Everything You Need To Know About Spam
And How To Get it Under Control
Simply and Easily
The problem of spam is something that comes up regularly in my conversations with virtually all business owners. It’s incredibly annoying and very wasteful of your companies’ valuable time. Worse still, we’ve seen it bring entire networks to a standstill.
Although it’s a constant battle, rest assured that your spam problems can be solved. The good news is that it isn’t expensive and will save you a considerable amount of wasted time and annoyance.
This month’s newsletter is a simple guide to spam and how to stop it:
- A brief history of spam
- The scale of the problem
- What you can do about spam
- Call us today for a 30 day anti-spam test
A Brief History Of Spam
The officially accepted definition of spam is an email message that is both unsolicited and sent in bulk.
The first piece of spam was sent by a DEC marketing executive called Gary Thuerk in 1978. Back then it was actually on a forerunner of the internet called Arpanet. He invited Arpanet users to a DEC open day and the recipients were horrified. Little did they know how it would grow!
It was dubbed spam in internet chat rooms of the 1970’s. Nobody quite knows why, but it seems that for some reason they associated the phenomenon with the famous Monty Python sketch. The name stuck.
The Scale Of The Problem
Internet Service Providers estimate that an amazing 90% to 95% of all emails are spam.
We have some real statistics from our clients. Some of our clients get literally thousands of spam emails every day. Here is a graphical illustration from one of our clients:
They received 67,386 emails in a single week of which 56,494 were spam and 5,979 were viruses. Only 6.7% of the emails were real – 93.3% were spam or viruses. You might well think that this was a large client, but it’s actually a small electrical goods retailer called CH Seymour’s with 5 shops and 25 mailboxes.
And the scale of the problem is increasing quickly – according to the Message Labs statistics spam has increased by 6% in the last 4 months.
This clearly indicates that the scale of the problem is so great that it just can’t be ignored.
Hosted email companies such as AOL, Google and Hotmail certainly aren’t ignoring it. In the last few months they have become extremely selective about the emails they are willing to receive. If you send many emails to their addresses the chances are that many of them will be rejected.
What You Can Do About Spam
The first thing to do is to make sure you’re not an easy target:
- Don’t put your personal email address on your website – spammers use automatic programs or “bots” that trawl the web to pick up addresses from websites. Instead use a non personal address such as the one that we use – ask@ziptechservices.co.uk You will still need to sift through the spam, but at least it will not be in your personal mailbox. Better still use a form on the website that people can use to communicate with you. This way there is no need to put an email address on the site at all.
- Don’t use your email address for forums etc. – create a disposable email address that you can dump if it gets spammed by somebody. Again you can have this feeding into a separate mailbox, so that spam does not clutter your personal email address.
Once you’ve made sure that you are not an easy target you can put some spam control tools in place. What you can do depends on whether you are using a hosted service or your own Microsoft Exchange email system running on your server.
If you are using a hosted email system your email provider will already have an anti-spam service in place. It will be a one-size-fits-all solution that runs across all of their clients, so if it doesn’t work for you then you’ll need to install your own solution on every PC. You will need to update the licences annually and all the users will need to manually “tune” the system on a regular basis. It’s dependant on each user knowing what they are doing and using their valuable time to keep the system tuned. In our experience this user dependence renders this approach impractical.
If you are running your own copy of Microsoft Exchange you have a lot more options:
- Set Up Reverse Lookup – when an email recipient gets an email they often use a facility called Reverse Lookup to check which server sent the email to them. If they are unable to perform a Reverse Lookup they will automatically mistrust the email and reject it. Reverse Lookup is a facility that can be set up for you by your Internet Service Provider. This is something that we do for our clients.
- Implement IMF – IMF is an anti-spam service that is included with Microsoft Exchange. Once installed you can ensure that you get regular updates to combat the latest type of spam. Like viruses, it’s a never ending battle. You can increase the level of spam filtering until the point at which real emails are blocked. You will know that the level is right when you are at the point where you only get a few emails a day. If you are a Ziptech Fully Managed or Support Lite client we can help you with this.
- Install an additional anti-spam service – you can add an additional facility on top of IMF and most companies are forced to by the unrelenting pressure of spam. At Ziptech we provide a monthly spam management service that checks against blocked IP addresses and provides you with a greater level of tuning than provided in the standard IMF service. It increases the amount of spam rejected and reduces the number of real emails that are accepted. All of our Fully Managed support clients have this service and while the fight against spam is ongoing it does provide a very real improvement – fewer annoying emails and less of your time wasted. Support Lite clients can optionally purchase this service, and many do.
- Tune – the fight against spam is never over so you do need to keep tuning the system and the White List / Black List. Our Support Desk works with our clients on an ongoing basis to help them manage their spam – so you aren’t left out on a limb by yourself.
Call us today for a 30 day anti-spam test
The best way to determine if a spam filter is right for you is to try it. That’s why we offer all of our clients using Exchange a 30 day FREE trial of our spam filtering service.
Here’s how it works ...
If you are a Ziptech client call me, Jim Simpson, on 0845 1233 042 to organise your trial. We can install it remotely for you and for the next month you will enjoy a spam free inbox! At the end of 30 days you can choose to subscribe to the service or to have it removed – there is no obligation - it’s as simple as that.
If you are not yet a Ziptech Client you should claim your 2 hours of free support. This will enable us to look at your spam problem and recommend the best course of action for you. Call me Jim Simpson on 0845 1233 942 to organise this diagnosis.
Best regards
Jim Simpson
Managing Director
Ziptech Services
08451 233942
Regular Hints & Tips
Jim Simpson
Managing Director
Ziptech Services
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