Spam Books

The primary goal of this work is the methodical analysis of the potential, limitations, advantages, and drawbacks of anti-spam measures. These determine to which extent the measures can contribute to the reduction of spam in the long run. The range of considered anti-spam measures includes legislative, organizational, behavioural and technological ones. Furthermore, the conceptual development and analysis of an infrastructural email framework that features such a complementary application, is pointed out.

Most of the internet-using public has by now received at least one unsolicited e-mail from someone in Africa (or elsewhere), offering a too-good-to-be-true, get-rich-quick scheme. According to author and retired attorney Graham (Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man), the stupidity of Americans has turned Lagos, Nigeria into “an upscale suburb full of spam mansions.” Turning the tables, Graham replies to these malicious e-mailers with invented aliases and crazy stories that only a hapless, gullible schemer would believe: signing his emails with names like Barney Rubble, Graham tells his correspondents that he wants to “sell chia pets in erotic shapes” and “open Nevada’s first drive-thru brothel for seniors.

“It’s a funny premise-after all, it served three volumes of Ted Nancy’s Letters from a Nut well enough-but Graham’s humour often falls flat, and the back-and-forth e-mails quickly blend together. Amid juvenile, occasionally scatological humour, Graham provides middling comic anecdotes about himself and his family (such as his cousin, bit by a mongoose). At times, he’s gleefully offensive, as in an unfunny commentary about midgets, taking on the persona of Adolph Hitler and describing one spammer as “not the brightest candle on the Kwanzaa menorah.” While the idea of messing with spammers might entice, Graham’s approach isn’t for everyone.

Considerable research and some brilliant minds have invented clever new ways to fight spam in all its nefarious forms. This landmark title describes, in-depth, how statistical filtering is being used by next-generation spam filters to identify and filter spam. The author explains how spam filtering works and how language classification and machine learning combine to produce remarkably accurate spam filters.

Readers gain a complete understanding of the mathematical approaches used in today’s spam filters, decoding, tokenization, the use of various algorithms (including Bayesian analysis and Markovian discrimination), and the benefits of using open-source solutions to end spam. Interviews with the creators of many of the best spam filters provide further insight into the anti-spam crusade. Fascinating reading for any geek.

Find out what spam and spyware cost your company, and how to stop them. Whether yours is a one-person business or a multi-million dollar corporation, here’s help giving spammers and spies the bum’s rush. Two veterans of the spam wars help you analyze your situation, choose the right solutions, set up and maintain them, and even show the bean counters why such defences are essential.

Spam makes up more than half of all e-mails sent worldwide and more than 70% in the United States. The cost of spam is escalating for enterprises as the number of unsolicited e-mails being sent continues to reach new heights. Analysts estimate businesses lose up to $10 billion each year in lost productivity and services. Slamming Spam is an administrator’s “how to” stop spam book. It is very hands-on, with none of the “why people spam” or other topics that are found in other books and usually only peripherally interesting or useful to a mail administrator.

Most books out there now are for end-users; this book is for in-the-trenches sys admins. The authors examine how anti-spam methods are implemented on the client side (covering Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and UNIX mail clients), server-side (covering Exchange and Lotus Notes), and outsourced options including Brightmail and Postini. There is also coverage of SpamAssassin, a widely deployed open-source mail filter which uses a set of rules to decide how probable it is that a piece of mail is spam.

This guide describes the components in the Posix threaded library of routines supplied with the open-source version of Sendmail for writing a mail filter, or Milter. Intended for sendmail administrators and C programmers running Unix, Linux, or BSD, it shows how to set up a bait site to gather spam for analysis, and illustrates the code used to screen email for spam.

Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Spam Wars, veteran, award-winning technology interpreter, Danny Goodman, exposes the often criminal tricks that spammers, scammers, and hackers play on the email system, even with the wariest of users. He also explains why the latest anti-spam technologies and laws can’t do the whole job. Spam Wars provides the readers with additional insight, not only to protect themselves from attack but more importantly to help choke off the economies that power today’s time-wasting email floods. Spam Wars puts to rest many popular misconceptions and myths about email while giving readers the knowledge that email attackers don’t want you to have. Danny Goodman’s crystal-clear writing can turn any email user into a well-armed spam warrior.

From the author: “You may hate spam and think all spammers are evil, but listen to my story and see why I do this and more importantly, HOW.” For most people, the term “SPAM” conjures up the image of hundreds of annoying, and at times offensive, e-mails flooding your inbox every week.

