IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | E-mail is an amazing thing. You can
write a letter to someone and they can
| | 00:03 | receive it almost instantly or not,
their choice. No interruption like with the
| | 00:08 | telephone, no stuffing an envelope or
finding the correct postal to running to
| | 00:11 | the mailbox. It's just there.
Amazing but it's not all kittens and
| | 00:15 | marshmallows either. Along with all
that convenience we get spam, lots and lots
| | 00:20 | of spam. Some of us get many times
more spam than legitimate e-mail.
| | 00:24 | In fact we sometimes lose the mail we
want because of the defenses we set up to
| | 00:28 | deal with the spam that we don't want.
That's why I recorded this course.
| | 00:32 | I am Bill Weinman and I have been
involved in the battle against spam since
| | 00:35 | about 1995 as a programmer, author
and as the owner/operator of a hosting
| | 00:40 | company and e-mail services provider.
You should be able to get your mail with
| | 00:44 | as little fuss and bother as possible.
I can't end the spam for you but I can
| | 00:48 | give you a set of tools to help you
manage it without losing the power and the
| | 00:52 | enjoyment and the wonder of your e-mail.
You should be able to easily get the
| | 00:56 | spam out of the way so you can have
the mail you really want and it's my
| | 00:59 | intention to give you the
tools you need to do just that.
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1. What Is Spam?What this course covers| 00:00 | In this course, we are going to about
what is spam, then we want to make sure
| | 00:04 | that we have our definition straight,
we want to make sure that we are talking
| | 00:07 | about the same thing. That when I am
talking spam, you know what it is I am
| | 00:10 | talking about and you are not thinking
that it might be in some other form of
| | 00:13 | spam and we'll cover the different ways
that people use the term a little bit
| | 00:17 | and exactly what it is that we mean or
what it is that I mean when I talk about
| | 00:21 | spam in this course.
| | 00:22 | We will talk about why do spam happen
and also how does spam happen. This is
| | 00:28 | really two sides of the same coin
I found in my research-- I have been
| | 00:31 | researching the subject for a
number of years-- that there's both a
| | 00:34 | technological and a sociological
reason for spam. The technological being the
| | 00:40 | how it happens and the sociological
being why it happens. In fact, things like
| | 00:45 | spam have been going on for many years
even before we had computers and networks.
| | 00:49 | We will talk about how to manage
your spam and we will show examples in a
| | 00:53 | number of popular e-mail programs
including Microsoft Outlook, Entourage, Apple Mail
| | 00:59 | and Thunderbird. In fact, we are
going to do a lot of the examples in
| | 01:03 | Thunderbird because it's free, it's
open source and it's available on all the
| | 01:06 | popular computing platforms
including Windows, Macintosh and even Linux.
| | 01:13 | We will talk about how you can reduce
spam, not just how you can reduce the
| | 01:16 | spam that you receive although we will
cover that but also how you can reduce
| | 01:20 | the spam that you send and you might be
saying to yourself "Well, I am not a spammer."
| | 01:23 | and most of us are not spammers.
But we do things that sometimes are
| | 01:27 | spam-like and that might be received
as spam and it might actually get caught
| | 01:31 | in people's spam filters and prevent our
e-mail from being received. So we will
| | 01:35 | talk about how we can reduce this and
how we can be better citizens of the internet.
| | 01:40 | Finally, how you can get involved, how
you can get involved in the effort to
| | 01:44 | reduce spam worldwide and across the
internet. These are the subjects that will
| | 01:49 | be covered in Managing Spam Essential Training.
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| What is spam?| 00:00 | Spam is a term that's tossed around
a lot. It can mean a lot of things.
| | 00:05 | It's often used to refer to any
communication that a person just doesn't want, even
| | 00:10 | if it's not in violation of any rules
in particular. For our purposes, for the
| | 00:14 | purpose of this title, it needs to be
a specific thing and so we are going to
| | 00:20 | take a moment and define it.
| | 00:22 | First off, the lawyers at Hormel say
it's okay to use spam to refer to the
| | 00:27 | stuff on the internet as well as the
stuff that comes in the can as long as you
| | 00:30 | only use it in all caps for the
stuff in the cans. So you see here on the
| | 00:35 | screen that SPAM is in all caps and
that is the name of the canned meat product
| | 00:39 | from Hormel and the can looks like that
and it's got the word SPAM on it all in
| | 00:42 | capital letters.
| | 00:44 | For the purposes of the internet, spam
is anything that is repeated over and
| | 00:48 | over again and it's substantially the
same as it's repeated. It might have a
| | 00:52 | word here or a word there different or
something like that. So this was applied
| | 00:56 | to a lot of repeating things and then
somebody came up with the idea of sending out
| | 01:00 | bulk e-mail to lots of people
advertising their products and of course this
| | 01:04 | got called spam because of this usage
of the word spam on the internet by
| | 01:09 | the geeks who like Monty Python.
| | 01:10 | So spam came to mean anything
that's repeated over and over usually in
| | 01:15 | one-to-many communication. One-to-
many communication being things like chat rooms,
| | 01:19 | of course e-mail when it's sent to
multiple addressees, IM, the cellphone SMS.
| | 01:25 | I don't know if you have received
cellphone spam. I have. It's a pretty
| | 01:29 | annoying thing and it really shocked me
the first time that happened because it
| | 01:32 | actually costs the recipient money,
especially in places other than US. I know I
| | 01:37 | get a few free SMS messages with my
plan, but in Europe and in Asia and in
| | 01:42 | other places in the world you don't get any
and they don't have bulk SMS plans like that.
| | 01:47 | For the purposes of this title, spam
refers to specifically e-mail spam, what I
| | 01:52 | call Unsolicited Bulk E-mail. Some
people use the term Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.
| | 01:57 | It means pretty much the same thing.
I say bulk instead of commercial
| | 02:02 | because now and then you get some spam
that's not commercial in nature. So for
| | 02:06 | the purposes of this title e-mail spam
is the focus and I sometimes refer to it
| | 02:11 | as UBE or Unsolicited Bulk E-mail.
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| The impact of spam on users| 00:00 | Why do I care about spam? Why should I
care about spam? What's the matter with
| | 00:04 | deleting a few extra messages everyday?
I get a few extra messages that I don't want,
| | 00:08 | I just hit Delete. Why is it this
has to be such an issue? There are a
| | 00:13 | number of costs directly and
indirectly that can be attributed to spam.
| | 00:17 | The amount of times spent wading through
your unwanted e-mail. For a lot of people
| | 00:21 | that's not a lot time, it might be
just a few minutes a day or few minutes
| | 00:25 | every time you check your e-mail. Of
course that adds up over the course of time.
| | 00:29 | But for most people that probably
seems like it's just an annoyance. On the
| | 00:33 | other hand there are people like me
who get a tremendous amount of e-mail
| | 00:36 | everyday and a tremendous amount of
spam. The number of spam messages that I
| | 00:41 | get per day amounts to the thousands.
Over the course of a week, it adds up to
| | 00:46 | about 6 gigabytes of mail and because
of that this represents a significant
| | 00:51 | time investment every day. It takes me
30 minutes, sometimes an hour just to
| | 00:55 | deal with the spam in my e-mail everyday.
| | 00:58 | First, I have to go through my
inboxes and my various places that I receive
| | 01:01 | mail and mark as spam all of the
messages that are spam, that are not messages
| | 01:06 | that I actually have asked for or want.
Then I have to go through the spam
| | 01:12 | mailboxes and deal with what's called
the "false positives", the messages that
| | 01:15 | got marked as spam that are not
actually spam because of my spam filters and
| | 01:20 | over time because of the way that spam works,
| | 01:22 | the spam filters have to become
trained and how this happens is by dealing
| | 01:27 | with the false positives and the
messages that did not get caught and marking
| | 01:30 | those as spam and then going through
the spam boxes and finding the messages
| | 01:33 | that are actually are not spam and
marking those as not spam and this is just
| | 01:36 | a fact of life in dealing with e-mail
for somebody like me who gets lot of e-mail,
| | 01:41 | that some of the mail that is
actually for me is going to accidentally
| | 01:44 | get marked as spam for some reason.
A lot of mail that is not for me is going
| | 01:48 | to end up in my Inbox and is going
to have to get marked as spam.
| | 01:50 | This takes a certain amount of time
every day and because of the volume of spam
| | 01:55 | that I get, and a lot of people like
me, I can't use a free e-mail service.
| | 02:01 | Well I use Gmail for some of my mail
because they have a high enough limit but
| | 02:05 | I have to use a hosted mail solution
for the bulk of my mail which I spend a
| | 02:08 | few hundred dollars a year on because
that can handle the volume that I was not
| | 02:13 | able to handle with a free e-mail
account and so these are real costs to
| | 02:18 | somebody who gets a lot of mail.
| | 02:19 | Well, there are other costs to people
who are in the general public who don't
| | 02:25 | actually get a lot of mail and might
not be associated with spam. One of the
| | 02:28 | largest of these is what's called
Phishing with a ph, which is a major source of
| | 02:33 | information for the people who steal
information for identity theft purposes.
| | 02:37 | A Gartner Research Study that was done
just this past December found that in the
| | 02:41 | year 2007 about 3.6 million adults
lost money to phishing attacks. Phishing
| | 02:48 | attacks are these e-mails that you get
that look like they are from a bank or
| | 02:51 | look like they are from PayPal and
want you to log in for some nefarious
| | 02:54 | purpose and people, the first time
they see one of these, they are surprised.
| | 02:58 | They log in and they find that their
information has been stolen. The total
| | 03:02 | cost of this in the year 2007
according to the study by Gartner Research was
| | 03:05 | $3.2 billion. That's money that
regular Joes like you and me lost because of
| | 03:11 | these phishing attacks.
| | 03:13 | These are real costs to the user, to
the recipient of the e-mail, to the person
| | 03:17 | who is just trying to keep in touch
with grandma or their boss or their clients.
| | 03:22 | These are real costs and
these are reasons that we need to be
| | 03:25 | concerned about the problem of spam.
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| The impact of spam on ISPs| 00:00 | Spam has a significant impact on the
ISP and e-mail providers as well. This is
| | 00:06 | something that's a little bit hard to
believe but it's true. The majority of
| | 00:09 | the bandwidth on the internet is spam.
It's not web traffic, it's not video,
| | 00:15 | it's not file sharing, it's e-mail. And
the majority of e-mail that's sent over
| | 00:21 | 90% by most estimates is spam. The ISP
of course has to pay for their bandwidth
| | 00:28 | and the fees that we pay to our
providers, our hosting providers, our ISP that
| | 00:34 | puts the DSL into our house or our
business, we have to pay their costs and the
| | 00:40 | reason that the prices are where
they are is mostly due to spam.
| | 00:45 | The majority of e-mail labor is
devoted to spam and in a lot of places
| | 00:49 | especially a company like AOL or like
Yahoo where such a significant amount of
| | 00:55 | what they do is e-mail related, this
is going to be the majority of their
| | 00:58 | technical labor is devoted to
dealing with spam. These are the people who
| | 01:03 | maintain the spam filters, they maintain
the equipment, they maintain the routers.
| | 01:07 | All of these things have huge impact
from the amount of volume of spam
| | 01:12 | and a lot of this effort goes to
reducing the amount of spam that ends up in
| | 01:17 | your mailbox.
| | 01:18 | If all of these efforts were to go away,
you would probably be receiving a 100
| | 01:22 | times as much spam as you do or more.
