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spam

What is a Botnet?

by Barbara J. Feldman January 23, 2007

Recent increases in spam mail can be traced to botnets. According to Leo Notenboom, “a botnet is a networked collection of computers infected with software that can be remotely controlled to awaken and perform some task. Typically that task is to send email. Lots of email. Lots of spam.” You can protect yourself from getting [...]

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Using Gmail as a Spam Filter

by Barbara J. Feldman June 19, 2006

If your inbox is overrun with spam, and your ISP (or corporate mail server) does not offer a spam solution that works for you, you can try using Google’s free email service Gmail as a front-end spam filter. Read more in this article from Jeremy Zawodny: Using Gmail as My Spam Filter.

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Email Graphics

by Barbara J. Feldman November 8, 2005

Posting your email address on a web page in a machine readable format is simply asking for trouble because thousands of robots crawl the Web looking for email addresses to add to spam mailing lists. One way to avoid this is not use text or HTML (which is machine readable) but instead put your email [...]

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Neo-Nazi Spam

by Barbara J. Feldman May 23, 2005

Coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, email users around the world have found their email boxes stuffed with German Neo-Nazi propaganda. In what appears to be the first time spam has been used to promote a political viewpoint, the Sober Q worm replicates itself on infected machines and sends [...]

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CAPTCHA

by Barbara J. Feldman February 15, 2005

Ever wonder why so many websites ask you to enter squiggly, distorted pass codes? They are using captcha to verify your humanity. A captcha is an automated test that humans can pass, but computers can not. To learn more, read the definitions from Webopedia or Wikipedia. Or dive into Carnegie Mellon’s Captcha Project.

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Joe Job

by Barbara J. Feldman December 27, 2004

A Joe Job is spam mail that deliberately and specifically uses an incorrect from address in order to put the blame on that specific person. Although it common for viruses to forge from addresses, it is usually not done with specific, malicious intent. So true Joe Jobs are pretty rare. The term originated in 1997, [...]

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