The Misconceptions of Spam Filters by Laurie Rogers Copyright
July 2002
Unfortunately there are a lot of people online that all have
many misconceptions regarding Spam Filters. Today I'm going to
answer some questions that people have asked me about my "Spam
column" for DEMC Small Business Ezine regarding them. With
regards to spam filters, one can never have enough knowledge, so
I do hope that this article will clear up any misconceptions
that you may have.
1. Don't spam filters ONLY apply to those who have NOT opted in?
This is indeed a very sad misconception, Spam Filters do affect
EVERYONE who sends and receives email in some way or another.
Whether you publish a FREE ezine OR a PAID ezine, it does not
matter, if it is being sent by email it affects YOU. The biggest
problem with filters is that they have NO way to detect that the
email message is in fact "Optin", they actually base it on your
headers.
Should you use a third party list server, your chances of being
filtered are even greater, because of that reason. And this is
how ALL filtering is based: By looking at the headers in your
email message, by using a point system based on the contents in
your subject line as well as the body.
This can also be done by subscribing to a blacklist service that
will provide them with a list of domains or hosts that have been
identified as being used by spammers -such as
http://www.spamhaus.org or http://mail-abuse.org/ AOL, Verizon
and Accessus are widely known for using services such as these.
It should also be known that spam filtering programs MAY also
subscribe to these services, some do and some do not.
2. I heard that spam filters don't apply to autoresponders, is
this true?
Actually they do, because if you send email using a third party
list server, and put your FROM email address in the field rather
than a FROM address on the third party's list server - the spam
filter will read it as being a "falsified" email address or
header. Because REAL spammers do it all of the time.
3. Spam Filters do not target HTML ezines because they can't
read the code properly, is this true?
Yes in fact they do, some more so than text ezines, this is
because HTML ezines are considered to be more virus prone. And
NOT all list servers and email clients "clean" their email
before it is sent. Meaning, even if you do not have a virus on
your computer, your ezine can still pick one up during the
process of sending through your list server. This has been known
to happen on "high traffic" list servers as well as FREE list
servers, such as Yahoo Groups.
3. Aren't spam filters ONLY used by large ISP's?
Although it is very true that the majority of larger ISP's use
Spam Filters (such as: AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Mindspring, Verizon,
Accessus, Sympatico etc.) you will find a lot of smaller ISP's
use them as well. For instance, my ISP has only 900 customers
and they do use them, although I've made it quite clear they are
unacceptable on my account. The most "popular program' that
ISP's use is called Spam Assassin.
I hope this article has cleared up any misconceptions that you
may have had regarding Spam Filters. You can learn more detailed
information about Spam filters by visiting:
http://spamassassin.org ests.html
Article by Laurie Rogers Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
About the author:
Laurie Rogers is co-author of the Ezine Resource Guide, you can
check it out at: http://www.zineadz.com/erg.html She is the
owner of Optin Frenzy a list building program for ezine
publishers http://www.optinfrenzy.com You can also obtain
Laurie's articles at: mailto:ezinearticles@optinfrenzy.com
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