These companies constantly have to invest
| | 01:29 | in new technology for managing spam.
This is what I call the Whack-A-Mole effect.
| | 01:33 | If you have ever been to an
arcade and you have seen this little game
| | 01:36 | where the little moles pop up out of
the holes and you hit the little plastic
| | 01:39 | mole with a hammer and it
pops up out of another hole,
| | 01:42 | this is how the spam problem looks to
the technology professional because we
| | 01:47 | might come up with some clever--
I say 'we' because I have been involved in this.
| | 01:51 | We might come up with some clever
way to detect that the message is spam,
| | 01:55 | I mean that it's not real mail or vice versa.
| | 01:58 | So these spammers, they of course
learn about this technique and they adjust
| | 02:02 | what they are doing so that it is no
longer susceptible to that technique.
| | 02:07 | This is why you see things like Viagra
spelled with a 1 instead of an I. It's a very
| | 02:11 | simple example of that or why you see
these spam messages that will have a
| | 02:15 | paragraph of nonsense at the top or
at the bottom. They are trying to get
| | 02:19 | around the filters, they are trying to
make it look like regular mail and so
| | 02:23 | the ISP has to constantly be investing
in new technology, coming up with new
| | 02:27 | technology and purchasing new
technology so that they can manage this problem.
| | 02:32 | So spam is actually a huge cost
center, often the largest cost center in an
| | 02:37 | internet provider or a
service provider or an ISP.
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| The impact of spam on the internet| 00:00 | Largely because of the impact that has
on us personally and the impact that has
| | 00:04 | on the providers, spam has a large
footprint. A large impact on the internet as
| | 00:10 | a whole. Of course, there is the
increased cost for everyone and this is
| | 00:13 | because of the cost bandwidth, because
of the cost that we talked about in the
| | 00:17 | impact of spam on the ISP.
We all end up paying for that.
| | 00:22 | There is also impact on the complexity
of e-mail systems in general. The e-mail
| | 00:27 | system as we know it and the protocols
behind it were designed to be incredibly
| | 00:31 | simple, in fact the protocol that we
use to exchange e-mail on the internet is
| | 00:36 | called SMTP, which stands for Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol. It was designed to
| | 00:41 | be a simple.
| | 00:42 | Most of the complexity that has grown
and been added to this protocol and the
| | 00:48 | other protocols involved over the
course of time have been because of spam,
| | 00:52 | because of what the designers of these
protocols call e-mail abuse. Because of
| | 00:57 | these protocols have been used in
various ways that they were not designed to be,
| | 01:01 | new features and new barriers had
to be designed into them to combat this
| | 01:07 | problem and so they become more
complex and as result of this increased
| | 01:11 | complexity they have become less
reliable and a lot more expensive to run.
| | 01:15 | Additionally, another impact on the
Internet as whole, we often find there is
| | 01:20 | delays in doing the things that we want
to be doing or need to be doing on the
| | 01:24 | Internet. These bandwidth bottlenecks
as they are called are often caused by spam.
| | 01:30 | By the sheer volume of it, by the
incredible complexity of the networks
| | 01:34 | required to move that much
information and also by what's called Denial of
| | 01:39 | Service or DOS attacks; DOS, Denial of Service.
| | 01:42 | Denial of Service attacks are
sometimes intentional, sometimes they are not
| | 01:46 | intentional. But the way that they
often happen is someone will decide to send
| | 01:50 | a huge amount of spam to one
particular machine or to a series of addresses
| | 01:55 | like what happens at AOL, where all of
these multitude of addresses have to go
| | 02:00 | through one set of machines or one
part of the network and these bandwidth
| | 02:04 | bottlenecks will often
shut things down entirely.
| | 02:07 | Another way that this happens is if
someone sends out a lot of spam, say 10's
| | 02:11 | of millions or 100's of millions of
messages with a particular return address on it,
| | 02:15 | which is of course forged, and
all of the bounce messages and all of the
| | 02:18 | complaints about that mail will get
returned to that one address and that will
| | 02:23 | often times shut down services,
sometimes for an entire company, sometimes for
| | 02:28 | whole segment of the Internet, sometimes
for a whole city or a whole part of a country.
| | 02:33 | All because there is so much volume of
traffic going to a one particular place.
| | 02:37 | These are called Denial of Service
attacks. They are a real problem. There is
| | 02:40 | something that the providers on the
internet have to deal with and they impact
| | 02:44 | all of us because the things that we
want to get to all of a sudden become
| | 02:47 | unavailable because of these bottlenecks.
So for those of us who receive spam
| | 02:52 | for service providers like ISPs and
hosting companies and for everyone who has
| | 02:55 | any kind of an online presence, spam
is something that you just have to pay
| | 02:58 | attention to. You just have to give it
some energy now and then and this makes
| | 03:03 | it more than just a nuisance. This
makes it a cost center for all of us.
| | 03:06 | This makes spam a real problem.
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| Why does spam happen?| 00:00 | So why does spam happen? Spam
happens basically because it can. There are
| | 00:05 | people who believe that because
something is free or appears to be free or is
| | 00:10 | in their perception, that that gives
them the right to exploit it to their own
| | 00:13 | advantage and so there is the number
of ways in which these people do this.
| | 00:18 | The obvious one is people in businesses
who are trying to sell something. They
| | 00:21 | see the internet as a giant low cost
advertising opportunity and they believe
| | 00:26 | they are entitled to exploit it for
that purpose and so they send out these
| | 00:29 | millions of messages trying to sell you
whatever it is that they have to sell,
| | 00:32 | which were usually the sorts of things
that you are not going to find in the
| | 00:35 | reputable shops anyway. Or they are
opportunist looking for money. They have get
| | 00:39 | rich quick schemes, they have various
stocks scams like the the pump-and-dump stock
| | 00:43 | scams where they will send out an
e-mail with a particular stock and get lots
| | 00:47 | of people to buy them and pump
up the price and then dump theirs.
| | 00:50 | There is the 419 scams, the advance fee
fraud scams where they will try and get
| | 00:54 | you to send them some money for the
various fees that they are going to get $30 million
| | 00:58 | out of a bank for you, pyramid
schemes. A lot of these things are
| | 01:01 | things that we used to see in the
postal mail, before the internet was open to
| | 01:05 | the public and we have got these
pyramid letters and the 419 scam and all of
| | 01:10 | these various things used to happen
in the postal mail. That used to cost
| | 01:13 | postage. To send out a few 100 of
them cost a quite of bit of money and now
| | 01:17 | they can send out a few million for a
little or no money. So these things are
| | 01:21 | proliferated and we don't see them in
our postal mailboxes anymore. We only see
| | 01:24 | them in our e-mail boxes now. Or they
are the botnets, which are the way that
| | 01:28 | the spam is sent these days. They are
these automated networks of compromised
| | 01:33 | computers that have been compromised with a virus.
| | 01:35 | The purpose of the virus is to
install the software on your computer, which
| | 01:39 | will then make your computer part of
the network of machines that send out the
| | 01:43 | spam by remote control. These are
called botnets. The botnets themselves, they
| | 01:47 | expand their own networks, they get
more computers infected by sending out spam
| | 01:53 | that entices you to click on a link
that installs the various virus software
| | 01:56 | and Trojan horse software into your computer
to make your computer part of the botnet.
| | 01:59 | This is another common reason for spam.
| | 02:02 | Identity thieves looking for personal
information. These are called phishing
| | 02:05 | attacks and we will talk about that
later in great detail. But these are forged
| | 02:10 | messages that look like they are from
your bank or they look like they are from
| | 02:13 | PayPal or eBay or something and then
they entice you to go to a counterfeit
| | 02:17 | web site and then typing your
password or your credit card number or your
| | 02:20 | social security number and they steal
your identity and start draining your
| | 02:24 | bank account.
| | 02:25 | These spammers themselves looking to
expand their list, so often times, you
| | 02:29 | will get messages that may seem empty
or have no obvious reason for existing
| | 02:34 | and the whole reason was to see
whether not the message would bounce, so that
| | 02:37 | they can expand their list of targets.
| | 02:40 | So the things that all these reasons
for spam have in common, is that there is
| | 02:44 | a free or apparently free or close to
free way to send out a lot of e-mail and
| | 02:49 | that this can be exploited to the
advantage of the spammer. Some of these are
| | 02:54 | extremely illegal, some of these are
obviously illegal, some of these are more
| | 02:58 | on the border or may appear to be
illegal. They are just selling you
| | 03:01 | something that may or may not be on the fringe.
| | 03:03 | But what all these things have in
common is that their opportunities to exploit
| | 03:08 | the meaning of the internet for the
personal advantage and as long as that
| | 03:12 | opportunity exists, as long as that
reason exists and there are people out
| | 03:15 | there who feel that they are
entitled to take advantage of it,
| | 03:18 | spam will continue to exist.
| | 03:20 | So any solution to the spam problem is
going to have to address this, which I
| | 03:24 | called the sociological side of the
problem as well as the technological side
| | 03:28 | of the problem and we will talk some
more at other time about the technological
| | 03:31 | side of the problem.
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2. Examples of SpamIdentifying commercial spam| 00:00 | In this chapter, we are going to look
at some actual examples of spam. We are
| | 00:05 | going to look at different categories
of spam, some different types of spam and
| | 00:09 | reinforce the admonition not to
respond to spam because responding to spam
| | 00:13 | encourages more spam, which is bad.
So we are going to start out here by
| | 00:17 | looking at some commercial spam, this
is one of the more common forms of spam
| | 00:23 | and here we have a folder with a few
examples in it, this one here is for fake watches.
| | 00:29 | In this spam, we will notice a few
things. First of all, its objective is to
| | 00:33 | entice you to go over to their web
site and buy some fake watches. This link
| | 00:37 | here to some unpronounceable domain
name, if one were to click on it, which of
| | 00:42 | course you are not going to do because
that would be bad. Their browser would
| | 00:45 | automatically be redirected through
a circuitous route to get ultimately to
| | 00:49 | whatever web site it is that they
want you to get to where you would buy some
| | 00:53 | replica watches or they would try to
sell you some replica watches. The reason
| | 00:56 | that it's this unpronounceable domain
is so that when that domain gets shut down,
| | 01:01 | which inevitably it will and probably
has already by the time I am recording this,
| | 01:05 | then their main web site can still go
on and they can send out bazillions more
| | 01:09 | spam messages with another fake web
site and it would get redirected through
| | 01:12 | a circuitous route to their main web
site. So their main web site is somewhat
| | 01:16 | isolated and will not get shut down
because of course they know what they are
| | 01:20 | doing is frowned upon and it's
against the terms of the service of whatever
| | 01:23 | service providers they are
using for these various web sites.
| | 01:27 | Also we will notice in the addressing
that this address and this address and
| | 01:31 | this address don't exist. These are a
couple of specific purposed addresses
| | 01:35 | that are used to use which I can't
really use very much anymore because they are
| | 01:39 | mostly flooded with spam. But the
point here is they are phishing for new
| | 01:44 | addresses to send spam for. This is
called a Dictionary Attack where they just
| | 01:47 | make up words or they make up names
and they just send out the spam in the
| | 01:51 | hopes that you know some very itty-
bitty, small fraction of them will get
| | 01:55 | through and ultimately they hope to
find out which ones got through to get a
| | 02:00 | record of it. Of course, they will get
bounce messages for the ones that fail hard.
| | 02:03 | I have a few of my domain names
opened up to allow this so that I can get
| | 02:07 | examples of it in my anti-spam work.
