Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Exchange Server Anti-spam Filters

By Mark Victor Balotelli

Spam filtering email can equally be described as the organization and processing of email in regard to a particular criterion. A software program for spam filtering is responsible for sorting incoming mail to pull out and identify spam (junk mail). It is common for exchange spam filters to be installed on PCs, network servers and mail servers. Exchange Spam filters are capable of spam recognition in addition to averting its delivery. The roles played by a spam email and exchange spam filters are diametrically opposed in the sense that the efficiency of spam is realized when it evades filters while the efficiency of spam filters is realized when it recognizes spam.

Spam mail can generally be regarded as unethical email that accumulates and lacks suitable header information. Spam email equally performs involuntary tracking after being opened thus spreading spyware as well as viruses. This unsolicited email generally plays the role of advertising the services and products of a particular company to potential customers who do not have any association to the company. It is common to find spam emails that are generally malicious rather than advertising the company services and products. In such instances, senders device an approach of making emails appear similar to spam with the prospects that recipients will visit a website and consequently allow virus downloading onto their particular computers.

Other than spreading malicious Trojans and viruses, spam perpetuates phishing scams and these are the reasons that make spam filters an appropriate means of protecting the computer and network as well as cutting junk mail out. Exchange spam filters work by making comparisons between parameters involving incoming mail as well as lists entailing configurable rules. The settings of a spam filter may for instance be geared towards checking an incoming mails subject heading for terms related to pharmaceuticals, pornography and other common spam products.

The subject headings that spam is generally inclusive of are innocuous and personable and this increases the complication for the general spam ISP filters to differentiate between email that is legitimate and spam. Thus, certain spam emails have a chance of penetrating the internet mail servers onto the connected private networks and end-users. This is why most network administrators install spam filters and this is equally true with end-users who work from home. These are the sort that require intense configuration in order to catch junk mail and more so that which goes past spam filters that are configured online.

Exchange spam filter has a similarity to software in that not all of them are equal. There is presently a spam filter that is considered intelligent and based on statistical methodology. This program makes a comparison between all incoming emails and the set of rules which are user-defined before identifying spam on the basis of mathematical probabilities. In the easiest configuration, junk mail is passed onto a spam folder by an exchange spam filter while legitimate mail is passed into the inbox. The assignments are reviewed by the user and the mistakes corrected. Since the exchange spam filter program has the capacity of remembering corrections, it ensures that such mistakes are not repeated in the future.

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