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Spam is perhaps one of the most hated terms on the internet, and this is not surprising, considering how many people lose hours of work each day in an effort to prevent and eliminate spam form their inboxes and web sites. Conventional email spam is bad enough, however there is another type of spam that is even more annoying – web hosting spam.  This type of spam usually plagues your web site in the form of user comments, repetitive user posts, and an overwhelming amount of junk emails via your site’s “contact us” form. Unfortunately, this type of spam is much more difficult to prevent than conventional email spam, which can be combated with a simple spam folder and a blacklist. The following tips can help you overcome web hosting spam and keep your web site free from this type of spam.

Preventing Spam Comments

There are many webmasters that will attempt to build backlinks to their web site by leaving spam comments on your pages automatically with the help of automated software. To prevent such spam attacks you will need to make sure you are actively monitoring your site comments, as well as utilizing anti-spam tools within your web hosting control panel. All modern web hosting accounts have anti-spam utilities such as Spam Hammer that will let you set filters and prevent comments that may be easily identified as spam. For example, you can create a filter to prevent comments form containing links, which would greatly eliminate spam by discouraging spammers form leaving links on your site.

Securing Contact Forms

Some spammers will spam your web site’s contact form, sending automated emails repeatedly to overload your inbox and make your job as a webmaster difficult. This is often done by the competition, so it is very important to make sure measures are taken to prevent such spam attacks as quickly as possible, especially if you have an eCommerce site or a site that advertises your services, as you will need to be able to respond to customer and client inquiries. Fortunately, you can set filters and limits within your web hosting control panel that will keep a single IP address form sending too many emails in a row. This will greatly reduce the amount of spam emails you’ll receive.

Using Captcha Images

One of the best ways to deter spammers is through the use of Captcha forms that will prevent spammers from using automated software to attack your web site with spam. Captcha forms are basically images that contain letters and numbers that are difficult to read, and nearly impossible for a software to decipher. Thus, using Captcha forms on your web site will greatly reduce the amount of automated spam on your web site. Since spammers will no longer be able to use automated bots to fill in forms, create user accounts, and post content on your site, you will be eliminating the majority of web hosting spam.

Unwarranted and unwanted emails populate our inboxes each day. Most are caught by a spam blocker but there are a few that still filters through. Most of these messages are unread, but on occasion, the subject line contains something interesting and we open to find another advertisement or worse.

All about Money

This begs the question: If we aren’t reading these and it’s illegal, why are they continuing to send them out? The answer is simple: money. Sending out messages in this manner costs the sender less than it costs the impacted parties. Its simple economies of scale, as the number of spam emails sent out increases, the cost per message decreases.

Most email users check their accounts multiple times throughout the day. This gives spammers the opportunity to send multiple messages. Many of these messages appear to be legitimate emails allowing them to slide past spam filters and become more difficult to sort.

The Math behind Email Spam

The cost per message for a sender is the charge for the internet connection plus the time expended to actually create the message. On the other hand, the cost per message for the recipient is the charge for the internet connection and mailbox charges, plus the time to process the mail.

Spamming Methods

Some spammers do not pay anything for sending out emails by hijacking resources that belong to other users. Also, there are many software programs available that make spamming emails an automated process. Other spammers do not use mailing lists, they simply assault a target domain sending emails to all those on that domain name. This is accomplished by sending the same email to all possible letter combinations.

Scams

There are many email scams that appear in user’s inboxes everyday. These include winning money in a foreign country and all the user has to do is send a small check. Others involve messages from banks requesting account information or credit card information. Furthermore, some claim the user has won a prize and must click a specific link to claim the prize.

Conclusion

Consequently spam is an effective method of extracting personal information or reaching users because it’s cheap (or free) and large groups see the message. Since spammers are becoming more creative, many of the messages look interesting and legitimate. Most email systems offer some type of spam blocker. Unfortunately this doesn’t work 100% of the time. A good rule of thumb, if you don’t know who the email is from delete it.

Inboxes around the world are consistently clogged due to the massive amount of spam sent out each day. While spam filters and blockers eliminate a good portion of unsolicited emails, there are still many that slide through. As a result, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and the European community have all enacted different types of spam legislation.

Why is Spam Legislation Necessary?

Spam is said to make up over 65 percent of all email messages sent and received. The overall cost of spam to companies, internet service providers, individuals and email marketers is in the tens of billions of dollars. This cost factors in lost productivity, high bandwidth consumption, boosted storage costs and legal liabilities amongst employees.

Internet service providers suffer from a decrease in bandwidth and storage space and a decline in retention from unsatisfied customers leading to an overall loss of reputation among subscribers. In turn, these factors result in internet service provider operating costs to proliferate, thus increasing prices for the customer.

Furthermore, email marketers that run a legitimate operation must be constantly adjusting their business methods due to ever-changing regulations. Also, their product loses significant value because customers might believe their emails are also spam.

