money just as much as the big dogs, as long as they are not using deceptive practices. Which brings me back to the main point. What is the definition of spam? Certainly, trying to earn a honest dollar on the net by offering affiliate links shouldn’t be considered spam. But sites trying to promote one set of keywords and offer something else on their page should be considered spammers. It’s the unwanted promotion tactics and deceptive practices that are now and will always be true spam. Is it spam to offer a rearrangement of Amazon’s products? No, not if your title tag says books, and I find books on your page.

Webmaster of the new Webmaster Tips featuring website articles, web hosts, domain registrars, free scripts, and more.

You may have already received a do not spam list email, seen a web site or even heard a radio advertisement that promises to reduce spam email just by submitting your email address.

Since the federal "Do Not Call List" became law in 2003, it seems logical that a do not spam list exists also. But even though it sounds legitimate, don’t believe the hype or the official looking emails.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) attorneys, who are experts at fighting spam email, a national do not spam list registry would not be effective at this time for many reasons.

The FTC says the high risk of a list like this would actually result in more in-box clutter because illegal spammers would use the registry as a "do spam" list. So the FTC is advising consumers not to submit their email addresses to any organization that claims to be creating a do not spam list.

The FTC also says emails and web sites that claim to offer a national do not email list or registry could be part of a high-tech scam to trick consumers into disclosing their email address or other sensitive personal information.

According to the FTC, these web sites and emails may be a way to collect valid email addresses to sell to email spammers. The result could be even more spam for anyone who signs up for the do not spam list.

Or, it could be worse because some scammers have collected information through bogus web sites that mimic those of legitimate organizations, and then use the information to commit identity theft.

If you have already submitted your email address to a national do not email list or registry that promises to reduce the amount of spam you receive, you may be a victim of one the latest email scams on the Internet.

Should you get an unsolicited email claiming to represent a do not email list or registry, an organization to stop spam, or even the FTC itself, forward it to the FTC using this email address - spam@uce.gov .

If you believe you have already been scammed, file your complaint at FTC - File Complaint, then visit FTC - Identity Theft Resources to learn how to minimize your risk of damage from identity theft.

You can choose to ignore a do not spam list email or help the FTC with their efforts in fighting spam by forwarding any suspicious emails to them. The important thing is that you don’t become a new victim of the do not spam list email scam.

Copyright © 2005 Spyware Information.com All Rights Reserved.

This article is provided by http://www.spyware-information.com where you will find free spyware cleaners, downloads, removal software and valuable tips. For regularly updated articles about adware and spyware and protection from identity theft go to http://spyware-information.com/articles_1.html

Technicians at ActivSoftware recently analyzed over two hundred thousand tokens, also referred to as words, in a bayesian spam filter on one of their busier local email servers. They analyzed dozens of items within the data. The most compelling was the spam to ham ratios. Ham is defined as legitimate email sent by legitimate email senders. The compiled list of over 50 words with the highest spam to ham ratio was the result.

Words like ‘click’ and ‘here’ don’t show up as high, since they are used so often in legitimate email. The ActivSoftware list also reveals that words like ‘madam’ which is rarely found in legitimate email, while readily found in spam email, had very high ratios. Using this method the team produced a superior list of words found in spam email ordered not just by frequency of usage in spam, but offset by the frequency of usage in legitimate emails. The words are ordered from highest to lowest Spam to Ham ratio.

This study empowered the coders and business employees at ActivSoftware with an increased ability to continue to track and, according to the team at ActivSoftware, eliminate the negative impacts of spam on the business community. The team at ActivSoftware continues to attempt to learn spammers in order to increase the effectiveness and deliverability for customers using XM Mail Server.

Here’s the top ten:

• homeowner
• discreet
• madam
• materially
• unclaimed
• anticipates
• soma
• preapproved
• unconditionally
• beneficiary

Note: This list has been updated and might change frequently as we continue to hone it in. The newer version, 8/8/05, also includes bid information from Overture as well as the Spam:Ham ratios.

See the newest spam to ham word list

Rob Thrasher and Pete Freitag are published nationally on a weekly basis on topics including Web marketing, email software, email deliverability, small business (zero budget) marketing, coding, and business software engineering.

In 1998, nearly 10% of all email traffic on the internet was SPAM. By 2003 that number had climbed to 50%, and the problem had gotten so bad that Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act)

The specific requirements and penalties of that law, (which took effect in 2004) have done little to stem the tide of junk email we all receive. Today, in 2005, the percentage of unsolicited email is at an all time high of 87% (source – Wired Magazine July 2005)

How can we even stand to check our email? Well I can’t. That’s why I pay for a service to protect my entire domain name from all Spam. That’s a great solution for me, but it’s too expensive for a home or very small business user. How then can you protect yourself?

First, there are filtering options in Outlook and Outlook Express, and I encourage you to investigate them further. More details on this are in my article from May of 2000 called “Managing your E-mail II” here http://pdxtc.com/200005-managingemail2.htm

After trying about 6 other programs, I found a free version of some software that I used for a long time called Mailwasher. This program was easily trained and configured to learn all of my preferences, and for free, there’s nothing better. However, you I still basically have to check mail twice, once in a clunky web-interface to sift through all the blocked SPAM. I prefer to just check my mail normally, not worrying about a missed message.

In 2003, a friend recommended a service called Knowspam. That was a great solution that blocked 100% of all SPAM through a “permission based” system. A permission based system means that all new senders not on your list, will get a “verification” email, asking them “Are you human?” Well, if they are really human, then they take the simple instructed action, and you’ll get their email, as well as all future mail from them, unless you choose to block them later.

Many readers of my column tried Knowspam, and I got dozens of positive comments. That wasn’t enough for Knowspam though, because they still went out of business.

Well the good news is that there’s a replacement for Knowspam. It’s called Spam Arrest, and it’s under $3 a month. It does everything that Knowspam used to do, and then some. I’ve now set myself up with an affiliate account and arranged for you try it for free for 30 days.

First, you easily upload all of your contacts, and then follow their easy directions to change your system mail settings, and anyone on your list or anyone you ever send mail to is automatically approved.

The great news is that this works for up to 5 email accounts, and even works for AOL mail! If you want to see 100% of your spam get blocked, and not be embarrassed to let your kids see your inbox, then visit http://www.pdxtc.com/spamarrest and sign up for your free 30 day trial.

Scott Hendison is living in Oregon, and is the owner of Portland Technology Consultants. He is a computer and internet consultant, and has been in the industry since 1995. He provides search engine marketing and optimization services for selected clients, and offers integrated POS / e-commerce systems for retail businesses that want to sell online. For over 75 other articles, visit his website at http://www.pdxtc.com