Anti-spam techniques - Anti-spam tips - Anti-spam - Fighting spam |
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Anti-spam techniques - Read tips, tricks and techniques used to help prevent email spam
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The US Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Committee (CIAC) has provided specific countermeasures against electronic mail spamming.
Some popular methods for filtering and refusing spam include e-mail filtering based on the content of the e-mail, DNS-based blackhole lists (DNSBL), greylisting, spamtraps, enforcing technical requirements,
checksumming systems to detect bulk email, and by putting some sort of cost on the sender via a Proof-of-work system or a micropayment. Each method has strengths and weaknesses and each is
controversial due to its weaknesses.
Detecting spam based on the content of the e-mail, either by detecting keywords such as "viagra" or by statistical means, is very popular. Such methods can be very accurate when they are correctly tuned to
the types of legitimate email that an individual gets, but they can also make mistakes such as detecting the keyword "cialis" in the word "specialist". The content also doesn't determine whether the email was
either unsolicited or bulk, the two key features of spam. So, if a friend sends you a joke that mentions "viagra", content filters can easily mark it as being spam even though it is both solicited and not bulk.
The most popular DNSBLs are lists of IP addresses of known spammers, open relays, zombie spammers etc.
Spamtraps are often email addresses that were never valid or have been invalid for a long time that are used to collect spam. An effective spamtrap is not announced and is only found by dictionary attacks or
by pulling addresses off hidden webpages. For a spamtrap to remain effective the address must never be given to anyone. Some black lists, such as spamcop, use spamtraps to catch spammers and blacklist them.
Enforcing technical requirements of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) can be used to block mail coming from systems that are not compliant with the RFC standards. A lot of spammers use poorly written
software or are unable to comply with the standards because they do not have legitimate control of the computer sending spam (zombie computer). So by setting restrictions on the mail transfer agent (MTA) a
mail administrator can reduce spam significantly. In many situations, simply requiring a valid fully qualified domain name (FQDN) in the SMTP's EHLO (extended hello) statement is enough to block 25% of
incoming spam. Some small organizations go so far as to remove their MX (Mail eXchange) record and arrange to have their A-record point to their SMTP server. RFC standards call for fall-back to a domain's
A record when an MX lookup fails. While this method runs the risk of losing some legitimate e-mail from being received, some claim that it results in a 75% reduction in spam.
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