Wednesday, December 10, 2008

PDF Spam Generation and Protecting Your Kids

By Mary Maseko

With PDF type of spam, a junk email is sent out with a PDF file attachment, which most anti-spam filters cannot or do not read. These attachments range from rudimentary to professional-looking documents. The text in the body of the email is usually nonsensical gobbledygook that the spam-filter does not recognize as junk mail.

The advent and decline of the different types of spam attest to the cat-and-mouse game that goes on between the spammers and the security experts. As anti-spam technology catches up to their techniques, they continue to innovate and change tactics to deliver their spam messages.

Protecting Your Kids

Spam is commercial email that is sent out in bulk to millions of people without their consent. It is may contain advertising messages for regular products and services but increasingly, it is email of an inappropriate, offensive or malicious nature.

Whitelists - Set up an email account for your child that "whitelists" only specific email addresses. A whitelist is just a list of trusted and approved email addresses. For example, you can have the addresses of your child's grandparents, aunts and uncles whitelisted. Whenever email is received from any of the whitelisted addresses, it goes directly to your child's inbox. All other email addresses are blocked.

Web beacons: A web beacon, also called an "invisible GIF," is an image sent out with spam that is invisible to the recipient. When the email is opened, the spammer will be alerted that your email address is "live."

It is very important to educate your children on the dangers of spam and how to handle it if they do receive any in their inbox. - 16928

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