Fighting Spam..

Industry experts estimate that three out of every five e-mail
messages that are sent today are spam.

This is not only a nuisance; it is costing us all time and money
which could be better spent on productive ventures.

Bizwala is committed to fighting spam & blocks a great deal
without customer intervention. Our systems are updated daily and
we are always working to improve our spam filtering.

Though we may never be able to block it all, we can offer some
suggestions to combat spam effectively.
—————————————————————–
——— Q: How can I prevent spam from reaching my e-mail
account?

A: People who send spam compile their mailing lists in many
ways. Methods to compile such lists include:

Sending spam to e-mail addresses that are most commonly used. A
common tactic consists of building lists of targeted addresses
that use frequently used words such as “webmaster” or “info”
(for example, “webmaster@mydomainname” or “info@mydomainname”).

Obtaining e-mail addresses that are automatically “harvested”
from web sites by specialized software.

Compiling lists of e-mail addresses that are either chosen or
generate at random (for example, ” joe1@mydomainname”,
“joe2@mydomainname” or “joe3@mydomainname”. This method is
becoming increasingly frequent.

Because spammers often send spam to undefined e-mail aliases
such as aabbcc@domain.com, ccddee@domain.com, mfrds@domain.com,
you can combat the receipt of spam effectively by not using a
catch-all address . (The catch-all is an alias that is used to
recieve mail sent to undefined addresses/aliases .)

Q: What is spoofing and how can I fight it?

A: “Spoofing” occurs when a spammer uses some version of your
domain name in the “From” address field. Spammers use spoofing
to try to hide their identities and to pass blame for spam to
innocent Internet users. The large amount of spam messages –
many of which are sent to invalid address — result in a
significant amount of “bounced” e-mail (that is, mail that
returned as being undeliverable). Unfortunately, bounced mail is
sent back to the address found in the “From” line of the spammed
message. Typically, the “From” line is also an undefined e-mail
address not found in your mail settings. To combat receiving
bounced mail messages, you can use the “devnull” alias that we
mentioned in the previous question and answer.

Q: Even if my account is not generating any spam, can the mail
server I use get blocked because of spam?

Unfortunately, yes. The main cause for blacklisting your mail
server depends on where the spammed e-mail is ultimately
received and how the ISP who maintains that location reacts to
spam and to spam complaints. Many account holders with Bizwala
forward e-mail messages that are sent to there hosting account.
For example, a message sent to info@mydomainname could be
forwarded to myaccount@aol.com or myaccount@yahoo.com. At other
times, clients may be forwarding e-mail messages to accounts
that are invalid or otherwise not in use. The processing of the
forwarded e-mail message is handled by the mail server that your
account uses (specifically, the MTA or Mail Transport Agent).
Because a Bizwala mail server is the MTA, it is possible that
the mail server could be blacklisted even though you (or any
other Bizwala client) is not responsible for sending the spam in
the first place.

In short, you must be careful about where you forward e-mail,
how you report spam, and to whom you report it.

Note: Bizwala reserves the right to terminate a client’s
services for violations of our Acceptable Use policy.
Unacceptable use includes forwarding e-mail messages to
addresses that are invalid (not within the client’s control)
and/or sending mail with malicious intent.

Q: How can I filter spam in my Inbox once I receive it?

First, do NOT click any links in the spam or try to reply or
unsubscribe to the spammed e-mail message. Often, these links
will subscribe you to even more spam lists despite the fact that
those links appear to promise that you will be unsubscribed.
And, as spammers are always looking for legitimate e-mail
addresses to spam, replying to a spam message in any way only
tells the spammer that your e-mail address is valid.

Second, some e-mail programs have built-in functionality that
deals with spam that reaches your Inbox. Outlook 2000 (and
newer) is one such a e-mail program.

Outlook creates a folder called Junk Mail, where you can move
junk e-mail and then review it before deleting. Or, you can have
junk e-mail delivered to your Inbox, but color-coded so you can
easily identify it. The list of terms that Outlook uses to
filter suspected junk e-mail messages is found in a file named
Filters.txt.

You can also filter messages based on the e-mail addresses of
junk and adult content senders, allowing you to move or delete
all future messages from a particular sender. You can review the
Junk Senders list and add and remove e-mail addresses from it.

If you do not use Outlook 2000 or higher, please refer to your
mail program’s help files for any information related to spam
filtering.

Q: Are there any low cost programs out there that I can install
to help filter the spam?

A: Yes. There are many programs available that use a variety of
methods to help e-mail end users filter spam. Effective spam
prevention should include client-side software (that is,
software that is installed on your local computer). Below are
some links that you may want to visit:

Cloudmark Safety Bar: http://www.cloudmark.com

Realize that there are many products on the market that you can
install on help filter spam. However, as we are not affiliated
with the vendors or authors of those products, we cannot specify
which of those products would work best for your specific
situation. We ask that you “do your research” in order to locate
which product is best for you.

