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Table of contents

Practical Methods for Combating Spam

AOL reports it blocks approximately 1 billion spam e-mails per day

Agenda for Today

How Internet E-Mail Works

Slide 5

SMTP suffers from the following shortcomings…

How Spammers Exploit Internet E-Mail

A Few Years Ago: Open Relays

More Recently: Cheap Broadband

Tools to Fight Spam

Blacklists and Whitelists

Distributed 'Bulk-Measurement' Tools

Problems with Distributed 'Bulk-Measurement' Tools

Distributed Spam-Reporting Centers

Problems with Distributed Spam-Reporting Centers

Sender-Verification Tools

Problems with Sender-Verification Tools

Content Filters

Problems with Content Filters

Bayesian Content Filters

Problems with Bayesian Content Filters

Best Option

False Positives

Profile of the Ideal Anti-Spam Tool

SpamAssassin and MIMEDefang

SpamAssassin

SpamAssassin (CONT.)

Calling SpamAssassin

Examples of Rules

Check for Sender/Relay Mismatches

Force a Retry

Force a Retry (Cont.)

Check the HELO string

Use Open-Relay Blacklists

Examples of Other Rules

Summary