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Does Your Host Fight Spam?
by Eric Lester
Are you a website owner that receives a lot of Spam to your domain's email addresses? This article presents an overview of basic spam-fighting techniques available to website hosting companies. See if yours measures up.
Virtually anyone with an email address knows what Spam is, and has, perhaps, considered giving up the speed, convenience, and simplicity of email because of it. Those who have their own websites are more vulnerable than the average person with a single work or home email address from their company or Internet Service Provider. Email addresses visible on a website can quickly become Spam magnets, as automated programs, similar in form to search engine spiders, roam the web, looking for addresses to which new broadsides of Spam may be fired. Website hosting companies generally provide their clients email accounts for use with their domain, but are you with a host that provides those email accounts with Spam and virus protection?
Local Blacklist Filters
Webmasters shouldn't need to seek out local filters for their site's contact
email addresses. There are a variety of server level solutions a hosting
company can offer to protect their users from unwanted emails. A most basic
step is provision of a very rudimentary "blacklist" functionality
to their users, allowing them to prevent future Spam emails from arriving
from the same address. This type of filter is virtually worthless in today's
Spam environment, though, as it is quite rare to see unsophisticated email
arriving from the same address multiple times. Spammers have grown far more
sophisticated than that. Blacklisting functionality is only really useful
in avoiding email from other real people you don't particularly wish to
hear from anymore.
Keywords and Regular Expressions
More advanced server level Spam filters are available. A small advance is
accomplished using keyword filters. Keyword filters merely check for instances
of a certain string of characters and deny the message if that string if
found. The core problem with keyword-only filters is they can "over
filter". Someone who puts "sex" on their keyword filter will
find receiving local news and event announcements difficult if they live
in a town named "Essex". Some filters attempt to address this
deficiency by using "regular expressions" in order to build a
sophisticated rule set to prevent Spam from reaching your inbox. Briefly,
regular expressions are syntax rules used to identify certain strings of
text or numbers. These rules can be set up to identify text patterns that
are commonly used in Spam. They can become quite complex, but, as with most
any filtering method, are not 100% bullet proof. Some filters that use regular
expressions come with a basic set that can be appended by the user. Obviously
this kind of feature is of little use to someone not familiar with regular
expressions.
Bayesian Filters
Currently the most sophisticated filtering methods use Bayesian inferences.
Bayesian filters take a large data set and determine the probability a
message is Spam based on its similarity to previous Spam messages. The
more emails that are processed and flagged theoretically make the filter
more accurate. Services that provide filtering on an ISP or host level,
like "MailBoxCop",
filter thousands of emails and provide the highest level of success and
fewest "false
positives". MailBoxCop is already
highly intelligent about identifying Spam and only becomes moreso the more
users it filters. The online, browser based interface
keeps flagged messages in an easily accessible "quarantine" and
allows the user to check for any false positives. White and black list
functionality is provided to aide in the prevention of future false positives.
A hosting company offering such an advanced service takes Spam and virus
filtering for their customers seriously.
About The Author
Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com
and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring
knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting
provides website hosting, ecommerce
hosting, vps
hosting, and web design
services to a wide range of customers. Established in 1999, Apollo prides
itself on the highest levels of customer support. Click for more hosting
articles.
Note: These articles are provided for general interest and content purposes only, and should not be construed as "support" materials. Apollo Hosting does not guarantee the information contained within. All articles are free to reprint so long as they remain unchanged, the "About the Author" section remains, all hyperlinks are preserved, and the rel="nofollow" tag is not added to the hyperlinks.
