Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Spam: The PDF Spam and Protecting Your Children

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 use of junk mail with PDF attachments takes up even more Internet bandwidth. This is because PDF files are generally much larger than the embedded pictures and graphics used in image spam. Image spam is typically in GIF format; PDF files are upto 3 times the size of these files.

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.

Email Filters - Your email service comes with email filters built in. You can use these to filter your child's email into specific folders, and filter spam into the trash folder. This involves setting up rules that your email program will follow in determining what action to take on incoming messages: to let it through to the inbox, send it to trash or to block the sender.

JavaScript: The spammer can use Javascript that will ensure that the spam is only visible when the email is loaded. This type of spam can only be prevented using anti-spam software that decodes or blocks the java script.

Be sure to log into your child's email account on a regular basis to monitor the incoming and outgoing messages, and to ensure that the spam filter and spam block are working appropriately.

About the Author:

No comments: