Appendix A: Combating Spam with Exchange Server and Outlook

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And in Parting…

Love it or hate it, e-mail spam is a part of every Internet user’s life, and it will remain a part of our lives for some time to come. Everyone has strong feelings about spam, but very few people understand spam or the spammers who send it. During the course of this book, I’ve tried to show spam from an unbiased point of view, from both a factual and objective standpoint. Because spam and spammers are often a delicate subject for someone to advocate, spammers are often not given a voice to tell their story. For their part, spammers can be likened to marketing gurus of the Internet and must retain their anonymity for fear of backlash or dislike. Living such a shadowed life, spammers have had a very negative stereotype cast on them—a stereotype that by its nature is irrefutable. In this, however, spammers are highly successful at what they do. With simple tools, they are able to sell millions of products with almost no direct cost or overhead, and although spam might not be morally or ethically correct, it is highly effective, and those who send spam are often highly intelligent people.

I hope that by now you have a better understanding of the characteristics a spammer possesses and the technology they use to send spam. This conclusion serves as my own personal comments and reflections of both spam and spammers, whereas this entire book has shed some light on the nebulous subject that is spam. Hopefully, it has answered many of your questions and given you an in-depth look at how spammers operate at both a technical and mental level. The next time you open your in-box to see spam, you won’t curse or swear, but instead you’ll see it in an different light—as a kind of art form that is complex and dynamic. The messages can be likened to masterpieces that have been crafted; there’s complex work involved in harvesting e-mail addresses, passing undetected under spam filters, and tempting the user to buy a product that might not be needed to begin with.

Remember, at the end of the day, spam is just e-mail and can easily be deleted with a touch of a finger.

—Spammer-X

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