Q: The spam that is reaching me is being sent to defined e-mail
accounts. What can I do about it?

A: If any of your defined e-mail addresses are receiving too
many spam messages, it may be well worth it to you to change
your e-mail address. For example, if “info@mydomainname” is the
recipient of too much spam, it may be a good idea to delete
“info@mydomainname” in favor of “information@mydomainname. We
realize that this may be a tough decision, but such an action
could be a huge benefit as it would immediately reduce — if not
entirely eliminate — the amount of spam that you would be
receiving at your e-mail address.

Q: How can I prevent my e-mail address from being added to
spammer’s mailing lists?

A: As mentioned above, spammers use a variety of methods to
compile lists. We have created a help document that will give
you some useful tips about how to prevent your e-mail addresses
from being added to lists.

Protect Your Privacy

If you plan to enter your information to any Web site, please
review the Terms of Service and Privacy Policies of the Web
site. If the policies do not clearly indicate what will be done
with your information, you should reconsider posting any details
to that Web site.

Publishing Your E-mail Address on Your Web Site

Instead of having a simple “mailto” link on your Web site, such
as “Please e-mail me at joe@example.com,” consider using an
approved form mail script that allows Web site visitors to fill
out a form to send you e-mail. Bizwala offers such a script free
of charge. This will help prevent e-mail address harvesting
robots and other spammers from capturing your address. email
support@bizwala.net if you need assistance in setting up a spam
deterrent form mail

Member Profiles

Try to stay away from creating and posting a member profile, on
any Web site, for others to see publicly. Spammers are always
reviewing such information for new e-mail addresses.

Product Registration

Many of us register products online. Many times the product
registration form has options pre-selected that enable the
company to solicit you by e-mail, even though you may not want
it. Be sure to review the options you are selecting and any
options that may have been selected for you by default.

Posting to a Newsgroup

Never post anything to a newsgroup with your real e-mail
address. Consider cloaking the address or using a “disposable”
e-mail address. Consider creating and using an e-mail address
from one of the free e-mail address providers.

Do Not Reply to Spam or an Unsubscribe Request

Never reply to a piece of spam or request to be unsubscribed.
Your reply confirms that your address is working and provides
the spammer the opportunity to add your address to their list or
sell it to another entity. This actually helps facilitate more
spam.

Report Spam

An effective way to help prevent spam is to report it to the ISP
or mail administrator where the spam originated. Such reports
help ISPs to identify the user or users who sent the spam.
Report the spam, including full headers from the spam, to the
ISP abuse department or postmaster e-mail address.

Federal law strictly limits the information that online service
providers may disclose about their users. However, e-mail
messages do contain some information about the sender.

E-mail headers contain an Internet Protocol (IP) address that
corresponds to the sender’s Internet service provider (ISP). A
line in the e-mail message contains an 8 to 12 digit number,
separated by periods. For example: “Received: from
[123.456.78.91] by . . .” The “123.456.78.91″ represents the
ISP’s unique IP address for the sender. Most spam headers have
multiple “Received: from” lines. If the e-mail message has not
been forged then, in general, the first such line from the
bottom is the true origin of the spammed message.

After you identify the IP address, you can search to determine
which ISP provides this person with Internet access. A Web site
that attempts to determine the actual computer with that IP
address is located at http://www.arin.net/whois/index.html

-Article written by Wendy Jo McLeod Spam solution providers

Will other spammers take heed? Don’t count on it.

Jeremy Jaynes was on top of the world. By age 28, he owned a million-dollar home, a high-class restaurant, a chain of gyms and countless other toys. Yet those were only the spoils of his main line of business, which was swindling innocent people out of their money through email scams. From an unassuming house serving as his company’s headquarters in Raleigh, NC, Jaynes sent an estimated ten million messages a day pitching products most recipients didn’t want, amassing an estimated $24 million fortune in the process. Using aliases such as Jeremy James and Gaven Stubberfield, Jaynes spammed his way up to the #8 position on Spamhaus’ Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) and grossed as much as $750,000 a month, allowing him to live like a king.

However, Jaynes ran head-on into an information superhighway road block when a Virginia judge sentenced him to nine years in prison for his November 2004 conviction on felony charges of using false IP addresses to send mass email advertisements (some just call it spamming). The conviction was a landmark decision, as Jaynes became the first person in the United States convicted of felony spam charges. Though his operation was based in North Carolina, Jaynes was tried in Virginia because it is home to a large number of the routers that control much of North America’s Internet traffic (it’s also the home of AOL and a government building or two).

