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FAQ - SPAM AND VIRUS PROTECTION

 

 

What is Spam ?

Spam mail is the practice of sending massive amounts of e-mail promotions or advertisements (and scams) to people that have not asked for it..
Many times, spam e-mail lists are created by "harvesting" e-mail addresses from discussion boards and groups, chat rooms, IRC, and web pages.

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What are some of the issues consistent with Spam ?

Following are the main issues associated with Spam.

  1. If you have an email address you will, sooner or later, receive spam. It's not a question of "if", but "when".
  2. There is no 100% effective anti-spam solution (and probably never will be).
  3. Multiple anti-spam solutions are available, some better than others. Some are free, some are fee-based. Some operate on your mail server (protecting lots of people) some operate on your PC (protecting just you). Some solutions allow you to personally 'train' them over time so that they get better at determining what is or isn't spam according to your own individual preferences; others do not allow you to train them.
  4. Typically a combination of solutions is used to reduce the volume of spam ending up in your inbox.
  5. There is no 'one size fits all' anti-spam solution. An anti-spam solution that works for one person / organisation is not necessarily optimal for another person / organisation.
  6. The more 'aggressive' your anti-spam protection:
    1. The less spam you will receive in your inbox, but
    2. The higher the chance of 'false positives' (email messages that are determined to be spam that are in fact not spam)

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What does xman online do to limit spam ?

xman online's servers utilises the highly efficient MailScanner or SpamAssassin software to limit spam.Both are mail filters designed to identify spam. They are intelligent email filters which use a diverse range of tests to identify unsolicited bulk email, more commonly known as Spam. These tests are applied to email headers and content to classify email using advanced statistical methods.

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What do I do when I receive a spam message in my inbox ?

The simplest way of dealing with spam (that gets past our filtering service) is to delete the message straight away without opening it.

Please take note of the following points to limit the Spam you receive into your inbox:

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What can I do to better manage/minimise spam in my inbox ?

There are software and non-software things you should consider to manage/minimise spam in your inbox.


Software things:

  1. Upgrade your email (POP3) software to the latest version. The latest version of your software will typically have the highest anti-spam protection services built-in. E.g. Outlook 2003 has more advanced built-in anti-spam technology than Outlook 2002.
  2. Familiarise yourself with your email software's built-in anti-spam protection, and adjust it to the level that suits you.
  3. Use your email software's built-in 'filtering' / 'rules' capabilities. Add filters/rules that will automatically move incoming emails into a 'spam' folder (or whichever folder you choose) if they exhibit spam characteristics.
  4. Consider installing a 3rd-party anti-spam 'add-in' or 'filter' program that complements (and sometimes integrates into) your email software.
  5. Ensure that your company domain name does not have a 'catch-all' or 'default' email address. Before spam became a real problem, it was commonplace to redirect all incoming message that did not match an actual email address into a 'catch-all' email address. Example: There are just two people in a company, [email protected] and [email protected] A catch-all system might automatically redirect all incoming messages to [email protected] that aren't addressed to either [email protected] or [email protected], e.g. [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. So the problem here is that spammers can send to absolutely anything ...@company.com and Bob gets it all.
  6. Consider not using automatic 'Out of Office' replies (or similar) that automatically send replies to incoming messages. Reason: the bounced message confirms to the spammer that your email address exists. Also, automatic replies of this nature can sometimes cause a chain reaction of multiple emails being sent between your inbox and other mail servers. This can result in your email address looking like the source of spam and get you blacklisted as such.

 

Non-software things:

  1. Change your email address.
  2. Remove your email address from public display on the Internet:
    1. Don't display your email address on any websites, business or personal
    2. Don't use your primary email address (or any email address, if possible) when filling in any forms online.
    3. Avoid supplying your email address to potentially disreputable parties who may share/sell your email address with/to others.
    4. Don't reply to spam (which includes asking to be unsubscribed from the mailing list). Ever. This merely confirms to the spammer that email sent to your address is being read, and therefore worth sending more spam to.
  3. If it is necessary to have your email address on your website, we recommend that you encrypt this address to prevent Spammers from obtaining it. To do this, please following the following directions :
    1. Where you want your email address to appear on your site, type in the following code: <A HREF="mailto:you&#64;yourdomain.com">Contact Us</A>
      You can change "contact us" to whatever you like. This is the text that will appear on your site. When your email link is clicked on, it will display your email address correctly.
      Change the email address in the example above to the email address you would like to display.

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How do I create Rules Filters in Outlook Express ?

To create extra protection from spam within your Outlook Express client, please follow the tutorial found here.

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How do I create Rules Filters in Outlook ?

To create extra protection from spam within your Outlook client, please follow the tutorial found here.

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