Small Business Q & A: Beware Of Spam Withdrawals
Q: I am so sick of all the spam that is sent to my business
email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort
out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it
all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might
be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer,
what's the best solution for dealing with spam?
A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when
the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying
to pry it out of the can.
Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email.
I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email
address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am
a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used
to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400
messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people
I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would
like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.
Spammers, they are called the scourge of the Internet the
digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.
After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead
engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced,
"I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter
on our server that will prevent spam from getting through."
Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.
I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this
wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when
within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest
day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I
suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not
only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I
had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my
friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile.
They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give
me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans,
waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks
concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy
was incredibly heart warming.
And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were
worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if
only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?
After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy
to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm
afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.
You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by
eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81
emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam
now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies
more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited
e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.
So how do spammers get your email address in the first place?
It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a
result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will
sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy
says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their
sites.
Spammers use "spider software" to crawl the web and harvest
email address, so if you have a personal or company website
that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider
is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise
when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email
newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.
How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people
think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it
and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so
smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to
eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of
spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.
First, stop clicking on the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of
spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you
removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to
let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link
to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you
receive increase.
Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses.
Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys
and online purchases.
Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your
computer or company network. There are a variety of spam
blocking applications on the market that range in price from
free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely
eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive.
Search the Web for "spam filter" and investigate the ones that
you feel are right for you.
Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam
application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who
recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to
the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company
email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They
had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam
and everything else. Not a good idea.
Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try
adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software.
Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling
incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora,
and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features
that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.
One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would
quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting
from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.
Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.
Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing
email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you
don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer
receive any email at all.
Here's to your success!
Tim Knox
tim@dropshipwholesale.net
For information on starting your own online or eBay business,
visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort
out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it
all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might
be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer,
what's the best solution for dealing with spam?
A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when
the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying
to pry it out of the can.
Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email.
I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email
address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am
a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used
to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400
messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people
I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would
like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.
Spammers, they are called the scourge of the Internet the
digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.
After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead
engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced,
"I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter
on our server that will prevent spam from getting through."
Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.
I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this
wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when
within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest
day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I
suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not
only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I
had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my
friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile.
They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give
me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans,
waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks
concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy
was incredibly heart warming.
And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were
worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if
only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?
After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy
to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm
afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.
You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by
eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81
emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam
now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies
more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited
e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.
So how do spammers get your email address in the first place?
It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a
result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will
sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy
says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their
sites.
Spammers use "spider software" to crawl the web and harvest
email address, so if you have a personal or company website
that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider
is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise
when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email
newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.
How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people
think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it
and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so
smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to
eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of
spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.
First, stop clicking on the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of
spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you
removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to
let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link
to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you
receive increase.
Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses.
Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys
and online purchases.
Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your
computer or company network. There are a variety of spam
blocking applications on the market that range in price from
free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely
eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive.
Search the Web for "spam filter" and investigate the ones that
you feel are right for you.
Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam
application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who
recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to
the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company
email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They
had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam
and everything else. Not a good idea.
Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try
adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software.
Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling
incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora,
and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features
that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.
One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would
quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting
from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.
Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.
Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing
email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you
don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer
receive any email at all.
Here's to your success!
Tim Knox
tim@dropshipwholesale.net
For information on starting your own online or eBay business,
visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort
out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it
all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might
be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer,
what's the best solution for dealing with spam?
A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when
the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying
to pry it out of the can.
Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email.
I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email
address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am
a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used
to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400
messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people
I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would
like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.
Spammers, they are called the scourge of the Internet the
digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.
After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead
engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced,
"I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter
on our server that will prevent spam from getting through."
Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.
I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this
wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when
within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest
day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I
suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not
only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I
had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my
friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile.
They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give
me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans,
waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks
concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy
was incredibly heart warming.
And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were
worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if
only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?
After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy
to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm
afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.
You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by
eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81
emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam
now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies
more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited
e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.
So how do spammers get your email address in the first place?
It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a
result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will
sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy
says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their
sites.
Spammers use "spider software" to crawl the web and harvest
email address, so if you have a personal or company website
that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider
is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise
when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email
newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.
How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people
think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it
and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so
smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to
eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of
spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.
First, stop clicking on the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of
spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you
removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to
let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link
to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you
receive increase.
Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses.
Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys
and online purchases.
Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your
computer or company network. There are a variety of spam
blocking applications on the market that range in price from
free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely
eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive.
Search the Web for "spam filter" and investigate the ones that
you feel are right for you.
Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam
application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who
recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to
the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company
email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They
had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam
and everything else. Not a good idea.
Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try
adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software.
Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling
incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora,
and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features
that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.
One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would
quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting
from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.
Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.
Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing
email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you
don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer
receive any email at all.
Here's to your success!
Tim Knox
tim@dropshipwholesale.net
For information on starting your own online or eBay business,
visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort
out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it
all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might
be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer,
what's the best solution for dealing with spam?
A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when
the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying
to pry it out of the can.
Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email.
I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email
address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am
a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used
to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400
messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people
I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would
like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.
Spammers, they are called the scourge of the Internet the
digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.
After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead
engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced,
"I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter
on our server that will prevent spam from getting through."
Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.
I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this
wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when
within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest
day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I
suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not
only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I
had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my
friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile.
They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give
me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans,
waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks
concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy
was incredibly heart warming.
And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were
worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if
only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?
After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy
to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm
afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.
You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by
eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81
emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam
now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies
more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited
e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.
So how do spammers get your email address in the first place?
It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a
result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will
sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy
says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their
sites.
Spammers use "spider software" to crawl the web and harvest
email address, so if you have a personal or company website
that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider
is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise
when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email
newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.
How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people
think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it
and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so
smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to
eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of
spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.
First, stop clicking on the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of
spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you
removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to
let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link
to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you
receive increase.
Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses.
Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys
and online purchases.
Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your
computer or company network. There are a variety of spam
blocking applications on the market that range in price from
free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely
eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive.
Search the Web for "spam filter" and investigate the ones that
you feel are right for you.
Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam
application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who
recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to
the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company
email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They
had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam
and everything else. Not a good idea.
Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try
adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software.
Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling
incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora,
and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features
that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.
One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would
quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting
from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.
Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.
Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing
email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you
don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer
receive any email at all.
Here's to your success!
Tim Knox
tim@dropshipwholesale.net
For information on starting your own online or eBay business,
visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
Tim Knox as the president and CEO of two successful technology
companies: B2Secure Inc., a Web-based hiring management software
company; and Digital Graphiti Inc., a software development company.
Tim is also the founder of dropshipwholesale.net, an ebusiness
dedicated to the success of online entrepreneurs.
http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
http://www.smallbusinessqa.com
companies: B2Secure Inc., a Web-based hiring management software
company; and Digital Graphiti Inc., a software development company.
Tim is also the founder of dropshipwholesale.net, an ebusiness
dedicated to the success of online entrepreneurs.
http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
http://www.smallbusinessqa.com
Labels: anti_program_spam, anti_server_spam, barracuda_firewall_spam, blocker_free_spam, blocker_spam_utility
Posted In Antispam Blogs at
10:35 PM