He should’ve Used the Privacy Software

During the trial, prosecutors focused on three of Jaynes’ most egregious scams: software that promised to protect users’ private information; a service for choosing penny stocks to invest in; and a work-from-home “FedEx refund processor” opportunity that promised $75-an-hour work but did little more than give buyers access to a website of delinquent FedEx accounts. Sound familiar? Anyone with an e-mail address has received countless messages originating from Jaynes’ operation. (If you’re still waiting on your privacy software to show up, it’s probably safe to stop checking the mailbox.)

Jaynes got lists of millions of email addresses through a stolen database of America Online customers. He also illegally obtained e-mail addresses of eBay users. While the prosecutors still don’t know how Jaynes got access to the lists, the Associated Press reported that the AOL names matched a list of 92 million addresses that an AOL software engineer has been charged with stealing.

When Jaynes’ operation was raided, investigators found that the house from which he ran his operation was wired with 16 T-1 lines (a large office building can get by on a single T-1 line for all its users). Investigators also entered into evidence to-do lists handwritten by Jaynes. Take a look at Jeremy Jayne’s meticulously detailed lists at:

* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes1.JPG
* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes2.JPG
* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes3.JPG

Good Work if You Can Get (Away With) It

The economics of spamming makes Jaynes’ decision to build a career of it understandable, though not noble. Spammers work on the law of averages, which would seem like an odd strategy considering that the average response rate for a spam message is just one-tenth of one percent. However, once you do the math even this miniscule response rate can make one very wealthy very quickly. If a spammer sends one million messages pushing a product width a $40 profit, a response rate of 0.1 percent works out to 1000 customers, or $40,000 per million messages sent. Since each message costs only fractions of a penny to send, and Jaynes was sending literally billions of messages a year, it’s easy to see how he pulled in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead.

The fact that spamming can be such a profitable undertaking means that the profession is not likely to go anywhere in the near future. Spammers have financial motivation to come up with innovative ways to avoid detection, and they have begun to join forces. While the landmark decision handed down in the Jaynes trial may serve as a deterrent to some would-be spammers, it is unlikely that the threat of prosecution will keep future spammers from refining their trade. For now and the foreseeable future, the answer still lies in technology, not law enforcement.

Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry’s largest provider of enterprise email security. The company’s flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting http://www.ciphertrust.com/products/spam_and_fraud_protection/ today.

These days everybody wants to have fresh content on their web site. Search engines like to see dynamic web pages, where the content is updated on a regular basis. Static pages that have information that doesn’t change are not only boring, but less likely to be visited by a search engine spider than a page that changes every time it is displayed.

By using RSS and the MagpieRSS toolkit, you can import data from another web site or news source and display that information on your own site.

First, download the MagpieRSS kit from http://magpierss.sourceforge.net.

Next, unpack the archive, into a directory off your root on your web site called “rss”.

Then, create a directory off your root called “cache”. CHMOD this directory to 777.

You’ll need to know the URL for the feed that you want to display. You can find this by searching for “RSS feed” in Google, or by going to one of the many sites that allow you to search thrown various sources for feeds. Syndic8.com is one, for example.

To display data from a single source, you can use code similar to this:

require_once(’rss/rss_fetch.inc’);

$news_feed = ”;

error_reporting(E_ERROR);

$rss = fetch_rss(”http://www.url-of-the-rss-feed.com”);
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0);
foreach ($items as $item )
{

$news_feed .= ” . $item[’title’] . ” . $item[’summary’] . ”;
}

echo $news_feed;

MagpieRSS not only decodes the data, but it will also cache the data so it will retrieve news articles only once per hour.

Utilizing RSS in this fashion will allow your web site to have fresh content displayed constantly, and will (hopefully!) keep the search engine spiders interested in your site. The more the spiders index your site, the more pages you will have listed in the search engines. And with more pages listed in the search engine indexes you have a much better chance of attracting people to your web site.

Copyright © 2005 by Mikel Beck.
mikel.beck@elite-computing.net

Mikel Beck is the owner of a number of web sites, the latest being The Happy Hour Pub.

Spam. Those annoying, time-consuming emails that clog your Inbox and ruin your day. You wonder: How did it ever get so bad? While it’s not possible to completely eliminate spam, there are quite a few things you CAN do about the problem to reduce your burden.

Spam is defined as an unsolicited email trying to get you to buy something. In addition, it’s email that tries to get you to give up something: your credit card number, social security number, login ID, etc., by pretending to be a legitimate email. Here are some tips for stopping the current spam you’re getting, and avoiding getting on new spam lists.

1. Maintain two email addresses: a Personal Email Address (that you give to family, friends and business associates), and a Safe Email Address (one you use whenever you’re ordering something online, signing up for an email newsletter, or creating a profile on a website).

