Spam and Social Engineering

Perhaps this is the scariest trend of all - mixing current events, emotional issues, high profile stories in with spam creates one of the most compelling reasons to seek out effective spam blocker technologies.

Here's a recent example, yesterday a malicious email duped over 1 Million users into clicking on a malicious link in spam emails - the text and topic - the capture of Bin Laden. Can you think of a topic that is a more effective way to capture attention?

What used to be a clear line has been crossed several times in the last months making it more difficult to quickly identify what is spam and what is legitimate email. This will only get worse - its now time to seek out technical spam blocker solutions.
Jeff

Spam Goes Beyond Just Email

Bloggers are finding that they too need to look at spam blocker solutions - especially those using Typepad or Moveable Type blogging software. I myself have have used Moveable Type for a few different blogs and have been hit with hundreds of comment and traceback spam messages - so much so, I had to just turn the whole thing off.

What we are figuring out is that spammers will stop at nothing to increase their numbers for unsolicited mass mailings - and even move to more dangerous motivations such as spreading viruses and trojans turning PC's and servers into unwitting zombies.

Spam is quickly becoming THE obstacle to being productive - moving even beyond mail, threatening our ability to work and communicate effectively. For the latest methods, reviews and tips, be sure to vist our Block More Spam website.

A Simple Example of Dangerous Spam Impact

A new story regarding the dangers of spam come out each and every day,
yet I saw one today that does not directly mention spam, but certainly
is dangerous and could easily be triggered by spam - another reason
to check out the anti-spam resource we are building

According to this news story,
trojan code being added to basic ads, images, and video clips are causing
serious issues by infecting machines and quickly spreading throughout networks
by linking themselves to your email address book.

Spam used to be a simple annoyance, but recently the stakes have gone way up,
its no longer enough to use passive spam blockers, we have to get more aggressive.
This is the reason we are building our spam blocker resource site and why we
have finally taken action to find the best anti spam products to help us combat
the growing dangers of email spam.

How You Can Avoid The New Dangers Of Spam

Until recently, spam has been an annoyance, a definite
load on your email system and network, a waste of productive
time and money, but we are about to find that the cost could
get much higher.

Spam blockers are now becoming a necessity rather than an
optional email utility, the reason is that spam is becoming
much more dangerous.

Now, just like you, I looked into spam blocker software mainly
because I didn't like being constantly bombarded with various
anatomy enhancing messages or ironically, advertisements for
spam blocker software itself.

A skeptical person may even wonder if this whole problem is
not rooted in the business model of lesser than honest spam
blocker software companies - but that's another article.

Whatever the root cause, one fact is true, the spam problem is
turning into a far more costly and dangerous issue that could
effect you in profound ways.

The dangers are becoming so serious that we finally got serious
about reviewing spam blocker software - the result you can
find here: spam blocker software review

The evolution of spammers into 3 new and very dangerous areas
had me scambling to get serious about finding spam blocker
software and techniques that are more effective than what I've
been using in the past.

The 3 new dangers that threaten you are:

1. Rise in hijacked and spoofed email addresses means that
someone can make it look like their spamming campaign is
coming from your computer. The impact is that you could have
your internet connection terminated or put on hold by your
ISP - all without your knowledge. This raises the issue that
spam needs to be blocked, ideally, in both directions - to
ensure you are not an unwilling accomplice to a malicious
spam campaign

2. Convergence of viruses and spam. You are no doubt aware of
the nasty rise in viruses that end up impacting your PC in a
number of harmful ways including slowing you system down,
crashing your system, logging your keystrokes, stealing private
information, redirecting you to porn sites, etc... Now, in the
past the incidence of a virus travelling through email would be
fairly predictable. That has changed with viruses working
together with spam. An example is the SoBig virus whos purpose
was to create a broad spamming infrastructure by planting code
on unwilling participants PCs creating a mass threat to email
security. This is just the tip of the iceburg, spam will
increasingly be used to spread and activate very dangerous
viruses - for this reason alone, you need to be looking at
spam blocker software.

3. Mix of spam and phishing. If you haven't heard of phishing
before, it refers to the misleading emails you get dressing
themselves up to look like legitimate emails to get confidential,
often financial, information from you. Some common examples are
the Paypal or Bank emails that claim you need to login with your
private information to verify contact information or update
account information. In reality, this is a malicious third party
that steals your private information and can cause you MAJOR
identity and financial problems.

So what can we do about this?

It's time to get serious about spam blocker software - as a first
line of defense. Regulation isn't working, while it is getting
tougher and tougher to quickly decide what is spam and what is not
in your inbox and as we have seen, the stakes are getting higher.

There are hundreds of shareware, freeware and otherware solutions
on the market, the time for experimentation is over. In my trials
of over 12 different spam blocker solutions, we found incredible
variance in the reliabiltiy, effectiveness leading to our finding
that there were only a small handful of serious spam blocker
solutions. For our findings, feel free to visit our spam blocker
software review page.