First things first! Prior to doing a call out make sure you
have checked all you cables etc. Often a failure can be caused
by an incorrectly fitted cable or device. Also make that you
have checked the power cable and the fuse to ensure it is not
just a simple power problem. You could also check the socket by
plugging in a lamp etc.
If your company offers computer repair , Pc repair or laptop
repair in Leicestershire and the
surrounding Leicestershire area, and you are
able to help local customers, to advertise your company on
this page please contact
us.
PC Security - Fighting Spam, Part I: User
Strategies
Fighting spam - like countering any
illegitimate activity - is a never-ending battle. You
devise a strategy and there's a counter-response. But
taking low-effort steps that make spammers actions
ineffective or difficult puts you at an advantage.
FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE
If a spammer had to gather e-mail
addresses manually and send ads one at a time, the whole
enterprise wouldn't be worth his effort. Unfortunately,
automation gives him a huge assist.
Two can play at that game.
Since spam is made possible by programs,
programs can fight it - and, fortunately, there are many
already available. Before learning how to use them, it's
helpful to know how spammers do their dirty deeds and what
simple actions a user can take to counter them.
One of the most effective tools spammers
have are spambots - programs that automatically browses
websites looking for e-mail addresses, which it then
"harvests" and stores into large lists. The lists are then
either used directly for marketing purposes or sold, often
as CDs listing millions of addresses.
There aren't yet perfect mechanisms for
foiling spambots, but there are several effective
techniques.
MISDIRECT
If you don't expose an e-mail address to
harvest, you can't get harvested. But in a time when blogs,
forums and other public sites are heavily used - and most
require providing an e-mail address to post if not to read
- it's difficult to avoid.
So for those public venues, define and
use an address where you intend to get no personal e-mail.
After responding to the sign-up confirmation you don't have
to care what goes there. Keep another for personal use and
give it only to trusted individuals and vendors.
A word of caution: Hotmail, Yahoo and
other large providers have often been used for this
purpose. Some sites are wise to this and won't allow
addresses with @hotmail.com, for example. Fortunately,
there are dozens of free e-mail providers and you don't
have to use the same one every time.
CAMOUFLAGE
Spambots are clever, but they're not
human. They can't make subtle distinctions or inferences
unless they're programmed to do so. Often, disguising a
publicly visible e-mail address is enough to cause the
spambot to bypass you. They're frequently programmed to
look for character strings like John_Example@somecleverdomainname.com.
Programs only do what they're instructed, so even so simple
a change as John_Example_at_NOSPAMsomecleverdomainname.com
is enough to fool them.
Even if your disguised e-mail address is
still harvested, at minimum the address has to be
'scrubbed' in order to be used. Scrubbing routines are even
harder to write than spambots, because there are so many
possible variations. (NO_SPAM, NOSPAM, no*spam and many
that are much more clever. Be creative!) Those variations
are usually simple for humans to decipher, but again
programs only do what they're instructed.
The method does have potential drawbacks.
Humans have to strip out the extra letters and insert the
@-sign (in the above example) - something they sometimes
fail to do out of failure to understand the need to, or
because they simply hit Reply To. Also, since many e-mail
confirmation systems are themselves automated (by software,
naturally), they too will fail to deliver to the desired
address.
A variation on the technique can be used
not only by web site designers but (to an extent) users.
You can usually configure your e-mail account to make the
receiver see your e-mail address as anything you wish,
regardless of the actual address. After all, that's how
spammers often disguise themselves, too.
FILTERS
Once you make the effort to create an
e-mail account and 'advertise' it to your friends, business
associates and trusted vendors changing (or even
disguising) it can be undesirable. That puts you in the
position of making high cost efforts for low reward -
exactly the role you want the spammer to be in, not
you.
Spam or Junk Mail filters to the
rescue.
Filters examine every e-mail before it's
delivered and apply complex algorithms to determine whether
one is junk or not. They're configurable so that e-mail
from senders listed in your address book pass through to
your Inbox, with others directed to a Junk folder.
Though imperfect, those algorithms are
reviewed often by e-mail providers and evolve to capture
more junk and fewer valid messages. And, when reviewing the
junk mail folder, some allow you to specify whether they
'guessed' correctly. Your answers allow the algorithms to
make better guesses.
RAISE THE PRICE
Eventually, even determined spammers get
tired of programming variations to bypass the hurdles
thrown in their way, deciding the effort isn't worth the
reward. The trick is to make the cost of their effort much
higher than the reward, while making the cost to you low
and the reward high.
Spammers haven't surrendered, but
progress to date has been impressive.
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