For instance, I use a Hotmail account for my Safe Email Address. If a spammer were to get a hold of that address, fine. All the spam will go into my Hotmail account, which I only look at once a week. Hotmail has a great anti-spam filter built in, so it’s easy to see what’s spam and what’s not. This practice leaves my personal email account relatively spam-free (maybe I get two spam emails a day to my personal account). Some free email services include Hotmail, Yahoo and GMail (Google’s new email service).

2. Use your Safe Email Address to send emails to companies who might be harvesting email addresses from incoming emails. For example, say you want to write to a company to ask them about their products. Some companies will harvest your email address from the email you send to them, and put you on their mailing list. By using your Safe Email Address, you can avoid seeing messages from these companies come to your personal email address.

3. Stop giving your email address to everyone who wants it. Does your local bank really need your email address? Does your grocery store need it? Just because someone asks for it doesn’t mean you have to give it to them. If it’s a non-local company, or you are signing up for a mailing list, then they probably do need it. But it’s okay to leave the email address blank when filling out forms. Always ask yourself, Do I want to be contacted by this company via email? (Speaking of mailing lists, make sure the companies you subscribe to have a public, posted Privacy Statement on their website.)

4. Do not put your Personal Email Address on your website. Instead, use a form so that your email address is hidden. However, some spammers use special software that looks at the HTML code hidden in the form to steal your email address, so using a form by itself isn’t always the safest route. Better yet, use a free Form Processor so that your email address is never even in the HTML coding on your pages.

The service I use is Bravenet’s Form processor (www.bravenet.com). You can see ours in action here: http://www.passionforbusiness.com/send-email.htm

5. Never buy anything that’s sent through a spam email. First, it just encourages them to continue to spam. Second, it tells them that your email address is accurate, and they can then sell that address to someone else.

6. Never reply to spam and ask to be unsubscribed. They’ll just ignore it anyway, and it tells them that your email address is accurate, which just keeps you on the list. Note: many legitimate emails newsletters and mailing lists use automated unsubscribe links at the bottom of their emails, and you CAN use these to get off of mailing lists.

7. Use anti-spam software, like Norton Internet Security, on your own PC to filter spam as it comes into your email system. You still receive the spam, but it gets filtered to a Junk Mail or Bulk Mail folder, and segregates the spam from the legitimate email. Most anti-spam filters need to be trained, however, so you’ll have to occasionally tell the filter that something is NOT spam that it inadvertently put into the Junk Mail folder. Many of these anti-spam filters work on the principle of White Lists (legitimate email addresses that you DO want to receive email from) and Black Lists (spammer email addresses that you do NOT want to receive email from). Learn how to train your anti-spam software and it will work wonders for you.

8. Check to see if your ISP or hosting company has anti- spam technology in place, to catch spam before it even hits your Inbox. Be careful, though, because sometimes these filters are over-zealous and you have to train it to accept emails from mailing lists that you have subscribed to.

9. Do not use a catch-all email address. A catch-all email address is set up if you have your own website, and it is intended to catch all of the incoming emails sent to your domain even if there is no legitimate mailbox by that name. For example, your email address might be mary@mydomain.com. If that mailbox is set up as a catch all, and someone sends an email to marie@mydomain.com (with a spelling mistake in the email name), it will be forwarded to mary@mydomain.com. However, spammers know about catch-all email addresses, and will take your domain name mydomain.com and add common prefixes to it, like info@ or admin@. If you have a catch- all, then those spamming emails will come to you, even if you don’t have a legitimate mailbox of info@mydomain.com or admin@mydomain.com set up with your hosting company. See how easy it is for spammers to get to you?

10. Finally, if spam is really bad, create a new personal email address for yourself, tell everyone about the new address (give them several reminders that you are changing email addresses), then delete the old personal email address. This may seem a little drastic, but if you receive 200 spam emails a day, it might be time to time this final step to eradicate it.

You are not powerless against spam. But you do have to take action to fight back. Don’t let them bully you into accepting hundreds of unwanted emails a day! Take action now to reclaim your Inbox!

About The Author

Karyn Greenstreet is a Self Employment expert and small business coach. She shares tips, techniques and strategies with self-employed people to boost clarity and focus, create sustainable motivation, and increase sales and profits. Visit her website at www.PassionForBusiness.com

Traders from around the globe come to the Import-Export-Guide.com portal to post their trade leads - their requirements for products they want to buy and details of the products they have to sell. New trade leads are added all the time and it’s important that traders can easily and quickly find out what new requirements and product offers are posted.

Most traders are busy people with lots to do. Not really wanting to add to their burden of websites to visit, we decided it would be best to find a simple method of alerting our members about the latest trade leads.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was the perfect solution.

RSS
RSS is an XML format originally developed by Netscape as a way of aggregating or combining the headlines of various news-type sites for display on a portal site. It has been through a few versions, the most current being RSS 2.0 which we used on this project.