But for a few, SPAM is a way of life that delivers an adrenaline rush fueled by cash, danger, retribution, porn and the avoidance of local, federal, and international law enforcement agencies. “Inside the SPAM Cartel” offer you a never-before view inside this dark sub-economy. You’ll meet the characters that control the flow of money as well as the hackers and programmers committed to keeping the enterprise up and running. You may disagree with their objectives, but you can’t help but marvel at their ingenuity and resourcefulness in defeating spam filters, avoiding being identified, and staying one step ahead of the law.

The Internet and email have become a communications bonanza, allowing people to socialize, do business, shop, and enhance their education just about anywhere there is a computer. As convenient as all this communication is, it also creates piles of electronic clutter that accumulate on your computer, creating a blizzard of overstuffed files, annoying spam, and pop-ups, and making you vulnerable to dangerous hackers and viruses. Degunking Your Email, Spam, and Viruses is organized according to a special cleaning process and written in everyday language that is designed for all computer users.

With our unique 12-step Degunking program, you’ll learn all the tried-and-true techniques to keep your computer clutter-free of spam and viruses and running well. The unique Degunking with Time Limitations chart shows how you can improve your computer’s performance and keep your email better organized, regardless of whether you have ten minutes or a few hours. This book also provides information and links to free utilities and programs that will help you get rid of viruses, manage your email better, and protect your computer.

This comprehensive and detailed guide answers all your SpamAssassin questions. You will learn about:

• Spam detection and prevention
• Installing and running SpamAssassin
• Using Bayesian Filtering
• Configuring mail clients
• Rewriting spam messages
• Integrating SpamAssassin with external services
• Blacklisting and whitelisting
• Increasing Performance
• Using SpamAssassin as a service
• Using SpamAssassin with Fetchmail, postfix, sendmail, Exim, Qmail, and Procmail SpamAssassin rules.

This engaging book is a kind of “history” of spam wars, involving several people, the most notable of the spammers themselves, and the people who chose to fight them. And this indeed is a war, with both sides resorting to nasty tactics to try to get the other side to back down. McWilliams describes numerous stories in this book, from the antics of Hawke Davis and his countless spam campaigns, of Shiksaa, the dedicated anti-spammer and her initial desire to try to show the spammers the “right way” of doing business only to get in the middle of the “war,” of “Terri Tickle,” a man posing as a female; of Scott Richter, one of the larger figures in the spam war and numerous other figures on both sides of the issue.

Swat spam, vanquish viruses, knock down pop-ups, and expose spyware with help from this one-of-a-kind resource. Loaded with insightful advice, practical tips, and trial software, this book-and-CD defence will help you rid your computer of the perils and nuisances of Web surfing once and for all. Author and tech expert Ken Feinstein gives easy-to-understand explanations of the technologies at work, and just exactly what steps you can take to take back your e-mail, your surfing enjoyment, your privacy, and your computer.

Schwartz (clinical decision making, University of Illinois) clarifies the installation, configuration, and use of SpamAssassin’s rule-based system that analyzes email and compares different parts of messages with a large set of rules. Writing with Unix system administrators in mind, he also explains how to integrate SpamAssassin with the sendmail, Postfix, qmail, and Exim mail transport agents.

Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Every year businesses spend billions of dollars combating the overwhelming amount of junk emails their employees receive. With the Anti-Spam Toolkit, systems administrators have at their fingertips the tools they need to significantly reduce junk email. Through real-world software and examples, the authors demonstrate how to identify spam, deploy the best-suited anti-spam system for a business, keep legitimate email from being mistaken for spam, adapt and improve anti-spam systems, and stay one step ahead of spammers. They also cover the latest and most popular technologies available on the market for the proactive systems administrator. The CD-ROM includes all the tools discussed in the book.

Unsolicited commercial email–spam–has become the most frequent complaint among users of the Internet. Its blaring subject lines and gaudy content–repetitive at best and frequently offensive–have made it much harder to make productive use of computers. Fighting Spam for Dummies presents some techniques for keeping your email address off spammers’ mailing lists and, when that fails, keeping junk mail out of your primary inbox with filters and other utilities. As a last resort, the book (which, oddly, has three co-authors of its 200 small pages) shows you how to adjust your email program so it doesn’t automatically show pictures and is less likely to spread viruses.

In addition, Marketing With E-Mail and the companion website refer to many resources that you can explore to get additional insights into that new field of marketing. Shannon Kinnard, however, does not cover the economics of e-mail marketing thoroughly. Case studies are not usually backed up by any in-depth financial analysis that should definitely convince you that investing in e-mail marketing provides a sensible return on investment and positively influences customer lifetime value. Hopefully, Shannon Kinnard will further share her (financial) expertise with you in the second edition of Marketing With E-Mail which will be released soon.