Also we will notice in the Subject line
| | 02:14 | that the way that it's spelled this 'O'
for the word 'over' is actually a zero and
| | 02:18 | 3-O-O for three hundred, those zeros are
actually letter O's. The 'S' is a dollar sign
| | 02:27 | and the 'W' is very cleverly
disguised as a pair of slashes. The purpose
| | 02:31 | of this is so that you can get past
the spam filters. Obviously some of the
| | 02:35 | more rudimentary spam filters, they
look for specific words and hopefully for
| | 02:41 | the spammer, they won't find those
specific words if they are spelled with
| | 02:44 | symbols that may visually look like the
same thing, are similar enough that your
| | 02:48 | eye will be able to read it.
| | 02:51 | But from the perspective of the
spam filter they are not precisely those
| | 02:55 | characters in the character sets and
would be able to get past some of those
| | 02:59 | spam filters. So this is one example
of commercial e-mail. This is an ad for
| | 03:05 | replica watches or fake watches. This
one here is an ad for fake degrees where
| | 03:12 | you can get a genuine university
degree in 4-6 weeks, which of course if that
| | 03:16 | were possible the university degrees
wouldn't be worth anything anymore.
| | 03:21 | This one does not have you
responding by e-mail at all, doesn't have you
| | 03:24 | following a link to a web site but
rather uses a phone number and it's not even
| | 03:28 | an 800 number, its a local number for
somewhere. Somebody told me what area code
| | 03:32 | that is but it's just a local phone
number and again they don't need a lot of
| | 03:36 | responses. They are sending out
bazillions of these, if they get only get some
| | 03:39 | very small fraction of a percent of
response then it's going to be worth their while.
| | 03:43 | So again, don't call the phone number.
That would be bad. And finally this one
| | 03:49 | here is fake meds or something like
that and this is interesting for some other
| | 03:54 | reasons. Notice, again we have the
weird unpronounceable domain name which will
| | 03:58 | get redirected some place. Notice that
the message itself is very brief.
| | 04:04 | "Save! Save! Save! Top Selling Medications."
And then there is this long bit of
| | 04:09 | gobbledygook gibberish that doesn't
actually mean anything. But it's a bunch of
| | 04:12 | words that you might find in a
business communication. Representation,
| | 04:17 | transmit, entropy, multiplied.
| | 04:19 | The purpose of this is to get past a
very specific type of spam filter that's
| | 04:24 | becoming the most common type of spam
filter. It's called a Bayesian spam filter.
| | 04:28 | We are going to talk about that a
little bit more in a later lesson but in a
| | 04:31 | nutshell, a Bayesian filter uses a
method of looking at the message and deciding
| | 04:36 | if it has enough words and phrases and
patterns that you would find in a common
| | 04:42 | not-spam message or enough of words or
phrases and patterns you would find in a
| | 04:45 | common spam message and it will sort
them out that way to decide if i's spam or
| | 04:50 | if it's not spam. So by loading this
message up with a lot of gibberish that
| | 04:55 | might look to a Bayesian filter
like a standard business communication,
| | 04:59 | the sender of this particular example
of spam hopes to get past those Bayesian
| | 05:05 | filters and to end up in the Inbox
instead of the spam box. So again these are
| | 05:08 | the kinds of things that you see in
these messages and one final note, notice
| | 05:12 | that this one has what we call a
Remove link or an Unsubscribe link.
| | 05:16 | Don't click on that either. What happens
when you click on that link is that you will
| | 05:20 | get to a page and it will say that
you are unsubscribed and thank you for
| | 05:23 | whatever. But in actuality, you have
told them that you looked at the message
| | 05:28 | and your e-mail address has
now become more valuable to them.
| | 05:32 | By opening up the message and
actually looking at it enough to find the
| | 05:36 | remove link or the unsubscribe link,
you have told them that you are paying
| | 05:39 | attention and that's all they really
want. They know that if you look at it
| | 05:43 | that much, that if they were to keep
sending you a hundreds and hundreds and
| | 05:47 | hundreds and hundreds more messages
they may finally, eventually get some
| | 05:50 | message that makes you want to buy
something. Again, only it has to happen once
| | 05:54 | out of hundreds or thousands of
messages for it to be worthwhile to
| | 05:57 | them because it doesn't cost them any
more to send 20 million messages than it
| | 06:01 | does for them to send 1 million messages.
| | 06:04 | As a result they don't need much of a
response rate and so by clicking on this
| | 06:08 | remove link your e-mail address becomes
more valuablee. They can sell it at a
| | 06:11 | premium and you will in fact end up
getting more spam, not less spam. So these
| | 06:16 | are some examples of some commercial
spam and in the other videos in this
| | 06:21 | chapter we are going to look at
some other categories of spam as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Identifying 419 spam| 00:00 | I have also got another category of
spam, which is called 419 spam. It's also
| | 00:05 | called Nigerian scam spam or Nigerian
spam. It's also called advance fee fraud.
| | 00:11 | It's named 419, because that's the
section of the Nigerian criminal code that
| | 00:15 | makes this all illegal in the Nigeria,
and the reason that's relevant is that
| | 00:19 | for many, many years, the vast majority
of these scams came out of Nigeria.
| | 00:24 | It was invented there. It was run for
many dozens of years by postal mail before
| | 00:28 | there was email. Even though it's been
heavily outlawed there, it's still to
| | 00:33 | this day is one of the highest sources
of revenue that the country of Nigeria has.
| | 00:38 | So most of these come from Nigeria. I
think this one claims to be from Bulgaria
| | 00:43 | or something, but you know notice
those addresses in here, is this a Brazil
| | 00:46 | This is a Japan address.
They tend to try to obscure their
| | 00:50 | location until they get somebody on
the hook. The way this scam works is,
| | 00:55 | somebody writes you a very flowery
letter. They all tend to have very flowery
| | 00:59 | language in them, and that's some how
traditional for these. I am not sure
| | 01:03 | why otherwise. What they are telling
you is that there is some money stuck in
| | 01:08 | some bank somewhere and they need
your help to get it out, and that you will
| | 01:12 | get usually the majority of that money.
And you just have to promise to, you know,
| | 01:17 | use it for the good of the mankind
or something like that. In this case,
| | 01:21 | it's a 30 million US dollars, with a financial
institution. And usually there is somebody
| | 01:26 | who has died in a motor accident or
been assassinated, or he is a government
| | 01:30 | official or some thing like that.
The details change.
| | 01:33 | But the idea here is that you are
going to get piles and piles of millions of
| | 01:37 | dollars, and all you have to do is to
respond to this email address. Once you
| | 01:40 | respond to the email address, then they
will ask for some advance fee to pay a
| | 01:44 | bribe, or to pay a bank fee, or to you
know get some documents, and then they
| | 01:49 | will ask for another fee. And if somebody
follows along, eventually they end up
| | 01:52 | going to Nigeria to pick something up,
or to deliver some piece of paper,
| | 01:56 | to sign some piece of paper, and then even
worst bad things happen to them if they
| | 01:59 | end up there.
| | 02:00 | But bottom line is they never see
any of the money. They end up spending
| | 02:04 | usually thousands of dollars in fees,
and that's why it's called advance fee fraud.
| | 02:08 | So this is an example of it.
You will see these. I get lots of them,
| | 02:12 | dozens of them a day. Some people get
more, some people get less. I don't think
| | 02:16 | there is any reason or pattern for
that, besides just the overall amount of
| | 02:19 | spam you get. This is a very common
form of spam, and it's just something to
| | 02:23 | watch out for. If you happen to think
you would like to have $30 million, just
| | 02:27 | know that this is not where it's going
to come from, and then only bad things
| | 02:30 | will happen to you if you happen to
respond to it. So this is advance fee
| | 02:33 | fraud, or 419 spam, and
that's an example of it there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Identifying malware spam| 00:00 | Now let's look at another kind of spam
that you will see now and then. Sometimes I
| | 00:04 | call this 'stupid theme spam,' because
the subjects tend to be a little bit odd.
| | 00:10 | And in this other folder here I have
got some outrageous examples of it.
| | 00:14 | 'UFO Sighting in Downtown New York,'
'Sarah Jessica Parker Arrested For Gross Negligee.'
| | 00:20 | The point of these messages are
just to be outrageous enough to
| | 00:23 | get you to want to look at the video,
or to follow the link, which is going to
| | 00:28 | take you some place where you are
going to think you are going to look at a
| | 00:31 | video and it's going to ask you to
download a codec, or some kind of a
| | 00:35 | something, an update to Flash or
something like that. And in fact, if you go
| | 00:39 | through all of these hoops, your
computer will become a member of this
| | 00:43 | community of infected computers
that will help to send out the spam.
| | 00:48 | They are called botnets or zombies, and
we are going to talk about that in more
| | 00:51 | detail in a later lesson. But that's
the point of these messages is to get you
| | 00:56 | to infect your computer with the
software that helps you become part of the
| | 01:00 | network that sends out vast majority of
spam these days. So in a nutshell when
| | 01:04 | you see something like this and you
say to yourself, what's the point of that?
| | 01:08 | Why did somebody go through the
bother to send that to me? Well, the point
| | 01:13 | of it is to get you to click on the
link and to follow the bouncing ball
| | 01:18 | wherever it leads and to ultimately
download a program without your knowledge
| | 01:23 | on to your computer, that will infect
your computer with a root kit, or a
| | 01:27 | virus or a worm or whatever you want
to call it, that will put your computer
| | 01:31 | into this network of computers that
would be under their command and control.
| | 01:35 | Of course, it will still feel like
your computer. Well, it will be a little
| | 01:37 | slower, and your network connection
will be a little slower, but you won't have
| | 01:41 | any other way of knowing that this is going on.
| | 01:43 | So this is also a good reason for you
to keep an antivirus software up to date,
| | 01:46 | and always be running antivirus
software on your computer, just in case you get
| | 01:50 | enticed and haven't listened to the
admonitions enough to never click on a link
| | 01:54 | in spam, and end up getting your
computer infected with one of these things.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Identifying phishing spam| 00:00 | Now we are going to look at one of
the more insidious forms of spam,
| | 00:03 | it's called a phishing attack. That's
phishing with a 'ph' where the 'f' would
| | 00:07 | normally be, and the purpose of a
phishing attack is to steal your personal
| | 00:11 | information for the purpose of
identity theft, and ultimately to spend your
| | 00:16 | money, and to clean out your bank
account, and to steal your resources from
| | 00:21 | you, by having your personal information,
by stealing your credit card numbers,
| | 00:24 | your passwords, your pin numbers, your
social security number, getting these
| | 00:29 | credentials from you, so they can
take over your financial life, and your
| | 00:33 | financial persona to their own gain.