As well as being used by many news sites, the format is popular among the blogging community as it allows them to easily distribute the content of their blogs.

The advantages of using an RSS feed include:

• It is simple to implement
• The feed can be easily added to desktop or web-based readers
• It displays the latest content from your site
• It includes links back to your site
• It helps drive targeted visitors to your site

Creating The XML File
The format of an RSS file is very simple.

At its most basic it contains (within the main tags) a ‘title’, a ‘link’ and a ‘description’ tag followed by a series of ‘item’ tags.

Each ‘item’ tag, representing a unique news or data article, contains at least 3 other tags - one each for the article’s title, a link to the article and a description of the article.

Generating the RSS file is simply a case of extracting the relevant data from the database, building it up to match the template above and saving the resulting file on the server. Any of the popular scripting languages can be used for this process.

Our feed can be viewed here: http://www.import-export-guide.com/trade/leadsfeed.xml.

Using Our RSS Feed
You can’t comfortably read the contents of a feed by looking at the raw file in a browser. To do that you need a news aggregator program.

Aggregators let you include all your favourite feeds so that you end up with a page containing only content that interests you - headlines, quote of the day, weather, stocks, interest rates - you name it.

Popular aggregators include FeedDemon (a desktop application) and Bloglines (web-based). My MSN, My Yahoo! and Google accounts all come with news aggregation facilities.

Alternatively, if you are a website owner and want to include the feed contents on one of your site’s pages you can either parse the file using a ASP, PHP or similar or there are JavaScript programs that can do this for you.

Conclusion
Our main reason for building the feed was to benefit our current members. But by syndicating the feed on the many RSS syndication sites we will be able attract many other visitors who would not otherwise have known about our site.

Any content which is frequently updated and which can be packaged into separate items is suitable for creating an RSS feed. Hopefully this article will give other webmasters ideas for feeds to benefit their users and the wider Internet community.

Rob Henderson, Import-Export-Guide.com

Import-Export-Guide.com is an independent company that provides information and solutions for importers, exporters, trading companies, trading consultants and others involved in international trade. For more information and to register on the trade portal visit http://www.import-export-guide.com/trade.

As reported from the New Scientist, a team of researchers from IBM, and Cornell University developed a new algorithm for detecting spam in emails, called SMTP Path Analysis. The algorithm works by examining the path information (probably by looking at the Received headers), and detects patterns that are likely to be the route of a spammer. “…the algorithm is not meticulous enough to efficiently catch spam on its own, but works well in combination with content filtering tools.

Engineers at ActivSoftware recently announced their new algorithm
called ’slow start outbound connection ramping.’ This new server
technology attempts to avoid becoming flagged as spam by automatically monitoring delivery success and failure rates and adjusting simultaneous connections to an email service provider based upon those parameters. It begins with a very low number of simultaneous connections to any one ESP for any one IP address. It monitors delivery failure to success ratios and slowly ramps up the number of connections to that ESP from that particular IP.

In another recent attempt to help legitimate email senders avoid
becoming flagged as spammers, researchers at ActivSoftware, using a bayesian spam filter, sifted through over two hundred thousand words flowing through their email servers and itemized the top 50, or so, words most likely to trigger spam filters. The words are organized by their spam to ham ratio, or illegitimate to legitimate email ratio.

The team analyzed many factors within this data, but the most
compelling was the spam to ham ratios. Words such as click and here don’t rank as high, since they are used often in legitimate email. Whereas words like madam, rarely found in legitimate email, while readily found in spam email, had very high ratios. Using this method the team created, what they deemed, “A
superior list of spam words.”

The top twelve words follow:

• homeowner
• discreet
• madam
• materially
• unclaimed
• anticipates
• soma
• preapproved
• unconditionally
• beneficiary
• refinance
• intercourse

To view all the words visit the ActivSoftware Blog

Rob Thrasher and Pete Freitag are nationally published auhtors on the topics of email communications, marketing and software coding. Contact the authors

If you happen to be a blogger, you must be perfectly aware what
role RSS (Really Simple Syndication) plays in the blogging
world. This new way of sharing and distributing content has
spread across the web like wildfire in the past few years. And
blogs have played a major part in this dynamic growth,
catapulting the technology in the stratosphere in a very short
amount of time.

As more and more blogs are added to the World Wide Web (about
“forty thousand” a day), RSS is fast becoming a tool religiously
used by the majority of bloggers. However, it’s very unlikely
that blogs will be responsible for the future of RSS.

RSS In the Corporate World

There are bigger fishes to catch out there when it comes to
RSS. Larger than life opportunities for RSS exist not in blogs
but in the corporate sector. And as more and more web services
join the RSS bandwagon offering syndication with a creative
twist, there’s no doubt that RSS can be used as far as
imagination can go.