Three Major Pieces of Spam Legislation

There are three primary pieces of spam legislation setup by three different countries. These include:

• The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of  2003 (CAN SPAM) – United States
• The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003 (EC Directive) – United Kingdom
• The Spam Act of 2003 – Australia

CAN SPAM

CAN SPAM was designed in 2003 to limit the number of email spam messages since more than half of spam correspondence originates in the United States. This legislation forbids companies and individuals from distributing multiple email messages containing false header information, false identities, sexually-oriented material, address harvesting or hijacking various aspects of a computer system.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003

Otherwise known as the EC Directive, this law prohibits individuals from sending unsolicited communications related to direct marketing unless the recipient has been previously notified of by the sender of any correspondence.

The Spam Act 2003

This act was designed to control the increase in unsolicited emails. This does not target bulk emails originating in other countries. Rather, it focuses on implementing consequences for organizations that send emails for commercial purposes. Commercial messages must incorporate accurate sender information and contain a functional unsubscribe function.

While these may not eliminate spam altogether, they could deter individuals and organizations. Combining spam legislation with spam blockers and filters might decrease the amount of messages sent lowering the cost as well as improving productivity across the globe.

Inboxes around the world are consistently clogged due to the massive amount of spam sent out each day. While spam filters and blockers eliminate a good portion of unsolicited emails, there are still many that slide through. As a result, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and the European community have all enacted different types of spam legislation.

Why is Spam Legislation Necessary?

Spam is said to make up over 65 percent of all email messages sent and received. The overall cost of spam to companies, internet service providers, individuals and email marketers is in the tens of billions of dollars. This cost factors in lost productivity, high bandwidth consumption, boosted storage costs and legal liabilities amongst employees.

Internet service providers suffer from a decrease in bandwidth and storage space and a decline in retention from unsatisfied customers leading to an overall loss of reputation among subscribers. In turn, these factors result in internet service provider operating costs to proliferate, thus increasing prices for the customer.

Furthermore, email marketers that run a legitimate operation must be constantly adjusting their business methods due to ever-changing regulations. Also, their product loses significant value because customers might believe their emails are also spam.

Three Major Pieces of Spam Legislation

There are three primary pieces of spam legislation setup by three different countries. These include:

• The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of  2003 (CAN SPAM) – United States
• The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003 (EC Directive) – United Kingdom
• The Spam Act of 2003 – Australia

CAN SPAM

CAN SPAM was designed in 2003 to limit the number of email spam messages since more than half of spam correspondence originates in the United States. This legislation forbids companies and individuals from distributing multiple email messages containing false header information, false identities, sexually-oriented material, address harvesting or hijacking various aspects of a computer system.

Spam can be a nuisance for users, webmasters and the systems they run on. This type of unwanted and unsolicited mail can implant viruses, spyware and other types of malicious code unknowingly onto a user’s computer or simple be an annoyance. As technology progresses, the spam blocking and filtering systems have greatly improved.

Numerous Problems to Consider

Most web hosting providers and Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) have extensive systems in place to ensure spam doesn’t clog their systems. Aside from the time and cost to install and maintain the systems, there are many other potential issues with anti-spam systems. For instance, messages blocked in error, accidental blacklisting of an Internet address, accuracy of spam filters, consensus-based filtering system, and issues with white lists.

Spam Filters

A common issue amongst spam filters is those messages blocked in error. Organizations send high-volume messages to their employees but they are not spam. If they are blocked, the ISP will most likely receive a complaint from both the sender and recipient. Specific communications that were never received could end in financial losses resulting in major lawsuits.

Accidental Blacklisting

Another common problem is the accidental blacklist of a specific Internet address. When a large volume of spam is sent from a specific address or group of addresses, these will be placed on a blacklist within spam filters. If these addresses are part of a user’s ISP, they may not be able to send emails to those whose ISP’s are blocking those addresses.

Accuracy

An additional concern is the accuracy of the spam filters. Many users utilize Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and other free Internet-based email services. These providers offer spam filtering that identify spam and separate it from legitimate emails. Unfortunately, these don’t block 100% of spam emails since spammers are constantly discovering different methods for moving past the filters. Consequently the user still must weed through many messages.

Consensus Filtering

The consensus model can also cause issues. With this type of filtering system, users that receive messages they consider to be spam will report them to a centralized entity. If enough users report a specific message as spam, it will be flagged and blocked. Since there are many grey areas as to what is considered spam, some may not receive important messages. This system is far from perfect.

White Listing

Finally, there are many issues with white lists, which inform the filtering program to allow specific email through based on the source of the message. Individuals can also add their lists to the central bank. Although this method often helps to eliminate spam, it is prone to falsification and spoofing.

Spam filtering systems and methods are far from perfect. While they do help eliminate the majority of spam, there are still many problems that need to be addressed to ensure total security. Spammers continue to find methods around spam blockers, but as technology progresses and security tightens, spam filters will become more effective.