Exchange Spam Blocker
Anyone who uses the Internet is familiar with spam, but to some email users the phenomenon is more harmful and bothersome than for others. Business owners have difficulties with identifying real messages from interested prospects from unsolicited mails. For business and personal assistance alike, software companies have created special anti-spam programs meant to block the access of unsolicited mail to inbox in more than 90% of cases. One intelligent tool is the Exchange first released by Microsoft in May 2004. The target market for this product consists of individual users and companies that receive unsolicited commercial emails in very large numbers. Exchange is based on Microsoft SmartScreen technology that helps with the identification of a message that has a spam potential. Starting from this option that allows one to determine which incoming email is spam, the user may stop the access of unsolicited mail messages at the gateway or at the mailbox. Initially there were tools that pre-dated the release of Exchange spam blocker. At present, Microsoft no longer provides updates for the former intelligent filters, in a clustered environment. The present version of the Exchange is capable of stopping

spam in the tracks, allowing for good business development. The Exchange relies on a combination of techniques meant to identify the messages that could be spam; thus, besides the use of the Bayes filtering, the tool scans the messages for spam keywords and analyzes the spam headers. After the identification of the spam messages, it is up to the computer user to decide whether to keep or delete the messages. There are versions of the Exchange that even notify a sender if his/her legitimate message has been taken for spam or not. Plus, the advantages of preventing spam on the server before reaching the computer are manifold: less virus attacks and no malware unauthorized installation. All in all, most of the tasks required for small business operations and personal usage should be covered by using the Exchange spam blocker. An issue with the 2003 version of the blocker used to be the impossibility to import or export blocked e-mails or send domains. Another problem is the fact that the user does not know how much spam is blocked or how well the filters are functioning. It is important to check the settings and learn about the best operational mode so that you can maximize the usage of your anti-spam tool.