It’s Time To Take Spam Email Seriously. Is Anti-Spam Software The Answer?

The official definition of Spam has two parts. 

For an email to be considered spam it must firstly be unsolicited – a nice word that means you didn’t permit the sender to send it to you.  Secondly, it must be bulk – in other words it is one of many identical emails sent at the same time by the same sender.

I’d like to add a third part to the definition: ‘Potentially threatening to your business.’

I say this because the vast majority of people are unaware of this threat and think spam is simply irritating. 

Nearly everyone, especially those who use online email accounts like Hotmail, Yahoo! and Google, has received emails which have slipped through spam filters, appealing to them, for example, to buy Viagra, or electronic goods from China. 

For the most part these kinds of email are easy to ignore.  But what many people don’t realise is that some spam is far more malicious than it looks.

Spam is the source of many viruses which can infect and slow down your computer, or worse still, Malware, a type of virus which hijacks your PC and turns it into a Botnet, to send out still more Spam to unwitting recipients.  Worse still, when malware gets into your hard drive it’s often beyond the reach of even the best anti-virus software, and as any techie will tell you, repairing it might run into costs which surpass the retail price of a replacement computer.

Even if you don’t download your emails onto your desktop and so think you are safe from potential infection, you still need to take Spam seriously to help protect the integrity of the network itself.  The bottom line is that today, according to anti-spam body Spamhaus, 90% of all email is spam, with literally hundreds of billions of spam e-mails sent each day, blocking mail servers, polluting search engine listings and slowing down networks. 

Without it the Internet would be a completely different experience: faster, safer, and ultimately more enjoyable.

It is true that Spam, or UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email) as it is often referred, is banned by all Internet Service Providers, but that doesn’t mean an email address registered through a bonefide ISP won’t end up being the recipient of spam sent from elsewhere.

Advanced filtering and Captcha technology, (automated online tests which ask you to copy the letters of distorted text, to distinguish you from software designed to capture email addresses) has also made a big difference, and yet Spammers are no mugs and continue to find innovative ways to reach lucrative new arenas.

For example, one new focus is the use of automated ‘bots’ which can leave messages on blogs, make friend requests on social networking sites, and even initiate chat texts on VoIP services such as Skype.  Invariably, this activity is designed to direct you to another site, some of which have the ability to literally hijack your web browser and via that infect your computer.

Not to mention the increasing sophistication of ‘Phishing’ attacks – spammers who develop incredibly sophisticated fake websites, or even networks of fake sites, with the sole objective of tricking you into revealing your bank account or credit card details.

So what should you do?

Firstly, don’t fall foul of expecting governments to deal with the problem. 

There have been some very successful cases brought in the US, resulting in huge fines for spammers, but the vast majority of activity is practically impossible to enforce, while national governments fail to co-operate.  If the spam comes from one country, but is controlled by someone in another, and financed by someone in a third, who gets prosecuted? 

So, be sure you use an Internet Service Provider, who has invested in advanced filtering technology, and also has been willing to suspend accounts of suspected spammers.  Be absolutely sure too, to check Spamhaus’s list of service providers who have failed to tackle the problem of botnets.

But above all be willing to invest in advance spam protection.  The best spam protection comes from the people who are tracking the spammers closely, and that kind of knowledge and expertise is rarely available for free. 

Paying for protection and not paying for it, is a bit like the difference between shopping at

Lidl, or Sainsburys: the extra level of customer service is reassuring.  Paying for a premium anti spam service can cost as little as £18 a year, or 5p a day, which is easily justified against the time it takes you to clear out your in-box of unwanted email. 

At even as little as 10 minutes a day, that amounts to about 6 working days a year, which might be spent doing something infinitely more rewarding for your business. 

£18 for an additional 6 days of your time?  Should it be a difficult decision?

Please let me know your thoughts, ideas or experiences in the comments section below. Thank you.

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