Companies, which previously ignored RSS as just another fad,
have started to take notice of what it has to offer. A lot of
big wigs in the e-commerce industry have started to have second
thoughts about how content should be delivered to their clients
and prospects. Many of the corporate as well start up companies
have started to realize how beneficial it is for their customers
and subscribers to receive content of their own choice. Since
the consumer’s choice undermines any other thing on the net, in
future RSS would definitely be the driving force behind
delivering quality content, seamlessly balancing it with
consistency.

Coming back to blogs, the blogging era started with a bang and
now you see bloggers everywhere, in the news or in your
neighborhood. But webmasters are finding this activity
time-consuming, as maintaining a quality blog is not just about
content but about original and unique content. With new blogging
tools and services springing up every other day, creating a blog
is easy. But finding a USP for your blog and generating an
income from it is getting much more difficult as the web gets
crowded with more of these “online journals”. Eventually blogs,
which are promoting RSS in a big way, are going to suffer a
setback in the near future, as many people switch back leaving
most of the blogs deserted.

Simply Syndicating Your Business

RSS, on the other hand, will continue to add more avenues to
the web, allowing web users to save time and energy and making
the information more reachable. For the webmasters, RSS not only
gives a better ROI (Return on Investment) but also gives an
excellent ROTI (Return on Time Investment). It will help them to
get the most out of their content by giving them the freedom to
re-assort and combine their information for better productivity.

A web business using RSS to the maximum benefit will not only
bring in more new visitors but also bring in traffic, which is
laser-targeted. High conversion ratio accompanied with increased
search engine ranking comes as part and parcel when RSS is used
as a marketing medium.

RSS will thrive as a communication channel in the coming future
and will help correspondence to reach a new level altogether
with the enclosure tag. In the process, redefine how contacts
are established. This will surely empower RSS to grow as a
marketing tool.

With the type of flexibility RSS provides, the consumer’s
demands will undoubtedly surge and in turn fuel companies with
more business ideas. Which makes the content produced more vast,
effective and tightly themed with rich keywords. Not only that,
an on going communication with the current prospects, yields in
a better trust for the company and establishes a rock solid
reputation among peer groups.

Centralizing the Web

With every passing day we see, businesses are starting to use
RSS in different positive ways, making the information more
centralized. Giving users the opportunity to find the right
information at the right time at one place, rather than skimming
across the Internet.

As consumers nowadays, have started to become choosy and
selective about the content they want to read. The web is no
longer random. RSS is slowly making it organized and
theme-based. This is one of the major reasons RSS is going
through an exponential phase of growth and will continue to do
so. What makes really simple syndication useful today is the
consumer himself. The strongest benefit a consumer derives from
RSS is he/she controls the information he/she receives and is
not bombarded with unsolicited messages. As the delivery system
is totally opt-in, safe and effective. If at all the user feels
that the feed’s content is not up to the mark and the quality is
declining, he/she can very easily remove the feed from his
reader and not receive any future updates or messages.

RSS might not completely replace email in the future but it will
definitely join in to be on the same level very soon. As the
importance for content quality and delivery grows, RSS feeds
will definitely have a higher priority with time.

On the last note, blogs may have helped in spreading the word
about RSS and how useful it is. However, it will be the websites
with new ideas and corporate companies, which will reap the
benefits. RSS will help them find new revenue streams, build
strong brand loyalty, acquire repeat customers and promote a
continuous development. In the process, giving a fresh lease to
new and old businesses.

Unwanted email is no joke.

At the very least, unsolicited email wastes everyone’s time.

Much worse however, are the dangers that this unwanted

email brings.

I’m talking about the problems of spyware and adware, of

computer viruses, and of so-called phishing attacks that

enable identity theft and threaten your financial security.

There’s no doubt that reducing unwanted email helps just

about everyone, whether site owner or site visitor. This

article aims to help both.

==ASIDE==

Note: this article is based on 3 Tips to Help Webmasters

Reduce Sp*m in Their Inbox, Today, written a year or so ago.

Webmasters and site owners will find many more tips here

- http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/stop-spam.shtm
l

==ASIDE==

Let’s begin.

Here’s how webmasters and web visitors can reduce unwanted

email:

TIP 1. USE A CHALLENGE RESPONSE SYSTEM

What is a challenge response email system?

Well, “it is an anti-sp*m system which is designed to shift

the filtering workload from the recipient to the sp*mmer (or

the legitimate sender).

“The fundamental idea is that sp*mmers will not take the

time to confirm that they want to send you email, but a

legitimate sender will.” Extracted from

- http://domain-dns.com/docs/challenge_response.htm
l

Basically, a challenge response system aims to prevent

unwanted email getting through to your inbox.

