Archives: January, 2011
How to Troubleshoot 501 5.7.1 Errors with Exchange
If you’ve ever had “501 5.7.1 This system is not configured to relay mail from…” errors when relaying email through Exchange, it means that your email client did not properly log on to the mail server because it failed the SMTP authentication check. (Jan 31, 2011)
Dictionary Spam Trends
Spammers often like to use a dictionary type of attack to reach users’ Inboxes. You have probably noticed that most spam now appears to come from your own email address. A dictionary attack is where spammers create or work off a list of addresses starting with the letter A, and move down the alphabet. (Jan 28, 2011)
Troubleshooting your mail server part 2
In Part 1 of Troubleshooting your email server, I showed you how to use telnet to determine whether or not your mail server is having communication problems on port 25. In this part, we’ll see how to test address resolution to check for DNS Server problems (Jan 27, 2011)
Four free Microsoft administration tools and much more
MS admin tools, security tools, how hackers hack your website, tools your users will ask you to install on their systems, how to create hard to break passwords, ... (Jan 26, 2011)
How Windows Search in Windows 7 flattened my email life
From XP to Windows 7 now, search has been getting progressively better on the Microsoft desktop. It is now getting really effective, quick and accurate to do searches for emails with Windows Desktop Search. (Jan 25, 2011)
Email Encryption: Is your email secure?
So, you’ve secured your mail server and implemented all the necessary security policies. You think all your data is safe now and your privacy is protected? Think again. What about your correspondence? (Jan 24, 2011)
World Business Guide 2011: New Year, Old Scam
Over the past 6 years, this scam has been called Euro Business Guide and World Business Directory, claiming thousands of victims and making thousands of dollars in the process. Why change a winning formula? In 2011 it’s back as the World Business Guide. (Jan 21, 2011)
12 New Terms for the Anti-Tech Dictionary
In case you missed it, Chris Bowlby, a BBC Mobile News contributor, wrote a fun little article about the evolution of techno-speak and how the unplugged portion (Internet-wise) of the world’s population had no clue what the plugged-ins were talking about. In response, he created some great new anti-tech words and phrases. The subject has obviously struck a chord with people who responded with flurry of their own contributions. (Jan 20, 2011)
The impact of IPv6 on message filtering systems
An interesting article was posted on Slashdot in December: "As public IPv4 addresses dwindle and carriers roll out IPv6, a new problem has surfaced.." In the short term, this is definitely going to be a problem for email security companies that rely strongly on DNSBLs or reputation-based systems. (Jan 19, 2011)
Troubleshooting your mail server part 1
It’s not unusual to get an end-user complaint about problems sending email or login attempts timing out. These issues often point to a specific client configuration or browser setting. But what if the situation involves more than a simple client feature, and has been reported by many end users? The first step is to determine if there is indeed a server communication problem. (Jan 17, 2011)
25 Most Common Mistakes in Email Security
The 25 most common mistakes in email security. (Jan 14, 2011)
Word of the Week: Pagejacking
Pagejacking is defined in Vircom’s Glossary of Spam Terms as “A form of spamming a search engine’s index (spamdexing) whereby spammers make a copy of a website and use it to redirect surfers to malicious websites.” This means that a website page (preferably one with a high page ranking) is copied (sometimes with meta-tags) and the traffic is filtered off to another site. (Jan 13, 2011)
Email Overload: Clear your inbox in a few easy steps
A few steps to help you use your inbox properly and quickly clear it. Based on methods proposed by Mark Hurst in his excellent book, Bit Literacy. (Jan 10, 2011)
Top 10 Exchange Blogs
So... you're still a busy-bee, aren't you? After the success of the "Top 10 Email Security Blogs" article, I decided to go further and provide you with Email Security Matters' Top 10 Exchange Blogs now. (Jan 05, 2011)
How To “Gently” Switch People to SMTP Authentication
There are still quite a few small and medium sized ISPs out there who use technology such as “POP before SMTP” to allow mail relaying. However as threats increase, it’s become standard operating procedure to require proper authentication from end-users to allow outbound mail relay. One of my customers came up with a fairly gentle way to ease their user base into using SMTP Authentication (SMTP AUTH). (Jan 04, 2011)
More Recent News
Grand Prize Winner Spam Survey
We are extremely pleased with the tremendous response that we have received to this point from our Fight Email Spam survey. As promised we have randomly selected winners of our gift card prizes and most recently,... (Feb 21, 2012)
Recent Spam Survey Winners
We are extremely pleased with the tremendous response that we have received to this point from our Fight Email Spam survey. As promised we have randomly selected winners of our gift card prizes and the grand prize... (Jan 23, 2012)
New Year's Resolution
We spend 8 to 10 (or more) hours a day at work - more time than we spend anywhere else - and our desks/workspaces are becoming our kitchen tables. But, do you realize that our desks are covered in more bacteria... (Jan 20, 2012)
