Spam

Unsolicited email, known as spam, accounts for around 80% of all emails sent on the internet today. Spam email is typically emails trying to entice the user to buy some product over the internet. Most of these emails offer ways to make money easily, or miracle products.

Many people, especially those with publicised email addresses, face a barrage of spam emails daily, which can not only take a long time to sift through, but can open up the big possibility of accidentally deleting that all important message hidden amongst them.

The costs created by spam are unaccountable for. With lost hours by almost all computer users each day due to sifting through countless unwanted messages, missing genuine messages, the extra resources required on mail servers for this unprecedented amount of traffic, and the regular blacklisting of genuine mail servers due to them being high jacked by spammers are just some of the many problems generated by this worldwide problem.

Anti spam software can be implemented at a variety of levels. Many ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) can offer spam filtering as a paid for option, which will stop most spam from even reaching your computer, reducing the load on your internet connection and computer. One of the drawbacks of this type of service is you typically have little or no control over the spam filtering, leaving you in the situation where some spam continues to come through, and the filters stop some genuine emails from ever reaching you.

For corporate networks, spam filters can be installed on the mail servers, allowing the network admin to control the settings, and even allow some fine tuning by the end users themselves.

Personal spam filters can quite often be the best solution, since they allow you to set it up yourself, and see clearly what is classed as spam since it works its way to a spam folder within your email client, allowing you to correct it easily when mistakes are made. This gives you maximum control with the minimum effort to refine the rules of what is and what isn’t spam.