| |
| |
|
Spam Blocker Information |
|
|
|
20 Words That Kill - At Least When It Comes to Spam Filters
Spam, spam, spam. It's terrible not only for those of us on the receiving end, but for those of us who SEND e-mail. This deluge of irritating junk has unfortunately interfered with legitimate e-zine publishers, because we're caught in the anti-spam crossfire. If you publish any type of e-mail publication, there's a likely chance that your e-zine is NOT reaching a portion of your readers. Why? Their Internet service provider (ISP) or e-mail program uses a spam filter. These software programs search for words and phrases that are typical of spam and assign each incoming e-mail a "score." If your e-mail has too many of these words and phrases, you receive a high score, and you may be blocked. TOP 20 "KILLER" WORDS/PHRASES YOU MAY BE USING While there are other words that will cost you more "points" than these do (e.g. sexual phrases), here are the most common "trigger" words and phrases that you may be using in your e-zine: WHAT'S A PUBLISHER TO DO? You have two choices when it comes to beating the filters. One is to avoid using these words and phrases altogether. I've found that hard to do. For example, in a recent issue, I discussed how to use your e-zine to increase business. Unfortunately the word "increase" cost me a fat 1.4 points in SpamAssassin, one of the most popular filter programs. Your second choice is to disguise these words and phrases in clever ways by inserting keyboard symbols within them and/or replacing a letter in them with a symbol. The trick is not to make it too cryptic - you want your readers to be able to understand what you're saying. For example, in my e-zine, I use "fr*ee" for free. While some spam filters pick up on this trick and penalize you for doing it by adding onto your score, I've found that the points this tactic costs you penalize you much less than using the words and phrases themselves. It's not a perfect solution, but it's working for now. TEST BEFORE YOU SEND It's a great idea to test how YOUR e-zine stacks up before you send it out. The good news is you can do this for FREE. Lyris' Content Checker (http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker) tells you how your e-zine ranks in Spam Assassin. All you do is copy your e-zine text and paste it into the box on their site. They'll run your free report and e-mail a copy to you. It usually arrives within minutes. The report will tell you exactly which words are costing you points. Usually you should only be concerned if your score is over 5 points. If so, you can either delete those words or disguise them, as I mentioned above. I test each issue of my e-zines in Content Checker before I publish them, and often I'm surprised (and relieved) that my score is low. That makes me a happy publisher. : ) (c) 1999-2002 Alexandria K. Brown ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is author of the award-winning manual, "Boost Business With Your Own E-zine." To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/
MORE RESOURCES:
Spam-Blocker - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
FTC Botches Fight on SPAM, Microsoft Takes Over the Battle While the Federal Trade Commission is busy fighting over definitions of "What is SPAM;" Microsoft and Bill Gates are taking it to the enemy. Today Microsoft announced another case and legal action, which is being taken against a spammer who is in Germany. Spam - Its Whats For Breakfast The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is head for my computer. It holds the secrets to my day. Beware of the Newest Activity Online: Phishing No. I'm not talking here about the outdoor activity enjoyed by many. Three Faces of SPAM Like everybody who will ever read this, I get spam in my e-mail. Mine seems to fall into one of three categories. How To Stop Spam I imagine you have seen, heard about, or already know what spam is. But just in case you don't, it is unsolicited and unwanted emails that arrive in your email inbox from a person or company that you don't know. Anti Trackback and Comment Spam Methods What is spam ? Spam is text or URL, in one or several exemplars, neither being waited nor wished, not having, neither directly nor from its shipper, no relationship neither with the recipient nor with a possible resource related to the recipient. How does spam appears in blogs ? Through the comments' body and commentator's URL. Customers Demand Internet Privacy .. Demand for Spam? It exists Do you like spam? No, I'm not kidding. Everybody knows what spam is, almost everybody seems to have learned by heart simple advice like "do not click ?" "do not respond?" , "do not buy?" but--On March 23, 2005 Mirapoint and the Radicati Group, a consulting and market research firm, released preliminary results of their end-user survey on email hygiene. Why Is Spam Such a Problem? Spam can be a lot more damaging than you might think. Obviously, they are the most annoying thing that you can receive through your inbox, but it goes deeper than that. Take Back Control of Your Inbox: Eliminate Annoying and Potentially Harmful E-mails Are you tired of spam stealing your time, your money, your bandwidth and your hard disc space?The time you devote each day to sort and delete spam from your inbox could be put to much better use. In the European Union alone, the working hours employees are spending on sorting and deleting spam is costing the companies and estimated 10 billion euros every year! By manually sorting out spam after it has reached your inbox you are loosing time and money, as well as bandwidth and space. How Spammers Fool Spam Blacklists - And How to Stop Them Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of spam tools coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. Is Spam Affecting Your Business Email? 5 Ways Spam Is Affecting Your Business And what we can all do to prevent it.If you had only just got online, and received your first few emails, you may be forgiven for thinking you had hit paydirt. A War on SPAM: Attacking The Evil As most small, medium and large businesses in this country have seen the SPAM Emails have hurt our productivity and caused excessive costs.Here are a few very interesting web links on this issue and the FTC report on SPAM to Congress. What to Do to Avoid Getting Banned How would you feel if you found a link on the web that was interesting to you but when you click the link it takes you to a page that is total rubbish? You are not only disappointed but it also wastes your time. Unfortunately, this is often true in many cases. What To Do When You Get Spam When you go to your mailbox and find pieces of junk mail mixed in with important correspondence, you throw it out. It is a mild nuisance and you probably don't even give it a second thought. The Anti Spam Challenge - Minimizing False Positives Email is the quintessential business communication tool, so when it doesn't work like it's supposed to, business suffers. Anti spam software is designed to protect your inbox from unwanted messages, but unless your system is properly trained even the best software misses the mark and flags legitimate messages as spam. Where Did The Word Spam Come From? We've all become familiar with the term spam. It's become so commonplace that even people who never use computers are familiar with the term spam. Are You A Spam Zombie? Over the past few years you've all become familiar with the terms spam, spam filter, whitelists, blacklists and a whole myriad of other terminology associated with the problem of spam. You now have to add a new and extremely worrying phrase to that list - spam zombie. Kill The Messenger (Service) You are familiar with the software applications that you run on your computer, but you may not be familiar with the dozens of programs running in the background on your computer. These programs, called "services" handle tasks like event logging, spooling files to the printer, and networking. Stop Spam: How To Escape The Spam Hell-Hole If you're anything like me, you're pretty sick of it, and just want it to stop. What? Spam, of course.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
