What You Should Know On Internet Security
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Spam Protection: The Things you should know
Today, the Internet is reminiscent of the wildest days of the Wild, Wild, West. Your stagecoach through the World Wide Web can be hijacked at any instant if you have no knight in firewall armor to ward off any viral intruders. When your computer is connected to the internet with no firewall running, it is vulnerable to attack from spammers, hackers and phishers.
At the bare minimum a home personal computer that is connected to a cable modem or a full time connection needs to have and run a personal firewall software program, as well as anti-spyware and some type of anti-viral program.
Spam harm
In the early days of the Internet, spam was little more than an irritating nuisance. However, like every other aspect of the Internet, spam has evolved to become something far more nefarious in nature.
Email is the most common vehicle of choice for spreading viruses, and for hackers to get into your computer system. There is an increasing amount of this type of spam being mailed out of late. These small programs can be used in myriad harmful ways, including crashing your own system, crashing that of the parties you email or keystroke logging to gather your personal information.
The purpose of spam is to get your personal and financial information. Often it will fraudulently send you to web sites where this information regarding email, finances, bank accounts or other personal info is gathered and used in illegal ways. Very often, the spammers will combine methods, spamming their victims with virus-laden software, phishing and other schemes that take spam to a whole new level of illicit, criminal activity.
Whitelists - The ultimate in spam protection
Whitelists are quite possibly the single most effective form of spam protection available on the market today. They are as close as you can get to totally eliminating spam from your inbox.
When an email from an unknown source is received, the system will respond automatically, sending a "challenge" back to the sender. This challenge may require the sender to answer certain questions, or decipher an image that displays a series of letters and numbers. This image can only be deciphered by a human, and not by spamming software. Once this is successfully done, the email is allowed to go through the system to the inbox. The sender is also added to the whitelist. The challenge-response methodology uses a combination of human judgment and software technology to determine which email to let through and which to block.
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