There is a very big problem today, and
| | 00:37 | there has been a lot of hubbub about it.
| | 00:40 | In one study I saw recently, there was
over $3 billion lost in one recent year
| | 00:45 | by some millions of people, through
identity theft, and particular through
| | 00:49 | phishing attacks. So let's look at one
example of the phishing message here, so
| | 00:53 | you can see what it is, what it looks like,
how it works, and later on there is
| | 00:57 | going to be an entire chapter
devoted to the subject of protect yourself
| | 01:02 | against phishing attacks. But in this
context we just want to take a look at
| | 01:05 | the message, see what it looks like,
so that you can learn to recognize them.
| | 01:08 | This is a typical phishing attack
message. It's not one of the better ones. But
| | 01:13 | this is what they typically look like.
You know the subject says, Account
| | 01:16 | Security Measures, and it appears to
be from Bank of America, the Security
| | 01:21 | Department of Bank of America. It says
this is being sent out due to a number
| | 01:25 | of fraudulent transactions and the
implications there is, of course, that they
| | 01:29 | may have happened in your account.
| | 01:31 | Notice that it is addressed to valued
Bank of America member, instead of being
| | 01:35 | addressed to somebody's personal name.
This is a big tip off, actual message
| | 01:40 | from an actual bank or financial
institution or Pay Power, you bear any of
| | 01:44 | these targets of one of these phishing
attacks, would have the personal name of
| | 01:49 | the Account Holder. That the fact that
it says, valued Bank of America member
| | 01:53 | has some generic greeting, it's a
tip off that it's a fake. Because the
| | 01:57 | phisher, the spammer, does not have
your personal information. They are looking
| | 02:01 | for your personal information. So they
don't know your name, and the can't put
| | 02:05 | it in the message, but the actual
financial institutions, especially these days
| | 02:09 | are always going to use your personal
message, and that's one of the ways that
| | 02:11 | you can tell, but it's not the
communication from them. Then obviously if you
| | 02:15 | read the message you will notice that
it's got some grammatical problems, and
| | 02:18 | spelling might not be good, it's got
all little spaces here and there, and
| | 02:21 | that's just typical of these messages.
When you see the phishing attacks, they
| | 02:25 | are very rarely written in a style
that you would expect from the actual
| | 02:29 | financial institution. But they work,
because often times people reading, well,
| | 02:32 | they don't bother to read them very
carefully, or perhaps their English isn't
| | 02:36 | their first language in the first
place, but people do fall for these and
| | 02:39 | that's why they happen.
| | 02:41 | So when you see a message like this,
when you see a message that purports to be
| | 02:45 | from your bank, but looks a little
bit off. Don't ever click on the links
| | 02:47 | inside of the message. You notice
when you roll your mouse over this link
| | 02:51 | without clicking on it, up comes a
little tool tip that says where it's going to.
| | 02:55 | That's a server in Germany. That is
not actual Bank of America, you notice it
| | 02:58 | says bankofamerica.com at the end, but
the part of it is in the part of the URL
| | 03:03 | where the host name goes, actually is a
server in Germany. So that's one of the
| | 03:08 | things you want to look out for. We
will go into a lot more detail about the
| | 03:11 | technical aspects of this in the chapter
devoted to phishing. But for the purposes
| | 03:15 | right now, just know that when you see
something like this, don't click on the link.
| | 03:19 | Not like you would in any spam,
but this one is really trying to fool you.
| | 03:22 | So be careful when you see something
like this, and don't click on the links,
| | 03:25 | and be careful that when you do
give out your personal information on
| | 03:28 | the website, check and make sure it's
actually the website that you think it is.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Identifying pump & dump stock spam| 00:00 | Another common form of spam is what I
call pump-and-dump or stock scam spam.
| | 00:05 | The purpose of these spam messages is
to get you to invest your hard earned
| | 00:08 | dollars in a particular stock that's
held by the spammers, by the people who
| | 00:13 | are perpetrating this fraud, and to get
a whole bunch of people to buy some of
| | 00:18 | this stock within a short span of a day
or two, to pump the price up, and then
| | 00:24 | they will dump their holdings in the
stock. The value will crash, you will lose
| | 00:28 | your money, and they will get your
money, and that's the point of the scam.
| | 00:32 | So we have a couple of examples of it.
Both of these messages are I believe for
| | 00:38 | the same pump-and-dump, UCSO, yeah.
So the purpose of these messages, like I
| | 00:45 | said, is to get you to buy the stock,
and so often times they try to look like
| | 00:49 | they are from a trading company or
they'll be purport to be some sort of a low
| | 00:53 | cap newsletter and they have got some
hot tip. They will say things. Why this
| | 00:58 | stock is about to go up, that they have
got a deal with Wal-Mart, and they are
| | 01:03 | expecting this stock which is now $0.10
to be selling at a premium of $1.75,
| | 01:08 | and these guys are saying within a
month it's going to go up 4000%.
| | 01:13 | So who wouldn't want to buy something
like that? Put a few thousand dollars into it,
| | 01:19 | and end up getting few
hundred thousand dollars back.
| | 01:22 | The point is this that that's not
going to happen. Usually a very little
| | 01:26 | happens with them, but like with so
many email related scams, they only need it
| | 01:30 | to work occasionally. They don't need it
to work all of the time, and so when it
| | 01:34 | does work, a handful of people will
buy a whole bunch of stock in this
| | 01:38 | particular small cap, which is an actual
company,which is actually traded, and
| | 01:42 | is actually controlled, or a lot of
the stock is owned by the scammers, and
| | 01:47 | then the price jumps for a short period
of time and then they dump their stock
| | 01:51 | at the higher price. It's important to
also note that there are some websites
| | 01:56 | which you can find if you search on
the Internet, which will purport to have
| | 02:01 | tools that specifically watch the pump-
and-dump stocks and look for when they
| | 02:06 | are high, so that you can
do what the spammer is doing.
| | 02:09 | You can buy in low and sell high.
Don't do it. Even if they work,
| | 02:15 | it's contributing to the problem and
there is a tremendous risk that the timing
| | 02:19 | will be a little bit off. You'll end up
losing a bunch of your money anyway.
| | 02:22 | Participating even at that end of the
scam is just contributing to the problem,
| | 02:27 | not helping. This is another form of
spam you will see a lot. Watch out for it,
| | 02:31 | don't do it. You only encourage them at
best, and at worst you're going to lose
| | 02:36 | a whole lot of money.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. How Spam Is SentHow spam is sent| 00:00 | So how is spam sent? One way the spam
is sent is through something called open relays
| | 00:05 | and this used to be very, very common.
It's a little bit less common today,
| | 00:08 | and we will see why. Open relays happen
because of one of the properties of the
| | 00:12 | SMTP protocol. SMTP is the protocol
that's used to send and relay email across
| | 00:17 | the Internet. It stands for Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol, and one of the
| | 00:22 | properties of SMTP in the original
specification is that an SMTP server must
| | 00:28 | receive mail from any one,
and send mail to any one.
| | 00:32 | So let's take a look at how this works
normally. In a normal e-mail situation,
| | 00:36 | your computer connects to the SMTP
server of your ISP. That SMTP server, which
| | 00:42 | is the one that you are authorized to
use, the one that you are supposed to use,
| | 00:45 | turns around and sends your e-mail
out to the Internet and to the receiving
| | 00:49 | SMTP server. The SMTP server of the
recipient's ISP. Then the recipient logs in
| | 00:54 | with their computer and connects to the
SMTP server of their ISP, and receives their e-mail.
| | 00:59 | This is when you check your e-mail, you
download your e-mail. It comes from the
| | 01:03 | SMTP server. SMTP sends and receives.
So that's why it's called a transfer
| | 01:07 | protocol. So overtime spammers who had
been sending their mail through their
| | 01:11 | SMTP server of their ISPs, they got
booted off of their ISPs or ISPs shut them
| | 01:16 | down and they needed to find a
different way to do this. So they discovered
| | 01:21 | this little loophole in the SMTP
protocol, and instead of sending spam to their
| | 01:25 | ISP's SMTP server, they would just
merrily send it to some third party SMTP server,
| | 01:30 | which would then relay the mail
and send out spam, spam, spam, spam.
| | 01:35 | This is what's called an open relay.
Well, once the mail operators, the
| | 01:39 | operators of the SMTP servers around
the Internet, figured out that this wasn't
| | 01:43 | working, they simply shutdown their
servers. They configured their servers so
| | 01:47 | they would only receive mail from
authorized users on their own networks.
| | 01:52 | And eventually, they even changed the
specification, SMTP, so that it would allow
| | 01:56 | different types of authentication to
ensure that the person who is sending mail
| | 01:59 | through the server is
actually authorized to do so.
| | 02:02 | So this mostly went away. Not entirely.
There are still some open relays, and
| | 02:06 | certainly they are relaying a lot of
spam. If you open up a relay today on the
| | 02:10 | Internet, within an hour it will be
sending out a lot of spam. But this is no
| | 02:14 | longer the primary method of sending
spam on the Internet. The primary method
| | 02:19 | of sending spam today is something
called botnets. What botnets are is
| | 02:23 | they're networks of compromised
computers; individually they are called
| | 02:27 | zombies. The owners of these
computers rarely know that they are infected.
| | 02:31 | These computers are running software
that has been distributed and installed by
| | 02:34 | virus or a Trojan horse. It has been
specifically designed to create a network
| | 02:39 | of zombie spam machines. Some of
these botnets are as large as 400,000
| | 02:44 | computers or more. Here is how it works.
