Get less spam in your inbox
About half of all emails are spam or junk. Not only do they clutter your inbox, they bring nasty surprises like malware and hacking attacks. According to Wikipedia, Spam is a “meat product made mainly from ham.” Wait, that’s the wrong spam.
About half of all emails are spam or junk.
Not only do they clutter your inbox, they bring nasty surprises like malware and hacking attacks.
According to Wikipedia, Spam is a “meat product made mainly from ham.” Wait, that’s the wrong spam.
Spam is “irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients.”
Some spam messages are “legit” and offer a plethora of goods and services that are beneficial to you. But a large percent are trying to trick you into divulging details that the spammers can use to hack your credit card information or infect your computer so they can sell you a useless service that keeps getting you infected.
They intentionally lie and say your computer is infected when it’s not. Then these bandits want you to call a technician in some far-off country to get it fixed. But they don’t fix it – ever.
Instead, they will intentionally damage your computer so you must pay for service again. And again. You get the picture.
There are several methods of blocking spam, including dedicated spam blockers and manual blocking. If you use web mail – by logging into the Internet to get email – your service provider (Gmail, for example) offers a manual way to mark an email message as junk. That way, if the same email sender uses the same email address, it will be blocked and go to the junk folder.
However, if the same sender sends you another email but uses a slightly different email name, it will not be blocked.
An automated spam blocker may recognize this ruse used to circumvent the manual blocker and automatically determine the email as spam, assigning it to junk. Problem solved. Well, sorta.
The effectiveness of a spam blocker depends upon the number of times your blocker sees this message on the Internet, or algorithms used in the design of the blocker. Then there is the cost of the spam blocker, its reputation for ease of use, its effectiveness for keeping up on the spam definitions and a whole host of other issues.
Keep in mind that spam blocking is either manual or automatic. Manual depends upon your diligence at reporting new junk messages and managing variations of known spam. Automatic blocking depends on the software you choose, its price and its ability to update the international spam environment.
Perhaps you should look into a managed service provider (MSP), especially if you are a small to medium business without an IT department.
William Claney is an independent tech writer and former owner of Computers USA in the Clayton Station. Email questions or comments to willclaney@gmail.com.
Will Claney
William Claney is an independent tech writer and former owner of Computers USA in the Clayton Station. Email questions or comments to willclaney@gmail.com.