Thursday, December 18, 2008

Anti spam Software

Anti Spam software is a necessity because Spam compromises the security of your computers and exposes it to various risks besides being a permanent source of botheration. Before we learn about anti Spam software, we need to first know what is spam. To put it succinctly, spam is unsolicited and unwanted email. Other names for spam are Unsolicited Bulk Mail, Excessive Multi-Posting, and Unsolicited Commercial email, in addition to the more common - spam mail, bulk email or just junk mail. The advent of email brought in an era of instant communication, where information reaches our desktops, at negligible cost, and in no time at all, from across the globe.

Along with the benefits, came the negative aspects of email. For the multitudes of marketing hawks out there, this was an opportunity to send unsolicited promotions of their products, instantly, and at a very low cost. Today, spam has reached such monumental proportions that 10 out of every 13 emails (76.9%) we receive are spam, one way or the other. This is why anti Spam filter has become a must have software for almost all PC users.
Simply put, anti-spam software helps detect spam. It is a software program that detects unsolicited and unwanted e-mail, and prevents them from reaching your inbox.Anti Spam software is also known by many different names, such as: Spam Filters, Email Spam Filtering, Spam Blocking Software, Anti-Spam Filter, Spam Filtering Software, Spam Blockers, Bayesian Filters, and Anti-Spam, among many others. Anti-spam software is installed in your machine to divert the spam coming in. If installed in the mail server, you will never receive the spam, to begin with. The filtering is configured based on a number of criteria.


Anti-spam software has become an essential part of your computer's security, to ensure that you only receive the emails you want, and not others. To help eliminate spam, look for anti-spam software that has the following features, among many others: Blocking emails using both lists and preset filters - blocks specific addresses, watches subject lines, and messages within ,Updating filters automatically, Isolates spam outside of your inbox, Puts acceptable emails automatically into your safe list ,Monitors and filters multiple email accounts Now that you know the basics about the need and importance of anti-Spam filter, select the right one for your computer and get rid of the menace of Spam.

The term Spam refers to unsolicited, unwanted, inappropriate bulk email, Usenet postings and MUD/IRC monologs. For the purposes of this discussion, we will use the term Spam primarily in reference to email, which is what it is generally understood to mean when used in connection with the Internet. Spam is often referred to as Unsolicited Bulk Mail Excessive Multi-Posting Unsolicited Commercial email spam mail, bulk email or just junk mail.

Inters can Messaging Security Suite is an anti virus and content-management solution for the Internet mail gateway. Its various features are: anti-virus protection for both incoming and outgoing mail including Microsoft Office macro virus scanning, content management to analyze e-mail messages and attachments for content traveling to and from the network denial of service protection for the mail server, protection against malicious e-mail content such as HTML script files, Java applets and ActiveX controls and limiting of mass mailing of virus content.
Inters can MSS sits between your various SMTP mail servers and the Internet. It acts as a single security solution for all the e-mail servers of your organization, minimizing the installation and configuration of different solutions on different servers. It scans all mail coming in to or going out of the mail servers and disallows mail with viruses and inappropriate content as set in the policy to pass through. It even stops open e-mail relay, allowing only the designated SMTP servers to relay e-mail to the Internet. If you have an e-mail gateway, then you can either replace it by MSS or install MSS before the gateway. You can install it on both your local and remote systems.

The virus scanner can scan through 20 layers of compressed files. To protect against attacks, which involve sending highly compressed zip files to load the server, you can set the maximum size of a file after decompression. MSS uses virus and content policies to allow or disallow mail to flow through it. The policies are applied to a group of users and can be created with different settings. The policies use filters to match e-mail messages. You can create these filters for viruses and content. In content, you can create filters for message attachments, message content, and message size and anti spam. You can also create your own filters to screen messages on almost any criteria. For instance, you can permit only JPEG images and not heavy BITMAP images or stop messages from sending certain important text out of your mailing system.

The message attachment filter can limit the sizes of the messages and attachments and the number of attachments that you can send or receive. You can enforce the message size filter on a weekly calendar to block or allow messages at a particular time of the day. You can also create complex filters using expressions containing keywords and operators. But you have to read the manual for doing all this. The minimum system requirements for MSS are 800 MHz P III or equivalent processor, 256 MB RAM, Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server or NT with SP 6A, IIS 4.0 or above. Though its installation is simple, you need to be familiar with your messaging system setup before you start.

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