Somebody writes a virus, and that
| | 02:49 | virus is then transmitted out to a
number of computers, which are then
| | 02:53 | infected and turned around and
continue to spread the virus, until it gets to
| | 02:57 | be a whole lot of
infected compromised computers.
| | 03:00 | Those infected and compromised
computers turn around and contact a command and
| | 03:05 | control computer, and the instructions
for how to contact that computer are
| | 03:09 | built into software that's been
installed on them by the nefarious virus.
| | 03:13 | The virus writer who is now the
botnet owner, he controls the command and
| | 03:18 | control computer, and therefore he
controls these hundreds of thousands of
| | 03:22 | infected botnet computers, and that
all together is called a botnet. Then a
| | 03:28 | spammer comes along and he pays the
botnet operator to send out his spam.
| | 03:33 | So in effect, the spammer is renting the botnet.
| | 03:36 | And he now controls the command and
control computer, and he controls the
| | 03:39 | botnet through the command and
control computer. He tells all of the bots
| | 03:43 | through the command and control
computer to go out and send their spam, spam,
| | 03:46 | spam, spam, spam, and they do. So this is how
the botnet works. Typically the botnets have
| | 03:52 | the capability built in to spread
themselves. They will attack known
| | 03:56 | vulnerabilities and machines adjacent
on the same network. Also reach out to
| | 04:00 | the rest of the Internet to spread,
sending copies of themselves through
| | 04:04 | various payloads of viruses, which
are some times even updated through the
| | 04:09 | command and control computer, to
keep them fresh and to keep them alive.
| | 04:12 | Some of these botnets can last for
years. So botnets are now the most common
| | 04:17 | way for spam to get sent. Most of the
spam that you receive is especially the
| | 04:21 | really seedy looking spam comes through
the botnets, but it's not the only way.
| | 04:25 | Another common way for spam to be
sent is through unconfirmed mailing lists.
| | 04:29 | Sometimes you will get mail from very
reputable companies, from companies that
| | 04:33 | you have heard of, companies that are
publically traded, companies with big
| | 04:36 | major presence on the Internet,
companies that you may respect, and yet you
| | 04:41 | never asked for this mail.
| | 04:42 | Why is it that these companies are
sending mail to people who don't want mail
| | 04:46 | from them? Well, this is what the
unconfirmed mailing lists are. Often times
| | 04:50 | it's quite innocent, and often times
it's not, but what happens is, if somebody
| | 04:55 | goes to a website and buys something
or signs up for a mailing list, and for
| | 04:59 | whatever reason, either by mistake or
intentionally, they give a wrong email
| | 05:03 | address. The company who runs the
website, they just go ahead and send out
| | 05:07 | their mail to whatever these email
addresses are. They don't necessarily care,
| | 05:11 | and in fact, it's to their advantage,
they send out more mail than less mail.
| | 05:15 | So they probably don't have any
motivation to keep their mailing lists clean.
| | 05:19 | So a lot of people who do not want that
email end up receiving it. Normally the
| | 05:25 | way this is supposed to work is that
when you sign up for an email list, when
| | 05:29 | you sign up to be updated with the
newsletter or marketing materials from a
| | 05:33 | company, that company's email list
program should send out a confirmation
| | 05:37 | message, and all of the major software
packages for doing this are capable of
| | 05:41 | sending out confirmation messages,
most of them default, to sending out
| | 05:45 | confirmation messages.
| | 05:46 | The way these confirmation messages
work, is you receive an email message to
| | 05:50 | confirm that you want to receive mail
from this mailing list, and you either
| | 05:53 | have to reply to the message, or
click on a link in the message, and that
| | 05:57 | confirms that your email address was
signed up with your permission, that you
| | 06:01 | have actively confirmed that you are
the owner of this email, and that you
| | 06:06 | actually want to receive this mail.
That's necessary today, because there's so
| | 06:10 | much unwanted mail, there's so much
spam, that for a company to remain
| | 06:15 | reputable, to remain in good standing,
they need to make sure that they are not
| | 06:18 | part of the problem.
| | 06:19 | So that's why mailing list software
has this capability built into it, and
| | 06:24 | that's why all of us should be using it.
Another common way the spam is sent is
| | 06:29 | what I call corporate spam. These are
usually not the really big companies, but
| | 06:34 | sometimes they are. In the postal
mail world, it's always been common to be
| | 06:38 | able to buy or rent a mailing list for
sending out your marketing materials,
| | 06:41 | and in the email world, this is round
apart, this is not the way that it is
| | 06:46 | normally done.
| | 06:47 | But some people who are from the
postal mail world, or who have always done
| | 06:50 | things that way, they just don't
understand, that they can't just go out and
| | 06:54 | buy a rental mailing list, and so they
do. They go out and they buy a rental
| | 06:57 | mail list. And typically the people
who are selling and renting these mailing
| | 07:00 | lists are not doing this in a reputable
way. So they are selling what's called
| | 07:04 | the million CDs or these databases
with millions of email addresses on them,
| | 07:09 | and they claim that they all are
confirmed, and that there are people who want
| | 07:12 | to receive these marketing. They
even sometimes call them targeted lists.
| | 07:15 | When in fact they are just every email
address they have been able to scrape
| | 07:18 | off the Internet. So the marketing
manager in this large corporation, or this
| | 07:23 | medium or small size corporation, he
doesn't know the difference. He rents this
| | 07:27 | mailing list, and he sends out his
campaign, and he gets a flood of spam
| | 07:30 | complaints and he learns the hard way.
Well, this another way that spam is
| | 07:33 | often sent, and unfortunately sometimes
it's even done this way intentionally.
| | 07:37 | The effect of corporate spam, the
effect of unconfirmed mailing lists is really
| | 07:41 | the same as the effect of botnets,
without the nefarious pirate who writes a
| | 07:46 | virus and infects your computer, but
the effect of this spamming is the same.
| | 07:51 | People who don't want your mail are
getting your mail, and they are going to
| | 07:54 | complain and they are going to be
quit out by it, and it becomes part of the
| | 07:58 | problem instead of the part of the
solution. If you are working for a large
| | 08:00 | corporation and you have marketing
materials that you need to send out,
| | 08:04 | do it the right way, get a mailing list manager,
and send out the confirmation messages,
| | 08:08 | and be part of the solution,
and not part of the problem.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Defending Against SpamSpam filters| 00:00 | One of the most important tools is in
your toolbox, the toolbox of the average
| | 00:04 | user, is your spam filter. This is a
primary tool for keeping spam out of your
| | 00:10 | Inbox, making your email a usable
and productive part of your life.
| | 00:15 | Most filters today are what's called
Bayesian filters. This is named after
| | 00:19 | Thomas Bayes, an 18th century
mathematician, who was a pioneer in probability
| | 00:23 | theory and his Bayesian Theorem is
what's used with Bayesian filters to make
| | 00:28 | them work well. Before Bayesian
filters, spam filters basically looked for
| | 00:32 | certain words and certain patterns, and
when the spammers found out about those
| | 00:36 | words and patterns, they would start
spelling things a little bit differently,
| | 00:40 | or using a 1 instead of an I for
certain words, and getting past the spam
| | 00:44 | filters. And the spam filters would
have to be updated, and spammers would
| | 00:46 | change what they do, and the spam
filters would have to be updated. And this
| | 00:49 | was a very time consuming and very
frustrating process, especially for the
| | 00:53 | average user who wasn't in the loop,
and just found that the spam start to get
| | 00:57 | in through again.
| | 00:58 | Bayesian filters were created to
work better than this, and what Bayesian
| | 01:03 | filters do is they learn what your
legitimate mail looks like. They learn what
| | 01:07 | your spam mail looks like, and
they filter based on that. So they are
| | 01:12 | constantly learning, and constantly
being updated without having to go back to
| | 01:15 | the manufacturer and get refitted.
| | 01:17 | So as a result of this, if your mail
happens to have words that are otherwise
| | 01:21 | found in spam, for instance, if you
are a marketing manager and mail that
| | 01:25 | says, "Important sale today" is
actually common in your email ecosystem.
| | 01:30 | The Bayesian filters are smart enough to
be able to tell the difference between
| | 01:33 | that and spam mail that might also
have those words in it. But have a
| | 01:37 | different look and feel to them then
the legitimate mail that you might have
| | 01:41 | that has those words in it.
| | 01:42 | Bayesian filters need to be trained.
This means that as you go through you
| | 01:46 | Inbox everyday, you need to mark the
mail as spam, that doesn't belong in your
| | 01:51 | Inbox and is actually spam. And
likewise you need to periodically go through
| | 01:58 | your spam mailbox and mark the mail
which is actually legitimate mail. So that
| | 02:02 | means you don't just move the mail into
the folder that it belongs in, you have
| | 02:05 | to actually click the button. And on
your mail program there is a little button,
| | 02:10 | that says Mark As Spam, and when it's
looking at a spam message, that button
| | 02:13 | or different button will say, Mark As Not Spam.
| | 02:16 | These buttons are used to train the
filter. When you press one of these
| | 02:21 | buttons, the message goes through the
Bayesian Filter, and helps the filter to
| | 02:25 | train so it knows the difference
between what is spam and what is not spam.
| | 02:29 | So Bayesian filters are incredibly
useful. Spam filters today are miles ahead
| | 02:34 | of where they were just a few years
ago because of this advance. You need to
| | 02:38 | make sure that you train your filter,
that you keep your filter up to date by
| | 02:41 | using the spam and the not-spam
buttons in your mail program.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defending against phishing attacks| 00:00 | So let us talk about phishing. First
of all, what is phishing? Phishing is
| | 00:05 | e-mail messages that are forged to
look like they are from a financial
| | 00:08 | institution or another web site where
somebody can spend your resources or
| | 00:13 | steal your resources. Web site like
PayPal or a bank web site or even some
| | 00:18 | place like eBay or Amazon, where they
could spend your money and have products
| | 00:23 | or goods or services sent to
somebody else so they could resell.
| | 00:26 | Phishing is a pr. In fact, identity theft has
| | 00:32 | exploded in the last few years
primarily because of phishing attacks. So this
| | 00:37 | is the primary way that identity
thieves are able to steal the information that
| | 00:42 | they need to be able to use your
identity, to be able to use your financial
| | 00:46 | resources, to be able to steal your
money and your reputation. The goal of
| | 00:51 | these phishing messages is to gain
control of your financial resources. So,
| | 00:56 | let's take a moment and take a look at
a phishing message and see what it looks like.
| | 01:00 | This is one that I have received today.