COMMENT:

As a newsletter publisher, I find challenge response email

systems time-consuming to say the least. I have to confirm

my newsletter publication email address is valid so that my

free newsletter gets delivered to my subscribers. For a free

newsletter, that’s a lot of work.

However, I can see that challenge response systems probably

do ‘work’, to a degree.

LINKS:

- http://textmefree.com/control-spam-today.html#cha
llenge

or

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=challeng
e+

response+systems (all one word)

TIP 2. USE DISPOSABLE
EMAIL ADDRESSES

What are disposable email addresses?

Well, without stating the obvious, they’re email addresses

you can dispose of. They’re easy to set up, use once, and

forget. So if someone sends unwanted email to this email

address you’ll most likely never know about it.

COMMENT:

As a site owner and newsletter publisher, I am not a fan of

disposable email addresses being used to become a site-

member, etc. Responsible email marketing is one method that

webmasters or site owners use to keep their site free, after

all.

However, I can see why a site visitor might want to use them

also.

==ASIDE==

Disposable email addresses make perfect sense to use when

requesting one-off information, like my free articles

(ahem!). You receive one free article, like this one, sent

to your email address and nothing else.
- http://www.wise-buys.info/webmaster-articles.shtm
l

==ASIDE==

LINKS:

- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=disposab
le+email

TIP 3. HIDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS

This tip is aimed at anyone who leaves their email address

on a website or online forum.

Either replace all email links on your site with “contact

forms” or encrypt your email address. And be careful when

leaving your email on a forum.

There are several ways you can ‘hide’ your email address but

the basic idea is to try not to leave a ‘live’ email address

on a site or forum. (Technically speaking, I’m talking about

not using mailto: for your email addresses.) And you can do

this by:

o Encrypting your email address with ASCII-code;

o Encrypting your email address using JavaScript;

o Using an anti-sp*m feedback form, only;

o Putting your email address in an image.

As simple as that, really.

==ASIDE==

Hide your email address? From what? Well, programs called

sp*mbots search the internet for email addresses. They get

added to a database, and eventually used by sp*mmers. Find

out how to block sp*m bots from your site here

- http://www.kloth.net/internet/bottrap.php

==ASIDE==

COMMENT:

As a site owner, removing live mailto: links from your

website may take some time, but the amount of time

you’ll eventually save will make this activity worthwhile.

However, not all of the methods discussed above are 100%

sp*m-proof.

Here’s an example of a contact form that uses several of the

above techniques:

- http://www.best-digital-cameras.co.uk/contact-us.
html

As a site visitor, you’re relying on either not using your

real email address (see Tip 2, above), or on hoping that the

owner of the site you’re using has anti sp*m measures in

place to hide your email address. Do take care.

LINKS:

- http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=mailto a>+encrypter

- http://willmaster.com/master/feedback/

- http://www.privacysig.com/

- http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/stop-spam.shtm
l

- http://website101.com/SpamFilter/spamfilter.html<
/a>

TIP 4. FILTER YOUR EMAIL

If all else fails, you simply have to filter your email.

That means automatically deleting the junk via a set of

rules (or filters). How you do this depends on what email

software you use: Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora have

email filters (sp*m filters) that are easy to train.

Web-based email sites like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo! etc. also

allow you to filter your email.

COMMENT:

I still rely on this method to filter out unwanted or bad

email, though it never filters out all of the junk. As a

site owner, one way I can be sure that the email is unwanted

is if it’s sent to an email address that I know does not

exist; e.g. AnythingGoes@mysitedo
main.com (I try and

avoid using these catchall email addresses nowadays).

LINKS

- http://www.slipstick.com/rules/junkmail.htm

So, there you have it: four tips you can use to reduce

unwanted email, today.

As I said in the beginning of this article, unwanted email

is at the very least an unpleasant waste of time. So it

really is important that you try at least one of the sp*m-

reduction tips shown.

Above all, site owners should remove their mailto: links

from their website, and site visitors should simply take

care when and where they use their email address online.

Everyone can learn more from the resources listed here

- http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/stop-spam.shtm
l

DUMB HOST

OK, now let’s turn to the real bad guy in all of this. The
webhost who shuts down a website on the grounds of nothing more
than the say-so of an unverified spam complaint. In my case,
it’s DumbHost but I know there are many other webhosts and ISPs
out there who are just as irresponsible.

Here’s the email I received from DumbHost informing me my site
had been shut down:

“To whom it may concern,

“We recieved [sic] the following spam complaint regarding
ahbbo.com. Your domain will be temporarily disabled for 3 days.
You can have your domain re-enabled at the end of this 3 day
period by requesting so at enable@unsupportteam.net. If we
continue to recieve [sic] complaints, action may be taken to
disable your domain.

