Official Spam Filter - Bayesian Filter to Fight back Spammers

by: Micky Sing

The most prolific and path breaking innovation of last century had been the developments in the communication field. It literally changed the business working, product marketing, support services and most importantly, the advertisement campaigns.

But just like all goods things comes with a price, so was the communication. It brought in the problems of Spam Emails. Automated mailers with mass mailing capabilities, growing marketing dependencies on this tool have seen the large losses in terms of time and money.

There have been many ways of targeting spam mails like blacklisted domains, banned IPs, words in subject and many more. The spammers have always found out a way to change their identity. But here is the catch. The spammers are being paid to send the message. They can change their Domains, IPs, subject lines, but how much they can play with the contents? And that’s where content based filtering comes into focus. Now we can understand that by targeting and focusing on message body, there is a better chance of filtering spam emails.

Apart from the usual spam emails, the new menace has been created by the "phishing emails" targeting primarily eBay and PayPal accounts. These emails come as a "Last Warning", "Attention Required", "Password Change Required" or "Your account is suspended" among many more. These mails appear to have come from eBay or PayPal and provide a link to their own page.

These pages are designed just like the original pages and the unsuspecting user ends up providing his/her sensitive information like username/password or Credit Card Information to these duplicate pages. Here I would like to add one piece of advice to all users that you should always see where the link is taking you by seeing the tool tip and then if sure, follow the link.

The role of content in marking the mail spam or not spam has been achieved using the Bayesian filter. Together with the Black List of spammers and White list of trusted emails ids, is the best technique to counter the spam. The most interesting fact is that Spam Filter with Bayesian algorithm is a self learning filter. The more you use, the more secure you shall be within a matter of few days.

The spam filter integrate easily with popular emails clients such MS outlook and Outlook Express. With due course, up to 98% of the spam mails can be stopped from entering your Inbox. The Spam Filter for Outlook Express and Spam Filter for Microsoft Outlook, with the features of White List/Black List and properly used Bayesian Algorithm will help prevent spam mails, phishing mails and fraud mails from bothering you further.

There has been a considerable increase in the spam mails containing Non English Characters also. The Bayesian Algorithm based Spam Filter also must have the capability to parse non English characters and mark as spam mail.

To get rid of continuous spam mails, phishing mails, fraud mails and Non-English mails, you might like to try Official Spam Filter for Outlook Express 1.2 and Official Spam Filter for Microsoft Outlook 1.2. Official Spam Filter has the capability to seamlessly integrate with MS Outlook and Outlook Express and provide following features:

• Bayesian Algorithm for Anti Spam Filtering

• Auto Learning Bayesian Filter to challenge Spam Emails

• White List of Trusted Email Address

• Custom Black List

• Individual Marking of Spam/Not Spam Emails

• Optional feature to block Non-English Emails

• Complete Mail Header Information

For more information, visit http://www.officialspamfilter.com/spam_filter_features.htm

AviPreview/VideoLan/DivFix - For incomplete video files...

by: Parth Barot

I am very fond of downloading avi movies from net using p2p (peer to peer) softwares like Kazaa Lite k++,BitTorrent etc.I am using this for downloading new movies which are of full DVD quality and in very less size than the original DVD.They are comressed with Divx/Xvid codec in AVI file which is MPEG4 video compression format.And for Audio, different formats like mp3,ogg,AC3 can be used.Due to this, its size decreases in a big ratio of Bitrate per Second of both Audio-Video.So these files are of "MAX QUALITY MIN SIZE" we can say.

What the main problem here is we don't know about the quality of movies until we can see some part of it.I mean to say if we are downloading and say 15 MB downloaded then how you will see it?You have to see to know the quality of video and Audio.So here is the answer.

You can use AviPreview for viewing incomplete AVIs.Yes it is good tool because it is very small in size and no need to install.You just have to load the file in it.Before,you must stop downloading the file and then load it in AviPreview.And you are done!it will show you the movie upto it can.And you can decide what to do.

Now say AviPreview is not able to play the file at some point( At certain Frame in video if some error is there then it will stop playing file after that frame.).then what to do?I have the solution.

It is called DivFix.Yes,This tool is used for Re-Indexing of the AVI file.Don't need to install it.Just load the file and it will make new AVI file for you.Then you can see it and decide to stop download or not.