It purports to be from PayPal and it
| | 01:04 | says that I have got a message from
PayPal and that I should click on this link
| | 01:08 | here in order to log in to PayPal and
access my mail section. So what I do with this?
| | 01:14 | Let's take a look at how we can
defend against phishing attacks. Things to
| | 01:20 | look for in defending against phishing
attacks. First of all, you want to look
| | 01:23 | at the e-mail and look at it very
closely. Every time you get an e-mail from
| | 01:27 | your financial institution, one of the
first things you should look at is,
| | 01:30 | do they say your name?
| | 01:32 | If they say your name then, you got a
decent chance and you can look at the
| | 01:35 | rest of the message and see if there is
anything fishy about it. If it does not
| | 01:38 | say your personal name then it is a
forgery. All of the major financial
| | 01:42 | institutions, PayPal, eBay, Amazon,
anybody of any significance is using your
| | 01:48 | personal information. If they have it,
they are going to use your personal name
| | 01:51 | so that you know that this message is
from them. If it's a fake they don't have
| | 01:56 | your name. They are looking for your
personal information. They are wanting to
| | 01:58 | steal your personal information.
| | 02:00 | So they don't have your name and they
are not going to be able to address you
| | 02:03 | by your full name that the web site
has on file. We will look at their e-mail
| | 02:08 | message in a minute and we will look
at some other reasons that we can tell
| | 02:10 | that it's fake. But the first thing you
want to do is to be able to tell if the
| | 02:13 | e-mail is real or fake. Next before you
click on a link, if you are tempted to
| | 02:17 | click on the link, inspect the link
before clicking on it. Hover your mouse
| | 02:20 | over it, look at the little status bar
or at the pop-up that comes up that says
| | 02:24 | what the link looks like and we will
show you how to do that here in a moment as well.
| | 02:27 | You want to inspect that link before
you click on it and then if you do decide
| | 02:31 | to click on the link, which if you
are all suspicious, you want to not click
| | 02:35 | on the link at all. Instead you want to
go to your browser and type in the URL
| | 02:39 | yourself or better yet use the bookmark
that you always use to get to that web
| | 02:43 | site. In that way you're sure or you
are more sure that you are getting to
| | 02:47 | the web site. It's not impossible for
somebody to redirect you and we will look
| | 02:51 | at the further things that you can do
to make sure but using your bookmark or
| | 02:55 | typing in the URL yourself is a much
better way to get there than to clicking
| | 02:58 | on the link.
| | 02:59 | Then finally once you get to the web site,
you want to inspect the URL bar and
| | 03:04 | your browser and make sure that you got
to where you think you are going to get
| | 03:06 | to. So now let's look at the message
in a little bit more detail. So first of
| | 03:11 | all we notice that it says "Dear
Customer." It does not say, "Dear William
| | 03:15 | Weinman" or your name. So you know
right off the bat that this is very
| | 03:21 | suspicious and it's probably a
forgery. Look at the address that it's
| | 03:24 | addressed to. This is one of my throw
away addresses. This is an address where
| | 03:28 | I get most of my spam.
| | 03:29 | So I know that that's not the address
that PayPal would send my information to.
| | 03:33 | Look at the return address, this
one happens to be a very bad forgery;
| | 03:37 | it says it's from Pay.com, it doesn't
say it is from PayPal.com. PayPal would
| | 03:41 | never send a message from Pay.com. The Subject.
'Account Review PayPal, DEBIT.Team'
| | 03:48 | This is so badly written; this would
never come from a self-respecting
| | 03:53 | American company who's going to have
somebody writing their marketing materials
| | 03:57 | who has a good command of the English
language. They even spelled account wrong.
| | 04:00 | Finally, to best of my knowledge,
PayPal does not have an e-mail service;
| | 04:05 | they send me e-mails by e-mail. So there
wouldn't be an inbox there and let's hover
| | 04:09 | our mouse over the "Click Here" and
see what we get. Oh! Notice the web site,
| | 04:13 | streamsinthewilderness.com. That is an
obvious forgery, so we are not going to
| | 04:18 | click on this and if we look at the
rest of the message down here, we see that
| | 04:21 | PayPal is spelled inconsistently.
Up here its PayPal like it normally be
| | 04:25 | spelled, here its got a hyphen.
Blank check is a registered trademark of PayPal.
| | 04:30 | This is just very obviously not really from PayPal.
| | 04:35 | If I were tempted to click on the link
--and do not try this at home kids!
| | 04:40 | I am a trained professional. If I were
tempted to click on the link, this is what I
| | 04:43 | would get. Here is the forged web site.
It looks very much like PayPal's web
| | 04:48 | site. Now I also brought up the real
PayPal site. I happen to know that the
| | 04:52 | PayPal web site has had some redesigns
since they stole this copy, even though
| | 04:57 | they sent this message out today,
it's from an older version of the PayPal
| | 04:59 | site. Boy, does it look authentic.
A person might very well be tempted to type
| | 05:04 | in their e-mail address
and their PayPal password.
| | 05:07 | I will notice PayPal is spelled with a
space here; it wouldn't be on the real
| | 05:10 | thing. Also look at the URL bar.
Remember we said always inspect the URL bar
| | 05:15 | before you start logging in to one of
these web sites and its a good idea even
| | 05:18 | when you use your bookmark to always
inspect the URL bar before you log in to
| | 05:22 | the web site because DNS could be
hijacked as well. There are other ways that
| | 05:26 | people can run this scam besides
sending you a phishing e-mail message. This is
| | 05:29 | the most common way but it's not the only way.
| | 05:32 | So always inspect the URL bar. What do
we find? We find this odd domain name
| | 05:37 | that is not PayPal.com. Also we see
that it says http where it should say
| | 05:42 | https. This is one of the most
important telltales, is that this is not a secure
| | 05:48 | connection. So PayPal would never
ask you to log in over an insecure
| | 05:51 | connection. If we look at the real
PayPal site, we notice that it says https.
| | 05:56 | We notice that it says PayPal.com and
then here in Firefox anyway, we can see
| | 06:01 | that it has a verified valid certificate
by clicking here and we see that this
| | 06:06 | is an encrypted connection
and it has a valid certificate.
| | 06:10 | You can click on the More Information
and you get to see the exact certificate
| | 06:14 | that authenticates that this is the
actual real PayPal web site. So this is the
| | 06:19 | real, this is the fake and these are
the things to look for, so be careful. You
| | 06:24 | get a message like this obviously,
this one is a forgery and there aren't too
| | 06:28 | many really good forgeries any more
but they do occasionally come by where it
| | 06:32 | might look pretty convincing.
| | 06:33 | So be careful don't click on the link;
if you really want to check it out and
| | 06:37 | find out if its real, just go to your
browser and use your bookmark and get to
| | 06:41 | the real web site and confirm that its
real and then you can log in and you can
| | 06:44 | look and you can see if there is
anything actually wrong with your account. But
| | 06:48 | this is an obvious forgery and you want
to make sure that you are careful when
| | 06:52 | you get this kind of a message so that
you don't lose significant amounts of
| | 06:56 | money and have a whole lot of
trouble fighting off identity theft.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tagged email addresses| 00:00 | Another useful technique for managing
the spam that you get is what I called
| | 00:05 | tagged e-mail addresses. What this is,
this is something that you can do--
| | 00:08 | if your email system supports it, we will
talk abut that in a moment-- to manage a
| | 00:12 | relationship with a new sender. Let's
say you go to new store, and you haven't
| | 00:16 | been there before, and you don't know
what their reputation is, and you just
| | 00:19 | want to make sure that if they don't
handle your email address responsibly,
| | 00:25 | that there is something you are
going to be able to do about that.
| | 00:26 | So what you can do is, you can create
a tagged e-mail address, and here is an
| | 00:30 | example of the tagged e-mail address.
Let's say for instance that I am using
| | 00:34 | Gmail and my address is boothby42@gmail.com.
I can create a tagged e-mail address
| | 00:41 | that starts with boothby42 and it has
the plus sign and some word that describes,
| | 00:47 | that I can use as a tag, that describes
the relationship with this new website
| | 00:52 | that have been to. In this case I
call it newstore@gmail.com, and this is a
| | 00:56 | tagged e-mail address and Gmail happens
to support it. We'll show our example in
| | 01:00 | Gmail. In fact, let's look at that now.
| | 01:03 | This is a Gmail account for boothby42@gmail.com,
and here is a message that came from the new store.
| | 01:10 | So when I registered a new store, I used that tagged
| | 01:13 | e-mail address with the +newstore. And
if we look at this message and we can
| | 01:18 | click on Show Details, it shows that
the address that we was sent to is
| | 01:23 | boothby42+newstore@gmail.com, and they
sent a message to that address and it
| | 01:30 | showed up in my boothby42 email box,
and here is their little sales pitch.
| | 01:35 | So now if they were to say, sell the
email address, or "share" it, share it with
| | 01:44 | a partner and I didn't want that to
happen, then I have an easy way to deal
| | 01:49 | with it. I can go into my Filters, and
I can create a filter with this address
| | 01:58 | in it, boothby42+newstore@gmail.com.
And we see that because Gmail does this,
| | 02:09 | it tests the filter for you. Now if I
want to, I can just apply a label, I can
| | 02:14 | create a new label for this, which
is Gmail's analogy to putting it in a
| | 02:19 | folder, or I can just click Delete It,
if they have been abusing the address
| | 02:24 | and I don't want to receive mail from
them any more, I can say Delete It. Every
| | 02:28 | time they send a message to that
address, it will get deleted. Of course, you
| | 02:33 | can say, also apply to the conversation
below. So in this case, let's just
| | 02:36 | create a label because they haven't
turned rogue yet and we will just
| | 02:41 | call it New Store and say OK. And create a filter.
| | 02:46 | Now we have a label called newstore
and it's got that message in it and it's
| | 02:50 | also stored in the Inbox because
that's just how Gmail works. You can tell it
| | 02:54 | to skip the Inbox or not. And it's got
this tag on it, which is actually very,
| | 02:57 | very useful. So tagged e-mail
addresses, they really have a couple of
| | 03:01 | purposes. You can use them for
segregating your email, for creating filters, and
| | 03:05 | more importantly and what they were
created for is the ability to manage a
| | 03:09 | relationship with a new sender. So that
if they where to do something untoward with your
| | 03:14 | email address then you have some
recourse. You have a way of automatically
| | 03:18 | dealing with that so it doesn't
become part of your spam problem.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Block lists| 00:00 | Let's say you get a lot of unwanted
mail from a particular sender. You may be
| | 00:03 | able to block it using a block list.
There are basically two kinds of block lists.
| | 00:07 | There are sender-based block lists,
that use a list of email addresses or
| | 00:11 | domains that you don't want to receive
mail from, and there is IP address based
| | 00:16 | block lists, which we'll talk about in a moment.
| | 00:19 | The sender-based block list, the email
address-based block list, basically work
| | 00:23 | like this. We are going to talk about
this using Microsoft Outlook because
| | 00:28 | that's what we have in front of us here.
But of course, the same concept works
| | 00:31 | in any email program that you may be
using. In this case, you simply select
| | 00:36 | the message that's got the address,
that's from the sender that you don't want
| | 00:40 | to receive mail from any more. In this
case it's Apple. I am not saying that
| | 00:43 | Apple is nasty about mail, it's just
what we are using for example here. You go
| | 00:47 | to the Actions menu and under Junk
Email, you will see right there Add Sender
| | 00:52 | to Blocked Senders List, and it's that simple.
| | 00:55 | The sender of these messages has been
added to your Blocked Senders List,
| | 00:58 | the message has been moved to the Junk
E-mail folder. If we look over here now at
| | 01:02 | the Junk-E-mail folder, we'll see
there is the message. Let's say that you
| | 01:07 | don't want them on the blocked email
list any more. Let's go up and manage our
| | 01:10 | blocked email list. You simply open the
list using the Junk E-mail options, and
| | 01:16 | select Blocked Senders. There's your
whole list of them, you select the one
| | 01:20 | that you don't want in there
anymore and you say, Remove and OK.
| | 01:25 | Now they are not on the blocked list
anymore. You can move this message out of
| | 01:29 | the Junk folder, and put it back in
your Inbox, there it is. And there is the
| | 01:35 | message right back where it belongs
in the Inbox. So that's basically the
| | 01:39 | concept of how you use block list,
different email programs do it in different
| | 01:43 | ways, and sometimes they might not
have a specific block list functionality,
| | 01:48 | you can simply just create a rule or
filter and list all the email addresses in
| | 01:52 | there. That works fine in programs that
don't have a separate functionality for it.
| | 01:56 | The other type of block list is called
the RBL, Real-Time Block List, and this
| | 02:03 | work at the server levels, we are not
going to be able demonstrate it here. But
| | 02:06 | I want to describe them, and not
because you might be running a server, but
| | 02:10 | because you probably use a mail server,
even though you don't use it directly,
| | 02:14 | that's how your mail gets delivered to
you. Your mail server maybe using RBLs
| | 02:19 | and you need to be aware of that.
