Product Reviews

When issue number 1 of Shopper hit the streets in March 1988, the only problem you had with spam was avoiding eating the horrible stuff. Sadly, these days it's a menace that chews up an endless amount of our time, in both trying to prevent it and getting rid of it. Experts believe that up to 85 per cent of all worldwide email traffic is spam and, looking at my mailbox, I can believe it.

So why do you need to spend money on a book on spam when the obvious answer is to buy spam-killing software? The answer is that a spam killer is only partly successful - I have Norton Anti-Spam

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but still get spam - so the best line of attack is to understand the problem, which means reading up on it. At the time of writing, I can find only two suitable books on the subject. I thought this one from SAMS was expensive at £22 but the alternative, Anti-Spam Toolkit (Osborne McGraw Hill), is even more pricy at £33.

Author Jeremy Poteet tells you what you need to know to understand both where spam comes from and what dangers might lie within. Many unwanted messages are just a bloody nuisance but some can harm your system and cause you many hours of grief getting things back to how they should be.

Poteet starts by explaining how spammers harvest addresses, which is food for thought for anyone who has ever put their email address on the net. He goes on to discuss the way spammers operate and the dangers that lurk in attachments. He also provides advice about how to apply spam filters, guard against viruses and use web-based email securely.

The writing style isn't overly technical so, even if you're not a computing expert, you won't have trouble understanding the content. And when you know your enemy, you're better prepared to fight it.