Less spam, more ham
By: Chris Peters
December 2, 2008
If you’re not familiar with the term, spam messages are annoying, unsolicited email messages (usually advertisements for bogus products). Depending on who you listen to, spam constitutes between 50 and 90 percent of all email traffic. In addition to violating the law by sending you emails that you didn’t ask for, spammers often use their messages to perpetrate fraud on the people who respond. Unless you’ve been offline for the past 15 years, you know all this and you’d never reply to a spam email. Nonetheless, this deluge of unwanted emails can overwhelm you, fill your inbox and drown out legitimate messages. Furthermore, spam messages often contain spyware, viruses and other forms of malware.
As an IT manager or accidental techie, you have two main strategies for fighting spam. First, educate yourself and your colleagues about how spam works. The message here boils down to: Be careful about when and where you divulge your email address. See Things You Can Do to Prevent Spam for more information on the education and training approach. Second, you can use technology to battle spam. The rest of this article will focus on anti-spam technologies, also known as spam filters.
