Blocking Spam on a large scale is very difficult for Internet Service Providers and other large organizations that contain a membership or clientele that have different needs, requirements and expectations.

When we put our filters in place (and make adjustments), we look to block as much unwanted and abusive mail as possible while doing our best to make sure that no wanted or vaild mail gets blocked and rejected. Some members and companies are willing to take the risk of tighter Spam blocking with the understanding that good mail will get sometimes get tagged as spam, where others are not willing to take as much risk to contain Spam.  Therein lies the quandry.

To add to the complexity of the situation, spammers continue to push the game forward by inventing new and tricky ways to get around the common filters and mechanisms used to block their unwanted and abusive mail.  Every day new and better software and methods are developed to block this abuse, and spammers are inventing new tricks and ways to defeat them and go undetected.

It would be easy to simply block all drugs, mortgages, realestate, sexual content and foreign countries - but that would also cause all kinds of problems for members in our community that wish to receive such materials.

So what do we do?

We've developed a system that utilizes a filtering process that does a very deep analysis on specific grammar, phrases, words, websites, gimmicks and mail delivery and spoofing tricks. This deep analysis includes an advanced scoring system that gives a weighted value to each 'infraction' and totals up a score (like grading a paper), which is compared to a default score to judge whether a message is spam or not.

If no new spam were written, no new technology was developed and time was frozen - this filtering system would be PERFECT.

Unfortunately, it's an advanced game of 'tug of war' where new tricks to get around the filtering are developed and utilized, and we continue to develop our system to combat them.

So while you may get a flood of a certain type of spam from time to time, you should also notice that it 'stops suddenly' as we combat that spam (or tricks), to keep the spam at bay.

Rest assured, almost every day we develop more code to our ever evolving spam system to keep it "heads above the rest" and combat the various methods of spam and abuse.

How did I get on all these spammer E-Mail lists?

There are a few common and tricky methods that Spammers use to gain mail addresses :
1. Other Mailing Lists you may be on
2. Someone sending a joke or notice/advertisement where they put you and 100 other people in the CC: field for all to see. A common and foolish mistake - always use a blind list (BCC:) when sending mail to MANY people.
3. Having your E-Mail address on a website. Spammers will sometimes "spider" domains, searching web content for addresses.
4. Own a domain and have the address listed with your registrar (Network Solutions, Verisign, Register.com, etc.)
5. Having an unsecure mail server (at your office or your ISP) where Spammers can probe for addresses.
6. Mail blasing using common E-Mail address names, then send a ton hoping some hit in a 'can't lose' drive-by. Example : john@domain.com instead of john29@domain.com.

There are other methods, of course, but those are the most common methods.

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