Anti-Spam

According to latest statistics, spam accounts for between 20% and 75% of mail for a mailbox which has been used for over one year. With spam generating billions of dollars of revenue a year, spammers have a huge incentive to distribute as much spam as possible.

Unfortunately, unlike any other form of advertisement, spam is paid for by the receiver. It's like a telemarketer calling reverse charge to sell something to you; only you can't reject the call.

How do Spammers get Email Addresses?

There are several ways that spammers harvest email addresses:

• Trawl websites which have email addresses or: mailto: commands
• Trawl forums, usegroups and other Internet communities
• Dictionary attack a mail server (guess names)
• Spyware, including stealing address books
• Sold marketing lists
• Collecting from websites which require a legitimate email address for access

Risks Posed by Spam

Spam, while irritating on a personal level, costs the enterprise substantial sums. These costs are realised by:

• Increased network bandwidth consumption
• Increase processing requirements including additional storage
• Employee time to manage spam
• Increased IT management burden
• Loss of legitimate email messages