From our monthly column for the Wandsworth Chamber of Commerce Newsletter
 

Are you drowning in SPAM?

Email is now a key communication tool for all businesses and it is no longer an option for businesses to operate without using it. But, with the growth of email popularity and usage, has come the dreaded SPAM problem. This has arisen through unprofessional companies abusing email as well as illegal abuse of email address lists by fraudulent parties to send out unsolicited emails, often on a massive worldwide scale, touting for business or trying to trick people into giving out credit card details.

There is no need to drown in this often offensive material though. Some large email providers like BT Internet now provide SPAM filtering as part of their product offering. The easiest thing to do If you use Outlook is to make sure you can also have a SPAM filter installed on your PC. SPAM filters now come as part of both Norton Internet Security and Macafee Internet Security. These provide fairly efficient filtering of incoming email, with suspected SPAM being placed in a separate Outlook folder. You can then either just assume it is all SPAM and delete it, or scan through to make sure no emails you actually wanted have been filtered. You can also add banned or allowed emails to the filter with over time, so that it becomes more and more efficient.

For bigger businesses, companies like Messagelabs offer SPAM filtration at source. In other words, cleaning SPAM and viruses from incoming email before it hits your LAN and PC’s. A less expensive option is also offered by Pipex through their subsidiary 123-reg.co.uk. Both of these solutions require that your email is redirected through their internet filtering server before being sent on to you, so you will need to ask your internet hosting company to make some changes to your web domain addressing.

The SPAM problem is likely to get worse before its gets any better, so take control now of this great time waster.

August 2005

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