Book details of 'Fighting Spam for Dummies'

Title	Fighting Spam for Dummies
Author(s)	John R. Levine, Margaret Levine Young, Ray Everett-Church
ISBN	0764559656
Language	English
Published	January 2004
Publisher	For Dummies

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Amazon.com info for Fighting Spam for Dummies

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virtualbookcase.com score: 5.0   Vote for this book

The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Fighting Spam for Dummies':

Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
Unsolicited commercial email--spam--has become the most frequent complaint among users of the Internet. Its blaring subject lines and gaudy content--repetitive at best and frequently offensive--have made it much harder to make productive use of computers. Fighting Spam for Dummies presents some techniques for keeping your email address off spammers' mailing lists and, when that fails, keeping junk mail out of your primary inbox with filters and other utilities. As a last resort, the book (which, oddly, has three co-authors of its 200 small pages) shows you how to adjust your email program so it doesn't automatically show pictures and is less likely to spread viruses. There's a fair bit of interesting material in this book, a lot of which has to do with the tricks spammers use to conceal their identities. You'll find detailed instructions on how to convert the header lines of a garbage message--complete with obfuscated URLs and fake IP addresses--into the real origin of the message. Of course, there's not much more to do once you've figured out that the message originated in Taiwan or Russia, but that's not the fault of the authors. Elsewhere in this slender handbook, you'll find click-by-click instructions for erecting filters and making other worthwhile configuration changes in Eudora, Netscape and Mozilla Mail, several versions of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, and several Webmail sites. --David Wall Topics covered: Where spam comes from and what you can do about it. Instructions for configuring email clients focus on software for Microsoft Windows.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Part one introduces the world of spam. Chapter one tells us that spam is bad and that spammers like to do it, but there is little substance to the material and a lot of oddly spam-like verbiage. Even though the authors outline the "dictionary" process (that generates addresses on a semi-random basis) in chapter two, they insist on trotting out the usual recommendations to limit exposure and prevent address harvesting. A confusing look at US law, in chapter three, says that the situation is confused. Chapter four does provide information about obtaining and deciphering email headers, but the attempts to be funny make it hard to understand. Part two deals with filtering spam. Chapter five has a generic description of filtering, but there is little useful content. Chapters six to ten describe menu items related to filtering in the Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo programs. Part three looks at filtering programs and services. Chapter eleven has a terse review list of major filtering programs (with some odd exceptions: SpamAssassin is not mentioned), a few spam filter review sites, and fairly detailed descriptions of POPfile and Spam Bully. A reasonable, if brief, outline of filtering services is given in chapter twelve. Chapter thirteen touches on a few items not previously detailed, but it is far from being a useful guide to the network and email administrators that it supposedly addresses. Part four is the usual "Part of Tens." Chapter fourteen lists the most common spam scams. The list of annoyances in chapter fifteen is mostly unrelated to spam. (For the one that is, dealing with popups, some fairly complex solutions are listed, and a simple one is missed-- turning off JavaScript and ActiveX works great. The cost to the user will vary with patterns of activity.) This book does provide some pointers to software based assistance with spam filtering and removal. However, even in relation to the minuscule size of the book the content is very thin. Repetition, editorializing, and attempted humour take the place of substantive information. "Stopping Spam" (see reviews) and "Removing the Spam" (see reviews) are from an older era, and address the issue from a perspective of users who were more used to manual email controls, as well as a time when spam was not the overwhelming majority of email. Even so, they dealt with the issue realistically and informatively, which this book does not. The current work is better than nothing, but only just. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2004
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Book description:

Find out how to make your inbox off-limits to spammers! Reclaim your inbox with filters and helpful hints! Stop choking on spam —here's how to report it and how to can it Spam giving you indigestion? Help is on the way! Although there's no magic pill yet, this little book is packed with practical tips for keeping much of that trash from ever reaching your inbox. Find out how spam filters work, which ones work best, and how you can become a global antispam warrior. Explanations in plain English "Get in, get out" information Icons and other navigational aids Tear-out cheat sheet Top ten lists A dash of humor and fun Discover how to: Give spammers the slip Complain to the right people Follow the header trail Block messages by sender Activate controls on different e-mail programs Install and use POPFile