SPAM

SPAM is unsolicited, bulk email. Unsolicited means that the Recipient did not give permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having basically the same content. According to wikopedia.org, there are over 90 billion SPAM email messages sent per day using an enormous amount of bandwidth, storage space and giving the recipients enormous headaches. Email addresses are “harvested” from SPAMMERs mostly from addresses found in web page content and from people entering addresses in response to a question online.

As a tip to avoid future SPAM – never include your email address in a web page or give it to a non trusted organization. Instead of having text displaying your email address use an image of the text that makes your address visible while not allowing the address to be harvested. Alternatively you can have your email administrator setup special email addresses that “autorespond” with your some text that includes your real email address.

Many email providers include SPAM filters but these filters are not accurate and often misidentify SPAM content. It may also require you to go to a web site to review emails that were flagged as SPAM. Email applications such as Outlook 2003 also include SPAM filters but again they are not that accurate. We have had good results with a product call Cloudmark that checks all incoming email for SPAM. Cloudmark updates SPAM signatures and sources very regularly so their product is quite accurate when compared to the alternatives. The cost is around $4 per month and there is a 30 day evaluation edition available. Check out www.cloudmark.com if you are having a problem with “wonderful SPAM”.