Another good player is VideoLan player.Setup of this player is about 10 to 19 MB.Yes too big but it is very useful.It contains all the codecs for Video-Audio and can play any file(Except .RM - real media files. May be newer version has inculded .RM support.).It can even play any file if it is incomplete. Yes you heard it right.it is avi/mpg/dat/wmv don't worry.VLC can play the file which is incomplete also.And it also plays direct streams from Internet URLs if your net connection speed is enough to take load of streaming!.

See more tutorials on my blog http://www.blogcharm.com/parthbarot

Clearing Common Errors on Your Printer

by: Karlos Smith

Ever have blinking lights on your inkjet or laser printer that just will not go away? Ever install a new ink cartridge in your printer and it still thinks the old one is there? Well, instead of just getting angry at the printer or hunting around for your manual, you can try one simple thing: unplug it.

This technique has a few names that all mean the same thing: cycling the printer, resetting the printer or clearing the printer’s memory. Now unplugging your printer may seem like a low-tech solution to complex problems, and in reality it is. But, for problems like blinking error lights it is the only solution and also, it is typically the first one that will be recommended to you by a technician working for HP, Lexmark, Epson etc. They will recommend it right away if you install a new cartridge and it is registering as empty. If your printer isn’t registering it full, then that means it still thinks the old cartridge is in there and the memory needs to be cleared by unplugging it.

The first thing to remember about this solution is that unplugging the printer is not the same as turning the printer off. If you have error messages or cartridge communication problems, then turning off the printer is not going to do anything. It has to be physically unplugged from the wall or the back of the printer itself (you don’t have to unplug the printer from the computer). The second and most important thing is that the printer must be unplugged for at least one minute. It takes at least one minute for all the electricity to be cut off from the printer to allow it to completely reset and clear its memory. If you just unplug it for a few seconds, when it comes back on it is going to pick up right where it left off.

While this technique will not fix every problem, it is still a very quick and easy solution to a lot of annoying printer problems and it is always the best place to start when one of those problems arises.

Fight The Hunters - Get A Shield Against Spam

by: Ted Peterson

In their residential laboratories they cook industrial amounts of spam following special spam recipes and use these dangerous weapons to waste your days and living powers!

Meet it face to face: spam - unsolicited, unwanted, mass broadcast of advertisements to newsgroups and email addresses. Often used by con artists, crooks and pornographers. Steals bandwidth and clogs email boxes… convincing enough.

Their army grows day by day and soon you can easily observe a continuously increasing amount of junk mail which shows up in your email box or on your favorite news group. They are specialists in cosmic intrusions and their single concern is to get your attention a-la Machiavelli: every way fits to serve the “glorious” purpose! They hunt your precious attention ignoring all ethical rules of advertising, abusing your email and clogging your channels of stellar communication.

This kind of war is apt to raise envy of the Star Trek producers as the number of victims is larger by far: the recipients and the entire Internet commerce are irreversibly affected.

It would be fair enough to surf safely the web and enjoy its usefulness. But unfortunately safety means caution, thus you cannot freely join Internet mailing lists or Usenet groups and sometimes you might consider surfing the web anonymously. Sounds more like hiding instead of fighting…

Until you reach the information you need, you will be kindly informed about the last sensational pornographic achievement of the world known actress (really world known; as spam makes it possible), about the latest discovery in the household tools field and the lowest prices for airplane tickets of the magnificent South African airline company. This is how your life gets fulfilled with an endless flow of world events and your winter nights do not seems so empty anymore!

Whatsoever, those who not enjoy this certain kind of “entertainment” form coalitions and build a strong resistance against the impertinent intrusions of “the Others”. Not all of them are computer experts but everybody needs the Internet space and its unlimited resources. They are not powerless as long as they get help from the military center of software creators ready to serve peaceful folks in their needs for productive communication.

Now serious! The simplest way to fight against the junk mail is applying for software specialized in filtering your mail and detecting the spam automatically. Such programs are able to make you partially or entirely free from “marvelous” but useless data by isolating junk mail sent to your mail box. Your freedom and productiveness depends on the powerfulness of the program you choose. So, stop victimizing and get equipped!

And if you aren’t really that good in the specific computer matters, you might try Spam Monitor 2.5, a program designed especially for you, dear non expert. Besides all, with it you’ve got the power!

Microsoft Office Users are at Risk of Information Disclosure

by: Mykola Rudenko

By publishing Microsoft Office documents on the web or by sending them via e-mail, you are at risk of information disclosure.