“Regards, Abuse Response Team”

Regards!

The email that followed was the one from WeStopSpam.net.

Note that my site was shut down because “[w]e recieved [sic] the
following spam complaint regarding ahbbo.com”. Not because I had
SPAMMED, mind you, but because DumbHost had received a spam
COMPLAINT. The notification that my site had been disabled was
the FIRST communication from DumbHost on the matter.

An appropriate response would have been: “We’ve received a
complaint of spamming against you. We take all complaints of
spamming very seriously. Please let us have your response to
this complaint so we may take appropriate action”. But I guess
that would have been too much like due process for DumbHost to
want to bother with.

Here’s what followed:

From me to DumbHost:

“If you even bothered to read the “offending email” you will see
that it came from so-and-so.com, NOT ahbbo.com. The publisher of
the email in question reprinted one of my articles in his
newsletter. That article contained a resource box which
contained a link to my domain.

“If my site is shut down for ANY length of time as a result of
this complaint, expect a lawsuit without further notice.”

Their reply (from “Level II Customer Care Representative” - ha!):

“Was this bulk mail authorized by you? This is considered an
offense of our terms of service no matter where it originates as
long as the email is sent or authorized by you. The email
advertises your website, that is why your domain has been
disabled for 3 days.

Regards, Abuse Response Team”

Me again:

“No! I’ve never heard of these people before. It is common
practice for newsletter publishers to publish articles written
by other people. The author’s resource box is always included at
the end of the article. If this person’s newsletter went to
someone who wasn’t subscribed, then it’s the newsletter
publisher who should be reported for spamming, not the innocent
author who is unfortunate enough to have their work reprinted.

“Did anyone even read the email concerned before shutting my
site down? It’s obvious what happened. If my site is not
reinstated today, I will be issuing legal proceedings tomorrow.
“By the way, don’t you think your question should have been
asked BEFORE shutting me down, not after?”

Them again:

“Okay, I was asked to take a look at your account, I will
forward this information to abuse and they should get back to
you shortly…

“Best regards,

Jordan M. Level II Customer Care”

(They apparently don’t use full names at Level II Customer Care.
Can’t imagine why.)

Finally, this one from the “Abuse Response Team” at DumbHost:

“In light of this new information, I have gone ahead and
re-enabled your domain. Be advised that any mass emails such as
this will be considered a violation of our terms of service. You
may want to take steps to ensure that services such as this are
not sending out this kind of advertisement for your site.

Regards, Abuse Response Team”

Me:

“They did not send an advertisement for my site. My articles are
publicly available for reprint, as are thousands of other
authors’. It is usual practice for authors to give permission
for reprinting provided the newsletter publisher publishes the
author’s resource box at the end of the article. It’s a way of
generating traffic to the author’s website.

“The author has no control over who uses the article in this
way. Is a paying advertiser in an ezine shut down if the
publisher of the ezine sends a spam email (assuming that it was
spam in the first place)? … That policy makes no sense
whatsoever.”

Them:

Nothing. Zip. Nada. No apology, no nothing.

Nice going DumbHost. You must be proud.

PLAN OF ACTION

My experience was pretty trivial in the scheme of things. I was
able to get my site restored in just a couple of hours. Consider
the damage that could be done to your business if that didn’t
happen though. What would be the impact on YOUR bottom line if
your site was shut down for 3 days? Or a week? Or for good?

So, what’s the innocent party to do in a situation like this?

Here’s one plan of action:

1. SUE irresponsible complainer for defamation. 2. SUE
irresponsible spam police for defamation. 3. FIRE webhost. 4.
SUE fired webhost for lost profits.

THE SOLUTION

I for one am not generally in favor of government regulation
when it comes to the Internet. This is one area, however, in
which I must say some form of governmental control should be
taken. Where else but online can you have a situation where it’s
commonplace for someone to take punitive action against an
innocent bystander BEFORE giving them a fair hearing? Where else
but online can ignorant and/or malicious individuals be allowed
to cause such injury to someone else’s livelihood without being
called to account? Try that in the real world and you’ll be
answering a charge of vandalism, defamation and trespass to
goods just to start.

It’s high time someone took a balanced approach to the issue of
spam and recognized that, although spam is an undeniable
problem, so too are anti-spam zealots and plain malicious types
who think it’s sport to trash some innocent person’s business
and reputation. They should be held to account for the damage
they cause.

In addition, in recognition of this unfortunate fact of online
life, a fact, I might add, of which webhosts are only too well
aware, webhosts should also be held accountable for shutting
down livelihoods based only on the prosecution’s case in chief.
The defense is entitled to be heard and any conviction that
results from a one-sided hearing is nothing short of an abject
denial of due process. The legal profession can’t get away with
that. Why the hell should webhosts?

——

* Fictionalized names.