Fighting Zombies and Robots
Date: Tuesday, April 01 @ 10:00:00 EDT
Topic: News about AthensGuy Web Hosting
Last week we developed and installed a significant update to our custom spam filtering software. We have eliminated email delivery delays, at least from our side, and put a dent on the volume of spam going into Inboxes from Zombies and Robots.
We and some of our customers were noticing delays in the delivery of some emails. These delays were due to the ever increasing volume of spam and virus emails delivered by zombie computers and botnet (robot) networks.
Zombie computers are computers that have been infected with software that allows someone from a remote location to take control of the computer and make it perform tasks, anonymously and automatically. So like the fictional human zombie, a computer zombie will be slow and controlled by a secretive person of nefarious intention. When a spammer has access to thousands of these zombie computers, he has what is referred to as a Botnet.
Botnets allow spammers to launch a spamming campaign by sending millions of spam emails from thousands of locations simultaneously. Because these zombie computers are distributed across various Internet Service Providers and countries, it is difficult to identify and block them in real-time.
We took a step back and reviewed the spam filtering process, software and results. While we don’t want to into details about what we did (the badguys might be reading this), we have both successfully eliminated delays and decreased the volume of spam originating from these botnets.
As always, we welcome feedback and comments regarding our spam filtering and email service – a service we provide at no cost to you. We will continue our vigil against the endless army of zombies and robots trying to reach your mailbox. While we will never be able to stop all the zombies (there are many kinds), we do what we can to help save you time.
Cordially,
Patrick MacDonald
Zombie Slayer
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