Control of SPAM

Even if you’ve only been on the Internet for a month, you’re probably already familiar
with spam. Unsolicited email is delivered in bulk to millions of addresses a day. Regardless of delivery success rates, it’s one of the more popular advertising methods, and with good reason. With 50 million Internet users in the United States alone, it is the cheapest way to quickly inform the largest number of people about a product. Sadly, the laws governing spam violations are rarely enforced. 

It’s difficult to find ways to prevent spam from invading your inbox. Most methods we currently utilize to fight it are easy for spammers to overcome. However, there are convenient methods that block spam from flooding your inbox.

Most email systems now have a basic anti-spam filter. This tool looks for designated clue words such as sex, nude and porn and eliminates the message that contains these words from your inbox. While this may prevent some spam, most spammers have simply started purposefully misspelling these words so that the message can still get through. Some examples are “s*x” and “p0rn.” Another problem is that the filter may delete legitimate emails such as your sister’s e-mail which includes the sentence, “Why do I keep getting
e-mails about porn?”

EIC® recommends the most current version of Microsoft Outlook. We can assist
you with implementing this solution in a cost-effective manner. Contact an account executive at 888-342-3374 for details.

We also can upgrade your server with one of two upgraded anti-spam filters:  Bayesian
and heuristic filters. Our most popular product is Apache’s SpamAssasin. These are better because they recognize spam by locating objectionable phrases in the message. Unlike many basic filters, they also look at the entire message instead of just the subject line. However, they depend on frequency to filter messages; so, short messages often get through. Contact EIC® for more details.

The best way to avoid spam is to not send emails to a list. To save time, people often separate their contacts into lists such as friends, coworkers and clients. Then, instead of sending multiple similar messages, they send one to everyone on the list. Unless you used the proper precautions, however, every email address you sent the message to will be visible to every other person on the list. This is easy prey for spammers.

Not only does this put both you and your contacts at risk for spam, it’s also kind of rude. You would never call one of your friends and list the phone numbers of every other friend you have, or send someone a letter which lists the addresses of everyone in your family.
A few of your contacts may add the other contacts to their list of people to send to, a few
of those people may do the same, and it turns into a dangerous cycle. Sooner or later, all the names will end up on a spammer’s list. 

EIC® does offer an anti-spam solution for clients that are completely frustrated and have tried everything else.