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SPAM
The resources in this link to the internet industry association provides links, documents and details of research being undertaken to assist you to protect your system from Spam
http://www.security.iia.net.au/australian_resources/security_issues/spam.html

Spam at ANU
Instructions on how you can set up a filter in your email client that will transfer spam to another mailbox.
How Do I Filter My Mail at http://doi.anu.edu.au/sds/SpamFAQ

The IIA National Spam Initiative
http://www.iia.net.au/nospam/
The IIA National Spam Initiative aims to empower all Australians on the internet, from corporate employees right through to home users, to better control the situation. As far as we know, this is the first project of its kind and scale to be undertaken anywhere in the world.

While the IIA is working with government in Australia to help discourage the sending of spam, as well as engaging in global discussions about the problem, the good news is that a range of commercial and free spam solutions are now available in Australia. Most of these work to intercept spam before they reach the end user and can result in a substantial improvement in the end user experience.

IIA-member suppliers of the products shown at http://www.iia.net.au/nospam/ under How to Get Your Free Trial have agreed to support our push to raise awareness of internet users in Australia about spam and how it can be managed. They have all agreed to commit to a minimum one-month free trial so that all users, whether corporate, small business or domestic, have the chance to try some options and find a solution that works best for them.

More suggestions to combat unsolicited mail :-
There's no way of stopping it all. Most people are experiencing the same increase. The spammers just keep getting new ways to get through filters that we run on the server. A lot of the names you see in email headers such as roaringpenguin, amavis and mIMEDefang are filtering software used on mail servers.

The system implemented on the ANU email gateway machines is a content filtering program MIMEDefang. The software opens each mail and performs a number of checks for Viruses, Suspicious Characters, Dangerous Attachments and finally spam.

The spam filtering is done by looking at the content of the message and scoring it against a set of rules. Each rule is worth a number of points and at the end of scanning the message, the system simply adds up the number of points which a particular message has scored. The more points that a message scores the more likely it is going to be spam.

Not all rules are weighted equally and there are positive and negative scoring rules. For instance in many junk emails you might see the phrase FREE!!! so this will score 1.2 points. However this could also be part of a legitimate email so other key phrases would need to trigger rules before it was marked as spam.

Below is a list of useful links. The first two refer to what is in place here at ANU.

http://staff.anu.edu.au/billboard/show_news.asp?nid=120 ANU - having trouble with email spam?

http://doi.anu.edu.au/sds/SpamFAQ.asp ANU - frequently asked questions

http://www.symantec.com/spamwatchSymantec - Spam watch

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/03/06/index2a.html Frying Spam by Webmonkey