Being afraid of spam - means not to have "at -@"

If Korney Ivanovich Tchukovsky creations admirers remember at once some creature (cyborg maybe...). named Moydodyr, when pronoucing the word "soap", "computer" people imply a totally different meaning to this word. For networks users the words "soap" derrived from English e-mail (electronic mail), means communication.

Though, unfortunately, good memories about such civilization wonder usage have ovften spoiled by far from good memories about "junk" mail or otherwise saying -spam, junking the mail boxes of honest users.

The Canter & Siegel law firm owners from Arizona had got the doubtful honour to become the pioneers in the matter of postal advertisement mailing through electronic networks. It is considered that exactly Laurence Canter and Martha Seigel had been one of the first really serious spammers. These industrious Americans in late 1994 had invented the first mass mailing of electronic letters advertising law services for immigrants. The judiciaries servants with innovative thinking have become the pioneers of antispam wars. The developers, having got confused a little bit from network businessmen clear impudence, had created after some thinking, the most reliable, as they thought, spam protection mean - mailing filter. The way of protection creation had been surprisingly simple: as "sweet couple" had been the sole serious spammers team on the whole planet, the anti spam protection developers were easy to detect advertising letters, coming from provider addresses, Canter and Siegel had. Though, the lawyers had quickly found out the reason and started to change providers periodically. The software, aimed to protect honest users from dishonest advertisement, had been cheated easily and let not demanded correspondence to the mail box. Exactly these naive efforts put the start for global network war with spam, which lasts till now.

And we can not speak about the win of good developers over evil spammers, as global statistics shows - spam is getting bigger and bigger over the planet. The aforementioned facts can be justified by the following data: in 2001 the spam made 8% from general mailing traffic, in year 2002, this indices has reached the level of 30%, in year 2003 the spam amount has reached the level of 50%, and in year 2004 the volume of "junk" mail had overpassed the amount of 70%. For example, the 73% of messages had been identified as a junk mail from 12 milliards of electronic letters, checked by MessageLabs, performing e- mail filtration. The situation in Russia is far from being better. According to "Kaspersky Lab" data (kaspersky.com) the amount of spam traffic has reached the level of 85% from the whole amount of postal mailing, passed through Net in October, 2005. So, the fight is to be continued...

Despite the fact that anti -spam software became far perfect from far known 1994, the mailing crook invent more and more sophisticated solutions for each security measures, taken by anti- spam developers. For example, when filters -software have learned to sort mail, by selecting it from letter flow with similar text segments, spammers started to mix advertising mails with the set of random symbols. After the filtration software developers had developed the algorithm of basic linguistic constructions selection from the set of random symbols, the spammers learned to create "incorrect" phrases, understandable for a human or mix the sound text with inclusions, which hacked computers. When smart software had learned to sort letters by key words, spammers intentionally started to write words with grammar mistakes or punctuation rules violations.

Such situation prompts us to remember old good motto of Water safeguard society - "Nobody will lift a finger to help those in trouble". If talking about spam it means, that users have to know, at least in general, the signs which prove undesirable character of the received correspondence, in order to become the network thieves victims. As most often it is enough to have a quick look at the correspondence in order to identify it as spam, without even opening the received message. And in order to be guided by the flow of undesirable correspondence, it is necessary to know some tricks the network businessmen use to overpass mail filters and thrust the letter to poor user mail box. Here are some of them:

1.Weird orthography. It is enough to have a look at several junk mails to make sure that spammer, most often, are very unintelligent people and are not overloaded with intelligence. At least on the first sight. Though there are at least two reasons the text have extra spaces, grammar mistakes and misprints. First of all it is done to overpass "stupid" mail filters, which will hamper the letter containing the word "viagra", but pass the message, containing the term vaigra or vIagra. The possible second reason is that spammers are not really overloaded with intelligence.

2.Usage if "Re:" prefix in letter body. The thing is that most of the mailing software when replying on the earlier received message, automatically set the well -known Re(from English "refer" in replying to...) in front of first letter topic. Spammer hope that user conducting active correspondence, having seen the specified prefix, will think that this is a reply for his previous message and... This what spammers exactly need. They hope that having opened the letters the user will have a quick glance on the text trying to understand from who the reply came and will get acquainted with advertisement. The way is stupid of course, but sometimes, it works.

3.The letters from ... oneself. On more trick, designed for simpletons: user opens his mail box and sees the message the sender of which is himself. Of course that some part of too forgettable users will decide to read message in order to remember what he did yesterday so that he has forgotten which letter he sent Generally speaking it is necessary to open message, and there... Another annoying text offering "the right way to earn money just sitting in front of the computer". The most surprising thing is that the way is childish, but efficient not only for sclerotics...

4.The trick designed on the fact that most people adore to reveal the secrets of other people. In order to use such weakness, the spammers write in "To:" line the name of any user, and in Subject line they write the following: -something attractive, with erotic hint maybe ( for example, To: Vasya Pupkin, Subject: Summer photos from Marina). The curious user may not get rid of from the seduction to have a look at "Marina's photo", open the letter and... Spammers had solved his task. By the way, the same approach is used by virus writers as well. Their task is to prompt poor user to open letter attachment. The method is the same to get victim intrigued, having promised something interesting (e.g. private photos), and achieve its' goal as a result to infect computer with the virus. So here is the moral reading other people private letters is not only bad, but dangerous as well...

5.The letter topic conatins something unbelievable, kind of "TYRYThhgerfueiyfewjk". The said approach allows overpassing the simplest spam filters, but do any normal person will read frobnitz? Though, such people possibly exist, otherwise the spammers would not have used such "trick".

6.Spam, calling itselv to be... spam. One of the ways, used by special agents in films - to put documents which is necessary to hide to the most visible place. Nearly the same principle is put into the approach used by spammers. In orders to do this the letter Subject line contains something like "[Possible Spam] Accuracy: Medium". Spam filters use such type messages in case if the software is not 100% sure to indentify the received mail as the "junk" one. I.e. spammer mask the letter beforehand as the letter which has sucessfully passed protective border and made spam filter doubt just a little bit. Otherwise saying, user is informed beforehand, that the letter "can be spam, or can not be a spam". Generally, the illusion that the letter had already been checked and does not contain anything which is not allowed. Or almost anything...

7.The highest level of impudence and cynicism is to send spam, advertising spam protection software. The case seems to increadible. but quite real. And we can even mention some companies doing this, e.g.: MailWiper or Spam Remedy, for example. Well, weird people anyway...

8.Ande another clear evidence that the letter is possible spam is the senseless set of saymbols used in e-mail, for example qhutjn@.com The thing is that casual users are trying to express something sound, using their names, initials, year of birth or nickname, by making their e-mail names. The goal is understandable the address should be remembering and have some sense. Spammers have no time and need to take care about such things. As thieves do not count to get reply letters, that is why the random symbols set is quite convenient address element.

It is quite possible that if we track the activity of "businessmen", initiating junk mail sending, we will be able to define other signs allowing to identify the letter as junk advertisement, just having a look at letter appearance. Though the junk mail peculiarities specified above will be enough to put to trash box the most of junk correspondence, without even opening it. And spam filters are allowed and necessary to be used.