Since Microsoft Office is so widely accepted, Microsoft Office documents are an extremely popular way of Business-To-Business information exchange. While it is important to provide your partners or customers with extensive and easily accessible information, every company always has private information that shouldn't go outside and is intended for company employees eyes only.

Numerous case studies suggest that most of the companies that use Microsoft Documents, are not aware of the potential threats contained in the files they send outside or publish on the Internet. Let's do a simple experiment: Start Microsoft Word, create a new document and type "Hello, World!". Save it and take a look at the file size. I've got 20 kilobytes with my MS Word 2003. How is it that 13 characters of text require a 20 thousand character file to be saved on your disk? What are the other thousands of characters used for?

Every Microsoft Office document is a Structured Storage, a universal data format developed by Microsoft. Structured Storage may contain various pieces of textual and binary data. This is how they save images and text into the same file, for example. In addition to your text, its formatting, images and embedded objects, your Microsoft Word documents also contain technical info that is usually referred to as metadata.

You can get a very simple example of the information contained in your documents metadata by taking a look at the Document Properties Dialog (Main Menu: File/Properties). As you can see, some of the fields in this dialog are automatically filled in and automatically saved with your document: Title, Author, Company, Last Saved By, etc. Even these, the most basic metadata examples, may put your company into an embarrassing situation. You may not want to publish the names of your subcontractors, or unveil your information sources, etc. But, you should also know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the information contained in your documents is normally not shown. Yet, it can be easily extracted by your recipients with metadata extraction utilities or simply by turning on specific options in the Microsoft Office applications.

Metadata may also contain your company employees notes, corrections and even previous versions of the document that were for some reason rejected. Office documents incrementally collect info about the authors, correctors, editors and their contributions. Normally, your comments and the rejected versions of a document are not intended for the document recipient's eyes. However, a person that is sending out your documents or publishing them on the web may not be aware of the additional info contained in the metadata. Typically, you do not create agreements, contracts, invoices, reports and more from scratch. You use another document as a template. This way you can easily unveil the details of the contract that were used as a template. In some cases, this may cause serious financial or legal problems to your company.

OK. Now, you are aware of the problem. But is there a standard workaround? Unfortunately, no. Microsoft does not provide a standard feature to clear the metadata. There are guides available on the net that teach you how to check and clear the most threatening pieces of metadata. I think this is not a good idea. Manual processing takes time and there are no guaranties that you haven't missed something important.

Recently, I've came across a 30 dollar utility that can potentially save you millions by protecting your company from getting sued by your customers or beaten by your competitors who could use the metadata from your office documents against you. Smart PC Solutions offers for $30 their Document Trace Remover...the product that inspired this article. This utility is a great leap in securing your office documents. The program automatically analyzes your documents and allows you to either remove certain pieces of metadata or substitute them with the info that you would like to present to your recipients. Document Trace Remover can also operate in a batch mode. This allows you to easily check and secure multiple files at once.

I believe it is a good idea to start checking your documents immediately. Visit the Smart PC Solutions web site for more info about Document Trace Remover:

http://www.smartpctools.com/trace_remover

or use the following link to download the program directly:

http://www.smartpctools.com/files/dtrsetup.exe

It is a free download. They offer a 30 day trial.

PC Protection, The Latest On PC Threats

by: Glenn Munn

Every single computer on the internet is at risk from PC threats which include viruses, Trojans spyware, adware, key loggers, the list goes on. Most people genuinely try by buying an anti-virus program or an anti-spyware package which will help but there are still many other problems that need to be addressed.

More and more people are using PC’s these days for internet banking, paying bills, online shopping, using programs to manage financial information, and much more. It’s great to be able to do all these things without stepping out the door, but what people are actually doing is storing some of their most valuable information on PC’s and if the proper precautions are not taken hackers can have a field day.

Hackers and virus writers are getting increasingly sophisticated every day. At the same time, people are storing more and more confidential information on their computers. A good hacker can enter an unguarded PC through your browser, download your, credit card numbers, social security numbers, your entire identity is there for them take and use at there discretion.

Most people realize that they should be taking some type of security measure, but they don't know where to begin. Before you ever risk all the data on your computer again, you need to know exactly where to begin locking your PC down or you are taking some serous risks.

I have been working in the IT industry for many years now and it has been a scary experience to see how PC threats have evolved. People need to seek good advice and put a system in place to protect their computers and themselves against the many PC threats.

