Unless you live in a cave --and one without a computer at that-- you're very familiar with the huge time waster that sifting through mountains of email spam can be. And while spam is a huge annoyance for employees and end users everywhere, the real costs for businesses are in time and money and they're increasing every day. As costs rise, IT people (at SMEs in particular) are desperate for ways to deal with it effectively.

This articles explains how spammers cook up a spam message. This includes all the ingredients and directions on how they cook the ultimate spam delicacy!

Ingredients:
A complete and total lack of ethics
A good-sized serving of greed
One bushel of unnecessary products
One large cup of business ruthlessness
A dash of familiarity with spam filters
Several packages of innocent victims

Cooking Instructions:
The most important step in preparing the perfect spam is sanitization.

With every advancement in anti spam software, the spammers become more desperate and more inventive. They have even discovered how to take advantage of standard operations of most e-mail servers.

It's called NDR (Non Delivery Receipt) Spam or backscatter. Have you ever received a message in your inbox saying that something you sent was undeliverable or bounced? Spammers are now using this courtesy response to get their information in your inbox.

Your brave anti-spam software works hard to defend your inbox from all those messages about enlarging... um.... various things. Even more important, your spam buster also helps protect you from less-embarrassing --but more dangerous-- phishing scam emails. But not entirely safe. Just in case a big bad phishing scam does get through to your inbox, it's important to know how to spot it.