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Challenge Response Spam Filters Explained
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Author: Niall Roche
Topic: Spam
Viewed: 72 time(s)
[ Not Rated Yet ]
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As the flood of spam increases end users are looking for new
and more efficient solutions to block spam. In turn software
developers are knocking themselves out trying to come up with
the killer app that will stop spam forever.
For several years now companies have been focusing on faster and
smarter software to be installed on your PC or on your servers
that will detect spam through increasingly more complex
algorithms. The ingenuity behind these products can't be argued
with. The problem was that as the spam filters became better so
did the quality of the bulk email software used by the spammers.
The battle to fight spam was spiralling out of control.
There's an old scientific principle called Occams Razor. It
simply means that all things being equal the most simple
solution is often the best one.
Somebody somewhere realized that there was a simple solution to
the vast majority of spam. Spammers email millions of people
each day. This is an automated process that they can't possibly
monitor manually. Enter challenge response spam email filtering.
When using a challenge response system each email address must
be authorized to deliver email to you. You can either authorize
these email addresses manually by adding them to your challenge
response whitelist or the challenge response email server can
take care of that for you.
The process is simple but incredibly efficient.
Spammer sends email
Challenge response email server doesn't recognize address so
issues a challenge email that must be phyiscally answered by a
real human.
Challenge answer = yes = sender is authorized to send you email
Challenge answer = no = senders email address is added to
blacklist and all future email from them is automatically
blocked.
Challenge repsonse spam filters demand that a real person reply
to the challenge email. Spammers who generate millions of emails
a day simply don't have the time to do this and are therefore
blocked from sending you any future junk email.
Using a challenge response system initially can be extra work
but after 30 days you'll see a dramatic reduction in the amount
of email you receive from spammers. Our challenge response
system is currently showing 11,000 blocked pieces of spam in the
last *5 months*. Those are hard figures to argue with.
About the author:
Need a spam
blocker? Check out Spam-Site.com for spam filter reviews and
spam related information.
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