Because the way that it works is that it
| | 02:23 | works based on the IP addresses, and
it's usually blocks of IP addresses.
| | 02:28 | So if mail comes from a particular
block of IP addresses that this particular
| | 02:33 | RBL has decided acts badly, then that
mail will never get to you, and it gets
| | 02:37 | blocked at the server level. Usually
the way that that works, is right when the
| | 02:42 | SMTP conversation begins, the server
that doesn't want to receive mail from
| | 02:46 | that address will simply cut them off,
or never accept the connection in the
| | 02:50 | first place.
| | 02:51 | These RBLs are managed remotely, and
usually automatically, like for instance,
| | 02:56 | there is RBLs that keep up with the
addresses of the botnets, and refuse to
| | 03:01 | accept mail from any addresses that
are known to be botnets, where they are
| | 03:05 | known to be zombies within the botnets.
And these can be very useful and they
| | 03:09 | can also be a little bit dangerous.
Because for example, somebody who is
| | 03:13 | managing an RBL might decide that
anyone from a particular ISP is bad, not
| | 03:19 | necessarily the users, but that ISP
is bad, and block that whole ISP. There
| | 03:23 | have been occasions where whole ISPs
have been unable to receive mail from
| | 03:27 | whole other ISPs, because of this block list.
| | 03:30 | It's good to know that they exist and
know basically how they work, even though
| | 03:34 | we are not going to be demonstrating
them here and they are a useful tool in
| | 03:37 | the fight against spam. I know that
from my part, if my server didn't have any
| | 03:41 | RBLs, I would be getting twice as much
spam as I do now. So it's good to know
| | 03:45 | that they are there, and it's good to
know how they work, and what they are.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Other ways to defend against spam| 00:00 | So there are some other important
things that you can do to help defend against
| | 00:04 | the spam that onslaughts your Inbox.
The first one of course, and we
| | 00:08 | mentioned this before, but it is
worth mentioning it again, is to never
| | 00:11 | unsubscribe from something unless
you subscribed it in the first place.
| | 00:14 | Obviously, if you subscribe to a
mailing list and you wanted to stop receiving
| | 00:18 | that mailing list that you have
already subscribed to, then you go ahead and
| | 00:21 | you follow the procedure for
unsubscribing. If you just get something out of
| | 00:25 | the blue and it has a very legitimate looking
look to it and it has a very legitimate
| | 00:30 | looking unsubscribe or remove link,
| | 00:32 | you may be tempted to just click on it
to end the problem, but that's not going
| | 00:36 | to end the problem. Remember the
spammers don't really care if you want to
| | 00:40 | receive the mail from them or not. It
costs them virtually nothing to send it
| | 00:44 | to you. So if you click on the
unsubscribe link in that spam message,
| | 00:49 | all it does is it tells them that you
looked at the message and that makes you
| | 00:52 | more valuable to them. It makes them
want to send you more spam and it makes
| | 00:56 | it more valuable for them to sell your
email address to other spammers and you
| | 01:00 | become a prime target for them.
| | 01:03 | So never unsubscribe unless you have
actually subscribed in the first place.
| | 01:07 | And a related point is never to click
on anything that you find in a spammed
| | 01:12 | message. If there is a link there, and
it looks intriguing, or it looks funny,
| | 01:16 | or it looks entertaining, or it looks
profitable, don't click on it. Don't be
| | 01:20 | tempted, because when you click on
something that you found in your spam
| | 01:23 | message, you are telling them that you
are interested and that you have read
| | 01:27 | their message and you found it intriguing,
but at the very least you are
| | 01:30 | encourage them to do more.
| | 01:31 | And at the very worst you are telling
them that you are a prime target, and
| | 01:36 | that you want to receive more stuff
like this from them. They will just start
| | 01:39 | sending you more and more stuff. So on
a related note, never buy anything from
| | 01:45 | a spammer. When you buy things from
the people that are sending the spam, and
| | 01:49 | you are telling them this is a valid
marketing technique. This works. And of
| | 01:54 | course, they are going to want to do
more of it if it works because it is
| | 01:56 | making them money.
| | 01:57 | So never buy anything from an
unsolicited email message that you have received.
| | 02:02 | And finally, might seem like a little
bit of a tangent, but it's one of the
| | 02:06 | things that you can do to defend
against spam, is to have current antivirus
| | 02:10 | software on your computer and to keep
it up-to-date. To run your little update
| | 02:14 | utility at least every day.
| | 02:17 | As often as those updates are available.
Because this is going to help prevent
| | 02:21 | your computer from becoming part of a
botnet and becoming part of the problem.
| | 02:26 | When your computer becomes part of a
botnet, of course, it will send out
| | 02:30 | millions of spam messages everyday,
and it also uses up your precious
| | 02:34 | resources. It uses up your bandwidth,
it slows down your computer, it uses up
| | 02:38 | your CPU cycles, and by using the
bandwidth of your ISP, it helps to make your
| | 02:44 | Internet connection more expensive. So
keep your antivirus software up-to-date,
| | 02:49 | keep it turned on, and make sure that
you are running good antivirus software
| | 02:54 | on your computer.
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5. Dealing with Spam When It ArrivesMarking your spam| 00:00 | Every time you open your e-mail program,
there's a couple of things you are
| | 00:03 | going to want to make sure that you do
to help to keep your Inbox clean and
| | 00:06 | efficient, and to help to keep your
junk mail folders trained. First thing that
| | 00:10 | you are going to want to do is you are
going to want to go through your mail,
| | 00:12 | and you are going to want to look for
the messages that actually are spam, that
| | 00:15 | have made it into your Inbox, that your
spam filter has missed, and you want to
| | 00:19 | press that Junk Mail button.
| | 00:21 | This helps to train your spam filter.
It helps to keep it up-to-date with the
| | 00:25 | type of spam that is in the world today.
It then moves the messages out of your
| | 00:31 | Inbox, leaving your Inbox clean and
puts them in the junk mail folder where
| | 00:34 | they belong. So it's important to know
that by just selecting those messages,
| | 00:39 | and dragging them off to the junk mail
folder, or deleting them does not train
| | 00:42 | your spam filter. You need to train
your spam filter, because spam changes on a
| | 00:46 | daily basis, and that's why some of
those messages end up in the Inbox, instead
| | 00:51 | of in the spam mailbox where they belong.
| | 00:53 | So taking a minute to do this on a
daily basis will keep the spam at bay, it
| | 00:59 | will keep this spam filter trained, so
that your Inbox can be cleaner and more efficient.
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| Checking your spam daily| 00:00 | The next thing you want to do every
time you open up your email program is to
| | 00:03 | go into your junk mail folder and look
for the messages that were flagged as
| | 00:07 | spam and are not actually spam. This
will help to train your junk mail filter,
| | 00:13 | so that it knows what your legitimate
mail looks like, just like you train it
| | 00:17 | to know what your junk mail looks like.
So let's go over here and we see in
| | 00:21 | here, we have got three messages that
were marked as spam, that are not spam,
| | 00:26 | this three here.
| | 00:27 | So we want to select them and press
the Not Junk button. This will help to
| | 00:32 | train the spam filter to know that
these types of messages, messages with this
| | 00:37 | sort of content are not junk, that
these are legitimate mail, and this is just
| | 00:41 | as important as training it to know
what the junk mail looks like. Once we have
| | 00:45 | marked these messages as Not Junk, we
are going to need to drag them back into
| | 00:48 | the Inbox, because the Not Junk button
will not do that for you most of the time,
| | 00:53 | and then we might want to mark them as Not Read.
| | 00:59 | Now the messages are back in the Inbox
where they belong. The junk mail filter
| | 01:03 | has been trained to know that messages
that look like that are not junk and
| | 01:07 | they will in the future end up in
our Inbox, instead of in the junk mail folder.
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| Using filters for common senders| 00:00 | Another important tool in managing the
spam on your system is the mail filter.
| | 00:04 | A lot of times we think of the mail
filter is a tool for organizing our mail,
| | 00:09 | and it certainly is that. But by
organizing our mail, by having the mail for
| | 00:13 | specific important or common senders
go to a different place, then we know
| | 00:18 | where that mail is, and it's not going
to get lost in the clutter of the spam,
| | 00:22 | and the clutter of the Inbox. So let's
go ahead and create a filter here and
| | 00:27 | watch that in action.
| | 00:27 | Now here I have selected a message
that is from a different sender, this is
| | 00:31 | from webbie@webmonster.net. I am
going to go ahead and select create filter
| | 00:36 | from message here on this drop
down menu. Now this is how it works in
| | 00:39 | Thunderbird, it may work differently in
your mail program, and lynda.com has a
| | 00:43 | lot of the popular mail programs
covered in their video training library at
| | 00:48 | lynda.com. So go ahead and create a
filter, and this is how it works in most of
| | 00:54 | the programs. The dialog box looks something
like this. where From is webbie@webmonster.net.
| | 01:00 | You can add multiple rules if you want
to, you can have it match any or all of
| | 01:05 | the different rules. I am going to
have the mail from webbie go to the webmonster
| | 01:11 | folder, and go ahead and select OK.
Now we will see here that the filter we
| | 01:16 | just created is listed in the Message
Filters dialog box, and we can run it now
| | 01:20 | on the Inbox, and goes ahead and drops
those two messages into the webmonster
| | 01:26 | folder that has the messages that are
from that address. Now we will go ahead
| | 01:30 | and we will check our mail, happen to
know that there are a couple of messages
| | 01:33 | in there from that sender, and indeed there are.
| | 01:37 | Now there are four messages in there,
instead of just the two, and we see that
| | 01:43 | the two additional messages that came
in are also from that sender. So this way
| | 01:49 | we know that the messages like this,
the messages from that sender is going to
| | 01:53 | be in a separate mailbox, they are not
going to be amongst the clutter of the
| | 01:55 | Inbox that may have spam and other
things, and we can avoid the possibility of
| | 02:00 | accidentally marking something as spam
that's from an important sender, because
| | 02:03 | we have got it off in a different place,
which is not going to be amongst that clutter.
