Stop Spam
Just Delete It!

Recent reports believe that nearly one quarter of all emails sent to businesses may be spam (unsolicited advertisements). Valuable company time is wasted deleting these annoying emails.

SurfControl, an email filtering company, conducted a survey by polling 1,400 office workers and IT professionals. They found that 9 in 10 would support legislation restricting pornographic spam and wanted criminal penalties imposed on misleading and false information. The workers want Congress to act against spam. There were anti-spam bills in the last session of Congress, but they failed to pass.

The Congress and the Federal Trade Commission are hosting a three-day public “Spam Forum”. They are expected to investigate several issues surrounding spam: legal, financial and technical.

Microsoft’s Hotmail has restricted the amount of outgoing email a person may send to 100 emails per day. It is believed that this will restrict their 120 million users, discouraging spammers from using Hotmail for bulk email. Microsoft also maintains an in-house “blocklist” of spammers and uses San Francisco based Brightmail for their filtering software.

What can a small business do to reduce incoming spam?
1.) Don’t respond. Responding qualifies the email address, which then may be resold to another bulk email company.
2.) Open multiple email accounts. Use free services like Yahoo and Hotmail. You can have an email account for professional communications, one for friends and family, and one for junk email.
3.) Install filtering software on your computers. One example of filtering software is Mail Washer (www.mailwasher.net). Their free version is a great place to start. It analyses incoming email and warns you of suspected junk mail and viruses, allowing you to delete before downloading. It will bounce back unwanted emails, making your email address appear invalid to the sender.

Expect email advertisements to become more sophisticated in the future. Movie clips will be embedded into emails, assaulting us with inventive, attention getting technology.

In this digital world, spam is inevitable. Don’t get mad, just hit “Delete”!