A study by the FTC has found that ISP filters and anti-spam technologies can block almost 95% of spam sent to email addresses. The study also reveals that “Masking” emails is an effective method to thwart spammers.


A study by the FTC has found that ISP filters and anti-spam technologies can block almost 95% of spam sent to email addresses.

The report studied three main aspects of spam:

E-mail address harvesting
The effectiveness of spam filtering by ISPs and
The effectiveness of using “masked” email addresses.

For the study, the FTC created 150 new email accounts – 50 from an ISP that didn’t have spam filters, and 50 each at two different ISPs that had spam filters. The FTC posted these email addresses on message boards, blogs, chat rooms and so on.

The study showed that spammers were still harvesting the email addresses posted on websites, but some chat rooms and such took preventive measures against spammers.

The study lasted for 5 weeks and the result was:

Email addresses from the ISP with no spam filters received 8,885 spam messages.
Email addresses from one ISP with spam filters received 1,208 spam messages and
Email addresses from the other ISP with spam filters received 422 spam messages.

The first ISP with spam filters blocked 86.4% of spam received. The second ISP with spam filters blocked 95.2% of spam received.

The study also found that “Masking” email addresses was an effective method of avoiding harvesting by spammers.

“Masking addresses involves altering an e-mail address to make it understandable to the recipient but confusing to automated harvesting software. For example, an e-mail address such as johndoe@ftc.gov could be altered to appear as john doe at FTC dot gov.” [Source]

The study concluded by demonstrating how effective ISP’s spam filters are and by suggesting “Masking” as an effective way to avoid spammers.

To view the complete report by FTC, click here.

You will need Adobe Acrobat to view this report. To download Adobe Acrobat, click here.

 

 

 

 

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