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| Using your address book| 00:00 | Your Address Book can also be an
important tool in managing the spam on your
| | 00:04 | system. Most mail programs have a
setting, where addresses that are in the
| | 00:08 | Address Book, by pass the junk
filters altogether. Here is the setting in
| | 00:13 | Thunderbird. Under the Account
Settings, for the Junk Settings, select this
| | 00:19 | checkbox, 'Do not mark as junk if the
sender is in the Personal Address Book.'
| | 00:23 | There is a selection here also for
Collected Addresses, but that happens
| | 00:26 | automatically.
| | 00:26 | And the Personal Address Book is more
intentional, so I like to use that one.
| | 00:30 | So press OK there, and then we'll take
one of these messages that's addressed
| | 00:35 | from WebMonster and we'll bring down
this dropdown menu, and we'll go ahead and
| | 00:39 | add that to the Address Book. Now when
we look at our Address Book, there is
| | 00:43 | that address in there, and mail coming
in from that sender will no longer go
| | 00:49 | through the spam filter at all. It
will go directly in to the Inbox and go
| | 00:53 | through the filters, and end up in the
mailbox that you have selected for that sender.
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| Using different email addresses| 00:00 | If you get a lot of email and if you
get a lot of spam, it might be useful to
| | 00:03 | create separate email addresses for
different roles and different purposes in
| | 00:07 | your life. For example, you might
want a separate email address for your
| | 00:11 | business, or your personal mail, an
address for your role in a particular
| | 00:15 | project, or just an address for your
smart phone. You can have mail from
| | 00:19 | separate addresses forwarded to the
same mailbox or not, and if you do,
| | 00:23 | you can create filters based on the To
address, and put the mail for their
| | 00:27 | different roles in different mailboxes,
or as I have shown here, you can just
| | 00:31 | set up a whole separate
account in your email program.
| | 00:33 | I have done that for this billew@bw.org,
and I set this up for personal mail.
| | 00:40 | So when I go ahead and check the mail,
I see there is a personal message from
| | 00:44 | my friend Frederick Boothby, says
"How you're doing?" So this is a personal
| | 00:49 | account, and I would only give this
address out to some of my close personal friends,
| | 00:53 | and not give it out to everybody.
Therefore, it won't get a lot of spam,
| | 00:58 | at least not for a while, and it's
a very useful way to keep your e-mail
| | 01:02 | life from getting too complicated, help
to keep it simple, and help to keep it
| | 01:06 | streamlined. So there is a
useful tool that you can use.
| | 01:09 | Most of the free email services, by
the way, will allow you to have multiple
| | 01:12 | accounts. Most of your ISPs, your dial
up services, or your DSL services, or
| | 01:18 | cable services will allow you to have
multiple mailboxes. So it's a fairly easy
| | 01:22 | thing to do, and it's a useful tool in keeping
your e-mail life streamlined, and clean, and simple.
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6. Being a Good Email CitizenHow to be a good email citizen| 00:00 | So let's say you have a good reason to
send out a message to a lot of people.
| | 00:04 | You have something to say, and that's
good thing, but people these days are
| | 00:08 | very sensitive to spam, and you
probably don't want to get their feathers up.
| | 00:11 | Luckily, there are ways to do what
you need to do without looking like a
| | 00:16 | spammer. First thing to keep in mind
is that you don't want to just Cc your
| | 00:22 | entire address book. There can be a
tendency, that you have got something
| | 00:25 | important to say, and everybody in
the world needs to hear this right now,
| | 00:28 | to just grab all the addresses in your
address book, and plop them into the Cc
| | 00:32 | field in the message, and hit the Send
button, and you want to avoid that urge.
| | 00:37 | When you send out a message like
that without warning, and people aren't
| | 00:42 | expecting it, a lot of the people
who receive it, instead of seeing your
| | 00:46 | message, instead of hearing the thing
that is that you want them to hear,
| | 00:50 | they are going to say, "You spammed me!"
and you probably want to avoid that impression.
| | 00:55 | At the same time, and on the other side
of the coin, when you receive a message
| | 00:59 | like that, you want to remember that
it's probably well intentioned, and to
| | 01:03 | have a little bit of tolerance of it,
and try to get past that initial urge to
| | 01:07 | complain about the spam, and perhaps
think about what the person is trying to say,
| | 01:10 | because it's not necessarily a bad
thing. It's just that in this culture,
| | 01:15 | in this climate that we are at right
now, that's the first thing that's going
| | 01:19 | to come up when people
receive something like that.
| | 01:21 | So you don't want them to think that.
You don't want them to have that
| | 01:24 | reaction, you want them to see your
message. So how can you accomplish that?
| | 01:27 | The first principle that you want to
keep in mind is that you want permission.
| | 01:31 | You want to ask their permission to
invade their mailbox, because that's how
| | 01:36 | it's perceived. It's an invasion of
their Inbox. So you want to ask permission,
| | 01:39 | and there are number of ways that you
can do this. Of course, you can just ask them,
| | 01:42 | you can have a sign up sheet in
your shop, or you can have a place to
| | 01:47 | sign up on your website.
| | 01:48 | But you want to make sure when you
send out anything in bulk, that you get the
| | 01:53 | permission of each of the recipients
before you include them in the list.
| | 01:58 | In this way they will receive your message
in a good way, or there is a better chance of
| | 02:02 | it anyway. When you get their
permission, of course, you are going to want to
| | 02:05 | maintain a list of the e-mail
addresses of people who have given their
| | 02:08 | permission, and if you've got just a
few of them, you can keep it in a list in
| | 02:11 | a text file, or you can keep it in
a list in the Excel Spreadsheet, or
| | 02:14 | something like that, and just copy and
paste into your em-ail program whenever
| | 02:17 | it is that you want to send a message.
| | 02:19 | But if it gets to be more than a few,
you might want to think about using a
| | 02:23 | mailing list provider. Using a
mailing list provider is going to give you a
| | 02:27 | number of advantages over manually
maintaining of this list. One of the most
| | 02:32 | important of those advantages is that
people can sign up themselves and they
| | 02:36 | can unsubscribe themselves, and they
can change their email addresses on their
| | 02:41 | own as well. This is an important
distinction because this again gives people
| | 02:46 | the feeling that they have power
over their own Inbox and of course,
| | 02:51 | the amount of spam that we all receive,
we know that that's a fallacy.
| | 02:53 | We don't actually have power of our
own email box, but it gives people the
| | 02:57 | feeling that they have the power, and
that you are being polite about it, that
| | 03:01 | you are doing this entirely with their
permission and that they are entirely
| | 03:04 | at free will to add, change, and
delete their own addresses from the list
| | 03:08 | without bothering you about it.
So using a mailing list provider is an
| | 03:13 | incredibly valuable thing, and fortunately
it doesn't even need to cost you any money.
| | 03:17 | Yahoo Groups is one very prominent,
free mailing list company and
| | 03:22 | in fact, in addition to the free mailing
list, your Yahoo group also has a group
| | 03:27 | calendar, has a place where
people can post pictures and files.
| | 03:31 | It's a very full-featured and free
service, one worth keeping in mind for these
| | 03:37 | purposes. Google Groups is another
one that's free, and may works entirely
| | 03:42 | differently, it's a different sort of a
service, but it's worth looking at. And
| | 03:46 | in the non-free category, there is a
very popular ConstantContact. A lot of
| | 03:51 | people are using it. It costs about $15
a month or so, for their smallest service.
| | 03:55 | So it might be more of a commercial
thing, than something you want to
| | 03:58 | use just for keeping in touch with your
friends, or the soccer group at school,
| | 04:03 | or something like that, but it's
something worth knowing that it exists.
| | 04:08 | It's useful to know that these
services are available, and it's a very good
| | 04:12 | thing to think about using a service
like this instead of just Ccing your entire
| | 04:17 | address group. Your message will be
well received this way, and you will get a
| | 04:21 | lot fewer complaints and you will be
considered a better citizen of the e-mail universe.
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7. Getting InvolvedGetting involved| 00:00 | We've spoken at some length about
to reduce the amount of spam that you
| | 00:03 | receive, how to manage the spam that
you do receive, and how to maintain your
| | 00:07 | own e-mail ecosystem, and that's all
good and useful stuff. And it may even be
| | 00:12 | the extent of your interest in the
subject. On the other hand, if you are
| | 00:16 | interested in going further with the
subject, if you are interested in keeping
| | 00:19 | up with the latest developments, or
even helping with the effort to improve the
| | 00:23 | global e-mail ecosystem, then there is
some resources that you should know about.
| | 00:27 | I keep a more complete resource list
on my website at bw.org/ube, and you may
| | 00:33 | want to check there now and then and
feel free to use the contact form to keep
| | 00:36 | in touch with me. I would like to hear from you.
| | 00:38 | The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail,
CAUCE, and keep in mind that is a C there in the
| | 00:44 | fourth position, and not an S. It's one
of the oldest organizations involved in
| | 00:49 | the subject. They are primarily a
lobbying organization and they have been
| | 00:52 | involved in getting a lot of the
laws passed about the spam problem.
| | 00:56 | They are also involved in the legal
process in helping to prosecute spammers,
| | 01:01 | and they have a number of very powerful
lawyers on their staff, and they have a
| | 01:04 | legal fund that you can contribute to
that helps with this process. Abuse.net
| | 01:09 | is more technical website. It has a
number links to useful resources for
| | 01:14 | reducing spam and keeping ahead of the
technological battle against spam, and
| | 01:19 | it's run by some good folks as well.
| | 01:21 | I have my own project called AMTP,
Authenticated Mail Transfer Protocol.
| | 01:26 | AMTP is designed as a replacement for SMTP,
and it's the only solution that I know of
| | 01:31 | that addresses the problem from
both the technological and the sociological
| | 01:34 | sides. Provides a clear, succinct
set of definitions of email sending
| | 01:40 | behaviors, provides mechanisms for
extending those definitions, and strong
| | 01:44 | mechanisms for defining and
enforcing the rules related to sending and
| | 01:47 | receiving email and you can learn
more about AMTP at the AMTP website at
| | 01:52 | AMTP.bw.org.
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| Goodbye| 00:00 | I find spam to be a fascinating subject,
and while it can be annoying to
| | 00:03 | receive a lot of spam, I hope this
course has been useful and perhaps even
| | 00:07 | enjoyable for you. I have certainly
had fun preparing and presenting it.
| | 00:10 | You've learned a lot about what spam is,
where it comes from, how it's sent, and what
| | 00:15 | to do with it once it shows up in
your mailbox. You are now well equipped to
| | 00:18 | manage the spam in your life, and to
prevent it from doing too much damage in
| | 00:21 | your e-mail world.
| | 00:22 | E-mail is an amazingly useful tool.
It gives us the power to communicate
| | 00:27 | effectively and efficiently, without
the interruptions of a telephone, or the
| | 00:30 | expense and inconvenience of postal
mail. By giving you the tools to manage
| | 00:34 | your spam, I hope I have helped you to
get more power and enjoyment from your
| | 00:38 | e-mail experience. I am Bill
Weinman. Thanks for watching.
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