Internet Service Providers have a direct practical and financial incentive to deal with the problem:
a) they have to protect their very expensive bandwidth and
b) their clients insist that their ISP do something to protect them from Spam.
ISPs are therefore highly motivated to get rid of the problem, but they face these problems:
• Spam cannot be identified by sender email address because it is forged
• Spam cannot be identified by email subject because it changes constantly
• The body of Spam emails has random words and misspelled names to prevent easy detection. (For instance, Viagra is spelled V.iagra, vi.agra or viagr@, etc)
• Spam is sent from millions of virus infected PCs so it is difficult to find and track Spam servers
Even if one in one thousand emails are blocked incorrectly, it is an unacceptable error rate - so the ISP must be very sure that the email is in fact Spam before rejecting it.
We have implemented four services to help in the prevention of Spam:
1) Eject has implemented a real time blacklist (RBL) system from www.spamcop.net
This is a centrally maintained database of server addresses that have been positively identified as the source of Spam. This service rejects Spam at SMTP level (as we start receiving the email) and rejects emails from known Spamming servers.
This list continually gets updated and changed as Spam servers are being reported by ISP's and other companies that subscribe to this service. We check this list immediately and automatically on receipt of every email.
There is no charge to you and you do not need to do anything to enable it. You cannot request to be removed from it, as this is implemented for ALL users.
2) DSPAM has been implemented to reject Spam before it reaches your Inbox, using an automated system which learns over time. Up to 75% of all incoming emails are now detected and rejected.
3) Eject’s Webmail with Spam Assassin.
This product filters Spam into your Spam folder online and includes Content Scanning. This is done by a set of strict rules or heuristics it works on. Using your incoming emails source code, subject line, headers, mail servers and taking a very calculated guess as to whether an email is Spam or not.
Once you have selected your tolerance level, any email scanned and found to exceed the tolerance level will be delivered to your Spam folder. Tolerance level 0.5 is the strictest, while tolerance 7.0 is the most relaxed.
We recommend starting on 5.0, and working down the scale to best suit your needs.
Remember to delete emails from your Spam folder AND your Trash folder before your mailbox fills up. Go to http://webmail.eject.co.za/ to login and do this at least once per week.
4) You can download and subscribe to the eScan ISS desktop Anti-Virus, Content Security, Parental Control, Spy ware detection and anti-Spam software for Windows, which scans all data for viruses and objectionable contents.
• All the functions of eScan VC version: -
• Real time PC and Email Virus Scanning.
• Real Time Content Scanning for all kinds of email and Internet traffic
• Now with Spyware detection and Removal
• Fast/Automatic daily Internet updates (usually far less than 1 MB in size)
• NetBios Firewall
• * PLUS with the ISS version: -
• Parental Control (optional and password protected)
• Protect yourself from SPAM
• Privacy Control, where Internet history files will be cleaned at regular intervals.
• Popup Blocker
• You must manually configure the Escan Spam option to enable this
