Simple and effective spam defense method

The emergence of spam has brought a lot of trouble to network communication. These "black sheep" not only affect normal work, but also occupy a lot of network bandwidth, causing network congestion, and also the main way of virus and Trojan transmission.

Many readers have written to ask about spam prevention measures. We have also published relevant techniques in succession. This issue once again introduces some simple and effective defense methods.

Spam Features

What kind of mail is considered spam? There is currently no strict definition. In general, spam has the following characteristics:

1. The recipient did not submit a promotional email such as an advertisement or an electronic publication that requested or agreed to receive it in advance;
2. Email that the recipient cannot reject;
3. An email that hides the identity, address, title, etc. of the sender;
4. An email with false information sources, senders, routes, and more.

Precautions

The prevention of spam is divided into server and client. For the average user, as long as you are proficient in the client's precautions. Most commonly used mail client software has added anti-spam features, such as Outlook Express 6, Foxmail 5.0, etc. In addition, third-party spam prevention tools such as Norton AntiSpam and Mcafee SpamKiller can be used.

Outlook Express 6

Outlook Express 6 is a free mail client software provided by Microsoft, which is the most used by users on the Internet. Its anti-spam function is not very strong, but as long as the "mail rules" function is properly utilized, it can also be a good filtering effect.

Click "Tools → Mail Rules → Mail" in the main window of Outlook Express 6 and create a new "New Mail Rule" in the "Mail Rules" dialog box. The author below introduces the filtering of "sex" information as an example.

After checking the "If the message body contains a specific word" option in the "Select rule condition" column, click "Include specific words" in the "Rules description" column, in the "Type specific text" dialog box Enter the "sex" keyword in the box and click the "Add" button. After selecting the "Move to the specified folder" option in the "Select Rule Action" column, click the "Specified" text below to specify the folder where the spam is stored in the "Move" dialog box. Finally, name the rule in the "rule name" column, and click the "OK" button to complete the new rule.

For some known spam addresses, you can add them directly to the Blocked Senders tab, click the "Add" button, enter the email address in the address bar, and select it in Block Content. "Email", and finally click the "OK" button, this will effectively block the mail sent from this address.

Foxmail 5.0

Foxmail is a popular mail client software. It also adds anti-spam filtering in version 5.0. In the main Foxmail 5.0 window, click "Tools → Anti-spam settings" to launch the anti-spam settings dialog.

In order to effectively filter spam, first define the rule filtering level. Foxmail provides three levels of low, medium and high. By default, the intermediate level is used. If there is no special need, it is recommended to use the default level.

In addition, Foxmail also provides "Bayesian filtering" function, in order to use this function, you must count enough spam and non-spam keywords, that is, you should learn as much as possible Identify spam and non-spam and determine the classification of spam and non-spam. Click the "Learning" button in the "Bayesian Filter" tab, specify the folder to be "learned", and start counting the mail keywords.

The blacklist and whitelist functions are used to manage spam and friend emails. By adding spam or friend email addresses to the list of features, you can increase the hit rate of filtered spam.

Notes

Although the anti-spam feature built into the mail client software and third-party prevention tools can effectively filter spam, it is not 100% effective. Therefore, in order to avoid the harassment of spam, in addition to using technical means, we should also be vigilant when surfing, try not to leak your email address. Here are some suggestions for you:

1. Minimize the disclosure of your email address in public places such as newsgroups, chat rooms, websites, forums, etc.
2. Review and determine the Site's Privacy Policy before submitting your email address to any website, as some users will ask if they would like to share their email address with a third party.
3. The spam email will be forwarded to the government or industry management department for reporting (China Anti-Spam Alliance website http://anti-spam.org.cn/).
4. Don't trust the promises of strangers, especially any advertising emails that promise to make money.