The Battle Against SADDAM''er I mean SPAM

1
The Battle Against SADDAM..er I mean SPAM

• A presentation for the BVI Computer Society

2
Your Presenter

• Gregory Lemmon
• IT Manager
• ONeal Webster
• BVICS Steering Committee Member
• E-mail gregory_at_bvics.org

3
Agenda

• Target Audience
• Definition
• Its costs and Effects
• But I did not give them my Email Address!!
• What can I do?
• closing

4
Target Audience

• This presentation is targeted to
• the non-technical or end users of
• computing systems. It is meant to
• serve as an introduction to the
• various means of preventing or
• securing your email inbox from
• spammers.

5
Definition

• Spam is a registered trademark of Hormel, a
• US food company that has been gracious
• enough to not make a legal issue of its
• trademark being used for what is officially
• known as UCE or Unsolicited Commercial
• Email. (Thank you, Hormel.).

6
Definition

• The term "spam" was coined in the mid-'80s to
• refer to various sorts of behaviour we now term
• "flooding". Later it came to refer to the sending
  
• of excessive multiple posts on Usenet (the first
• types of chat rooms or more precisely an
• online bulletin board service -BBS), and finally
• to unsolicited bulk email.

7
Definition

• Spam is unsolicited e-mail! Much like the
• advertisements and other junk mail that
• frequently fills home mailboxes. Spam is
• junk e-mail that rarely is of any interest to
• users, it is never requested, and is sent
• by people you do not know.

8
Definition

• Spamming is considered to be a
• Denial of Service (DoS) attack since it
• has the ability to disable e-mail
• servers by overloading e-mail storage
• with junk messages. A DoS attack is
• punishable by law.

9
Its Costs and Effects
10
Its Costs and Effects

• A report before the European Commission in
• February 2001 (Gauthronet et al.) estimated the
  cost
• of spam at 10 billion euro (US 8 billion) per
  year.
• David Ho, an Associated Press Writer reported
• that Enrique Salem, president of Brightmail, said
  to
• the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and
• Transportation Spam costs U.S. businesses 10
• billion each year in lost productivity.

11
Its Costs and Effects

• You should now have an idea about the direct
  costs
• of spam. This might be of special interest to
• businesses, where productivity could be affected
  by
• time and resources wasted on downloading and
• reading spam. Especially if We consider the
  amount
• of spam that is received at businesses. According
  to
• ZDNet (www.zdnet.com) 30 to 50 percent of
• workplace e-mail is spam. It is the potential
  that
• spam has of making someone to loose something
• (time, money) that makes it dangerous.

12
But I did not give them my Email Address!!
So if you did not who did?
13
But I did not give them my Email Address!!
14
But I did not give them my Email Address!!

• Spam bots, also known as email harvesters,
• email address harvesters, crawlers or spiders,
• are quite probably the single most insidious
• manner by which spammers collect the email
• addresses of innocent victims.

15
But I did not give them my Email Address!!

• It appears that the number one purchaser of
• email addresses is the adult entertainment
• Industry!!!

16
But I did not give them my Email Address!!

• Spam bots are software used by spammers to
• automatically "crawl" the web, (and newsgroups,
  chat
• rooms, IRC, instant messenger and other contact
• databases) and locate any and every email address
  
• they can find. They then record all these
  harvested
• email addresses into a database to be used for
  plying
• the evil trade of the spammer.

17
What can I DO?

• The best time to begin protecting yourself from
• spam bots is from the very moment you open a
• new account with your ISP or other email
  provider.
• Once your email address is in the hands of
• spammers, regaining control of your inbox is a
• very, very difficult job indeed.

18
What can I DO?

• Therefore, wherever possible, simply do not
  provide an email address at all
• Never submit your email address into any of the
  numerous "email directories" available online. If
  you are already listed, contact the operators and
  ask to be removed

19
What can I DO?

• If you send an email to multiple recipients,
  either send it individually to each, or send it
  using the BCC field in your email software. Never
  put multiple recipients into the "To" or the
  "CC" fields...... and teach your friends this
  same piece of basic netiquette. (Many emails get
  forwarded around the net, and this can sometimes
  produce a list of thousand of 'productive' email
  addresses if it lands in the wrong hands.)

20
What can I DO?

• Remove your address from the Member Information
  databases of your Instant Messenger software. If
  someone has a legitimate reason to want your
  email address, let them ask you for it.
• Have multiple email addresses What is also
  called throw away email addresses, In the event
  that you must submit an email address (Spammers
  use them why shouldnt you!!!).

21
What can I DO?

• Purchase a commercial program to filter and
  delete spam.
• Use a service such as Spam Cop (http//www.spamcop
  .net)
• DO NOT respond with a message telling them to
  remove you. This only confirms an email address.

22
What can I DO?

• Spam filters are programs that analyze the
  contents of
• messages to see if they have the common elements
  of
• spam. If a message does contain some of those
• elements, the spam filter deals with the message
  in a
• specific way. For example users can configure
  the filter to add the word spam to the subject
  line, so they know that the message is spam.
  Users can also configure the filter to delete
  suspected spam.

23

• Examples of products that can be used include
• MailWasher (www.mailwasher.net)
• EmTec Softwares Spam Detective, which runs on
• Windows systems and is vailable at
• www.emtec.com/spamdetective

24
What can I DO?

• Save your main email account specific for those
  people you absolutely trust the most. Never make
  this email address available in any public area.

25

• Any Questions?

26

• This has been a presentation of the BVI Computer
  Society
• Email Us info_at_bvics.org