Until recently, spam has been an annoyance, a definite load on your email system and network, a waste of productive time and money, but we are about to find that the cost could get much higher. Spam blockers are now becoming a necessity rather than an optional email utility, the reason is that spam is becoming much more dangerous. Now, just like you, I looked into spam blocker software mainly because I didn't like being constantly bombarded with various anatomy enhancing messages or ironically, advertisements for spam blocker software itself. A skeptical person may even wonder if this whole problem is not rooted in the business model of lesser than honest spam blocker software companies - but that's another article. Whatever the root cause, one fact is true, the spam problem is turning into a far more costly and dangerous issue that could effect you in profound ways. The dangers are becoming so serious that we finally got serious about reviewing spam blocker software - the result you can find here: http://www.blockmorespam.com/spam_blocker_software.html The evolution of spammers into 3 new and very dangerous areas had me scambling to get serious about finding spam blocker software and techniques that are more effective than what I've been using in the past. The 3 new dangers that threaten you are: 1. Rise in hijacked and spoofed email addresses means that someone can make it look like their spamming campaign is coming from your computer. The impact is that you could have your internet connection terminated or put on hold by your ISP - all without your knowledge. This raises the issue that spam needs to be blocked, ideally, in both directions - to ensure you are not an unwilling accomplice to a malicious spam campaign 2. Convergence of viruses and spam. You are no doubt aware of the nasty rise in viruses that end up impacting your PC in a number of harmful ways including slowing you system down, crashing your system, logging your keystrokes, stealing private information, redirecting you to porn sites, etc... Now, in the past the incidence of a virus travelling through email would be fairly predictable. That has changed with viruses working together with spam. An example is the SoBig virus whos purpose was to create a broad spamming infrastructure by planting code on unwilling participants PCs creating a mass threat to email security. This is just the tip of the iceburg, spam will increasingly be used to spread and activate very dangerous viruses - for this reason alone, you need to be looking at spam blocker software. 3. Mix of spam and phishing. If you haven't heard of phishing before, it refers to the misleading emails you get dressing themselves up to look like legitimate emails to get confidential, often financial, information from you. Some common examples are the Paypal or Bank emails that claim you need to login with your private information to verify contact information or update account information. In reality, this is a malicious third party that steals your private information and can cause you MAJOR identity and financial problems. So what can we do about this? It's time to get serious about spam blocker software - as a first line of defense. Regulation isn't working, while it is getting tougher and tougher to quickly decide what is spam and what is not in your inbox and as we have seen, the stakes are getting higher. There are hundreds of shareware, freeware and otherware solutions on the market, the time for experimentation is over. In my trials of over 12 different spam blocker solutions, we found incredible variance in the reliabiltiy, effectiveness leading to our finding that there were only a small handful of serious spam blocker solutions. For our findings, feel free to visit our review page over at: http://www.blockmorespam.com/spam_blocker_software.html |