I recommend people to use the Windows update feature, a trusted anti-virus package, a trusted anti-spyware package, and make sure they are set to auto update. These three things will certainly help guard against many of the nasty PC threats but other precautions still need to be taken to insure your PC protection.

I suggest people download and put to use the free information provided at www.yourpcprotection.com.

Digital Printing vs. the Traditional Method in Photography

by: John Sollars

Over the past years, technology has been continuously evolving and it has brought about improved graphics, artworks and printing. Newer breakthroughs in technology have also made printing affordable and easy to use.

For photographers too, printing has been made very easy and consultative. More photographers have switched from the old style to the modern enlarged printing with the use of digital inkjet printers.

With the modern use of digital cameras now taking into effect to make perfect digital shots, photographers no longer have to go through the process of scanning of the negatives from the pictures taken This is the one of the main reasons more photographers have switched over to the digital age technology.

Digital image printing is developed in corresponding software such as PhotoShop, CorelDraw and may other types of software. However, among them all, Photoshop is the most commonly used software application to meet the demands of clearer and precise digital prints. In fact, it has now become difficult for photographers to sell the equipment formerly used in the darkroom.

With the growth of printing technology, new issues have also sprung up, such as whether digital printing is really as aesthetic and long lasting. Critics wonder if digital printing can contain the same level of output as that of traditional images. For others, printing in inkjet printers is akin to imitating the original as they are printed with the use of ink, while the traditional method contained natural mixture for photography purposes. Nevertheless, even with the advancement in digital photo printing, a number of people still appreciate the old technique of printing.

In case you’re wondering about when the debate of digital printing over traditional was sparked off, it started with doubts over the long-lasting effect of inkjet prints over emulsion printouts. Critics have questioned if inkjet prints can endure the exposure longer and maintain their quality. However, some have proven that the traditional prints have not lasted as long and have slowly been fading in time as well. This observation strengthens the belief that no image can withstand exposure for a long period of time yet. Given that the developments in digital technology are ever increasing, questions and issues regarding its performance have been lessened for it has played its role well till date.

Inkjet prints have greatly contributed to giving an eventual effect in the uniqueness of images. The technique of inkjet printers involves spraying a number of tiny dots onto the paper, making the image sharper and more defined. This is perhaps a simple example of how the new printing technology has played its part of contributing to creativity and has now defined its own field of artwork.

The acceptance of inkjet prints has been quite unpredictable so far. In some exhibitions and art galleries, inkjet print designs are easily allowed, whereas some follow strict rules against the display of such prints. Alternatively, some designers still prefer the traditional emulsion prints to be part of their artworks. For those who rely on digital printing, the choice is based on practicality and reverting to the traditional technique is not longer financially viable. Digital printing has also made enlarging of prints and images much easier than traditional printing. It has been suggested that in time, when digital printing will continue its rise in the world of technology, many will make the switch over from the traditional method to the digital one.

The use of digital printing requires refinement in art skills, and accuracy and precision should be followed and maintained. To enhance printing abilities, the aid of Photoshop, or similar types of software can prove to be very useful for acquiring spectacular prints.

Cyan And Magenta Explained

Moving on to ink cartridges used in printers, anybody who has purchased these cartridges would know that there is no blue or red ink. Cyan certainly looks blue and magenta definitely looks red — but have you ever wondered why they simply don’t call them blue and red instead of cyan and magenta?

Here’s the explanation — both monitors and printers use different ways to produce colour. While a monitor is a light source, printers are light reflecting. The only common ground between the two is something known as dithering. It is the process of approximating a colour that cannot be displayed with uniformly dispersed dots of other colours.

This technique assigns differing colour values to adjacent pixels, thereby reducing the contrast between dots of different colours or shades and generates a more flowing, natural impression. When viewed from a distance, these colours seem to blend into a single intermediate colour. Dithering is similar to the half toning used in black-and-white publications to achieve shades of grey.

Coming back to the discussion, both monitors and printers use primary colours; however, a monitor uses primary additive colours red, green and blue, while printers use the primary subtractive colours cyan, magenta and yellow. In both cases, the primary colours are dithered to form the entire colour spectrum. Dithering breaks a colour pixel into an array of dots so that each dot is either made up of one of the basic primary colours or intentionally left blank to create white.

Cyan and magenta are in fact old printing terms for blue and red, but since some form of differentiation is needed between the additive and subtractive spectrum, cyan and magenta are here to stay!