How to stop SPAM dead

Evening all,

We thought we would discuss the age old problem which we have to address for many customers that we provide outsourced IT support to.... SPAM!!!

We want to start by addressing the many options you have to stop receiving SPAM for a small or medium sized business so you have a clearer understanding and can make your choice.

The list we will be covering but not all today are as follows:

• Affordable ways for small/medium sized businesses to prevent SPAM
• Cost-effective ways to prevent SPAM even ever hitting your network
  
• Free ways to prevent SPAM
• Hardware and Software SPAM solutions

OK let’s get started....

SPAM is one of those extremely annoying things that you can't get away from as it doesn’t matter how many email addresses you create the SPAM always seems to find you and before you know it, you are siphoning through your emails to find one which are actually relevant to you and your business... So frustrating I think you would agree.

So I want you to imagine your new IT system has gone in and your email exchange has been installed. The IT support guy has just set-up all your emails and you’re ready to start sending and receiving emails to and from the world. At this exact point the SPAMMER does not know your email exists and would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible to find you!

So how to you keep it this way..

Well that is a good question. Basically SPAMMERS use automated software on the web continuously looking for email addresses which it can lift off. Put in a database and then is either sold or used themselves to target you for the usual crap we never asked for like Viagra, Watches, pumps of the enlarging variety!!!! You get the picture

Back to what to do...If you are at the point now that you have your new email addresses, then you need to take stringent measures to keep this email address away from places which will make you an easy target.

So here are the rules that you should follow to seriously reduce your email being taken by the SPAMMER and being enlisted to a lifelong stream of untargeted, unrelated, unwanted and annoying SPAM

Rule 1 - Only use your work email address with people/companies you know such as other business people, vendors you know. This sounds simple but the amount of places people use their work email address always astounds us at Sagari!

Rule 2 - Do not use your work email address to purchase from sites on-line that you are unsure about and couldn’t be confident what they would do with your email address afterwards. It is not worth the risk. Create another email address and use that.

Rule 3 - Read the website privacy statements to ensure they will not share your email address with other companies for marketing purposes

Rule 4 - Create separate email addresses for every type of need. For example you could have a procurement@companyname.com for all you’re purchasing. This will stop your personal business address from being used and if this email address for some reason got targeted you could delete this email address and create another one.

Rule 5 - Create your own free email address which has no relationship to your business email address. There are many free email accounts you can setup such as Gmail from Google, Yahoo or Hotmail from Microsoft. You can then use this email address to purchase from unreliable sites, subscribe to newsletters, subscribe to RSS feeds, or use it generally when it is not work related

Rule 6 -Do not have you personal business email address on your website as SPAMMERS have special software which searches all the websites out there looking for email addresses and then lifts them off your website and puts them in a database ready to sell off, or SPAM to you themselves. Instead have your website designer build a form such as the one below which will have your email address embedded where it cannot be taken. If you must have an email address on our website then have your website designer put this on as an image rather than normal text as this will ensure it can't be lifted off the website using automated software.

It is very difficult to stop all SPAM by using these methods alone especially if you are an enterprise with quite a few staff using email every day. What you can do is educate your staff the methods that will reduce your business from being heavily targeted and to look to implementing an email policy AKA a User Acceptance Policy. Although we are not discussing this topic in detail today, this is a policy you can have created which will outline your email procedures on what your staff can and can't do. It is then signed by then making it almost a binding contract that they have to adhere to otherwise disciplinary actions can be taken against them!

Well we have covered the best ways to stop SPAM happening in the first place but we now need to be looking at software or hardware which will then be your next layer of protection against SPAM.

Software is the least expensive form of protection and has pro's and con's for managing SPAM.

Some of the pro's are as follows

• Very cheap option if not free if you use SPAM fighter standard which allow you to install the software directly onto your machine
• Very easy to install and get started without much configuration
• Is a good solution for businesses with up to 6 staff

Some of the Con's are as follows:

• Increased traffic on the bandwidth of your broadband/DSL line as the emails still enter your system but are blocked at this point. This will in turn slow down your network
• Does not block all SPAM and you will still receive a level of SPAM
• Is not a viable solution for companies with 6 + staff
• Does not have much reporting facilities
• You will be managing your SPAM system yourself

So as you can see it is a choice which for a new business start-up. A solution such as SPAM fighter will allow you to stop your SPAM for free until it is viable to scale up to a business class solution which we will discuss next.

We will be back to run through Hardware SPAM filters that are on-site at your business site and relaying your emails through a third-party supplier next time to give you an idea of other solutions to give you an informed choice for what will best suite you.

Please remember at Sagari Ltd we are always happy to discuss your requirements free of charge with one of our highly skilled engineers. There is no obligation but just a way of helping you make the right choices for you

Best Regards,

Steven John

Owner of Sagari Ltd

http://www.itmanagedsupportservices.co.uk/