SPAM 102 – A Refresher
I get asked all of the time about SPAM email messages. I got another one of these <fill in the blanks> SPAM email messages again today. Why am I getting these? How come they are not being stopped? Etc.
There are two kinds of SPAM emails, the first type are the ones that we call UCE (or unsolicited commercial email). These emails are generally harmless and are being sent to you from a company that you may have once subscribed to or your email address was sold to another company and they are now sending you emails. These emails are generally harmless in that they are not trying to deliver a virus, malware or spyware to your computer.
The other type of SPAM email that we get are those that are sent from individuals or companies that quite simply are trying to steal from you. These emails pretend to someone who they are not (banks, airlines etc.) and their sole purpose is to install a virus, or malware on your computer or to try to entice you to send them money some how.
SPAM email today (estimates vary but) is thought to be about 70% of all emails on the internet and the costs worldwide to combat SPAM is in the order of $150 billion US dollars per year. Some North American estimates put the cost of SPAM at about $1000 per employee per year.
Here is the problem.
Sometimes SPAM gets through. Think of a SPAM filter as a colander or a strainer. Ever notice that when you strain the water off your spaghetti sometimes one or two of the strands get through. It is the same with SPAM filters.
What we can do is 100% trap SPAM emails when we know exactly what they look like (you know, all those strands of spaghetti that are larger than the holes in the strainer) but it we don’t know exactly what the SPAM emails looks like then sometimes they get through.
Remember that many of the SPAM email that we see these days are quite literally being sent by criminals. Their single objective is to either mess up your computer or get money from you. They will do anything to try and get around SPAM filters to make sure that their messages get to you. These are the ones that generally get through.
A second big complication is that with SPAM filters we have the ability to adjust the size of the holes in the strainer and we can make a decision on how much email to let through the filter. We have this ability because at some point we have to make a decision on those questionable emails if they are SPAM or not. Our quandary is that we don’t want to take the risk of blocking legitimate emails as this could end up costing you dollars if you are unable to respond to a legitimate request for business. For this reason some of those SPAM emails get through as well.
The best thing you can do for SPAM is to use the tools that you have at your disposal to assist us in making those decisions to block SPAM. Learn how to use the Junk Email filter in Outlook to block SPAM emails that get through your corporate wide filter. If you have other corporate wide filters that you can use take advantage of those as well. If you need assistance please make sure to let your IT resources know.
