Imagine a day when you open your email to find that all of your messages are from actual people that you know. No offers for prescription drugs, home loans or sexually explicit content, and no more sifting through mounds of trash to find the few messages you actually want to read…
… okay, so maybe that will never happen. But while eliminating all that junk mail may be impossible, there are a few things you can do to seriously limit the amount of spam you have to deal with in your inbox.
1. Protect Your E-mail Address: The best way to avoid getting spammed is to keep your personal and business email addresses private. If the spammers don’t know you exist, you’re not a likely target. To stay off their radar, avoid Newsgroups, bulletin boards, and chat rooms that require you to enter your email address. (And if you can’t resist, try try tip #2.)
2. Create a Spam E-Mail Account: If you’re finding it difficult to keep your personal e-mail address completely private, setting up another email address may be the solution. Email accounts are easy to set up and often free, and this address is perfect to use when you have to register for that newsgroup, bulletin board, sweepstakes, or in any other situation where you’re not quite sure your privacy will be protected. The best part about this is that, because you aren’t expecting any important mail at this account, if it becomes over run with spam, you can throw it away and get another one to catch all your unwanted spam.
3. Message Rules in Outlook / Outlook Express: If you’re using Outlook or Outlook Express as your e-mail client, you can create message rules in the “Tools” drop down menu. You can set up rules that allow you to analyze sender’s names, subject line and message body before processing them. For example, you could set up a rule that automatically sends any message with an offensive word in the subject line to the Deleted Items folder.
You can also add notorious spammers to your “Blocked Senders” list without having to create a rule… and in a few clicks, a sender of unsolicited e-mail can be added to your personal blocked senders list. Whenever mail arrives from this sender in the future, it will skip the inbox and go straight to the Deleted Items folder.
4. Third Party Software: There are tons of applications that you can for purchase (or download for free) that were designed to filter spam as it enters your inbox. Basically, these programs recognize the telltale signs of spam and keep them out of our inboxes. There are a lot of companies out there producing spam filters, but they all do essentially the same thing: allow users to take control of the spam in their Outlook or Outlook Express mailboxes.
5. Server Based Solutions: Most major internet service providers offer a spam filter as part of the package offered to its subscribers. At DE, we use Barracuda Systems to keep our mailboxes clean… and since we’re an authorized Barracuda partner, we strongly recommend this product to our customers. (As a testimonial, I’ve been at Dynamic Edge for about three months now, and have yet to receive any spam at my business email address.) If your office email is being spammed, it may be because you’ve inadvertently signed up for it… but it could also be because your server’s spam firewall isn’t performing. Call us at 734.975.0460 if you’d like to talk to one of our expert consultants about that!
Final thoughts:
Spam is a nuisance that impacts just about everybody on some level. Even if the content is not inappropriate or offensive, it is a waste of time and money. That said, protecting your email address and getting the appropriate spam filter will greatly reduce the amount spam in your life… which leaves you more time to read blogs, like this one!
