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Spam is a Threat Block It

Written by: Adam Ford

Article Overview: Many underestimate the threat that spam can create for a business. Aside from annoying junk mail that dramatically cuts down on a business’ efficiency and bandwidth, spam can pose serious security risks. Viruses and phishing links that are carried through spam have been known to all but destroy many companies. For your business, not blocking spam may be a costly decision.

Spam is a Threat Block It

Spam’s prominence is undeniable. It bogs down your email and keeps you sifting through messages, often making you delete more emails in one day than you will read in a whole week.

For smaller businesses, spam concentrations can be especially high. ACF Consulting Inc., a company providing spam protection and other internet solutions, reports consistently blocking at least 75% of their client emails that are flagged as spam! Many weeks, spam concentration can spike to over 90% of all incoming email. In fact, over any given week, ACF reports having very rarely seen spam rates drop below 50%.

The Two Reasons That Smaller Businesses Have Such High Spam Concentration
1. It is a good practice for smaller businesses to have their emails easily accessible through their website and other avenues, allowing convenient customer contact. The trouble is, this leaves the business vulnerable to harvesters, collecting these email addresses for spam.
2. For a variety of reasons, smaller businesses often do not take the proper steps to protect themselves from spam. They may worry about cost or security. Unfortunately, they may not realize that if they continue unprotected, the problem will only become worse as more and more harvesters collect their email addresses.

Spam Is More Than an Inconvenience

Everyone knows that sifting through emails to find the legitimate messages is a tedious process, cutting down on a business’ efficiency. You and your employees may only be spending a few minutes a day sifting through junk mail but over time this can add up to hundreds of hours of lost work time! Spam also greatly contributes to a slower internet connection as it clogs your bandwidth as well as increasing ware and tear to your network.

Many do not realize that spam poses a real and potentially disastrous threat to a business’ systems. Along with annoying advertisements and chain letters, spam is one of the prominent ways to spread viruses. Without the proper protection, these viruses can all but destroy a small business’ systems, invariably causing strained client relations and often costing thousands of dollars to fix. This threat becomes greater with every day a business is unprotected and they allow more spammers to find them.

A greater danger comes with phishing, a recent trend that has become extremely popular with spammers and shows no sign of stopping. The spammer will send you a link to a website that is an exact replica of one of your financial institutions or other secure site. They will claim an error has been made, asking you for your account information. If you or any of your system-users provide this information, the financial security of your company can be ruptured, identities may be stolen, and all of your business’ secure information may be exposed.

How to Protect Your Business

The only truly effective way for a smaller business to protect themselves against spam and the threats that come along with it is through the use of a fully functional spam filter. Although many of the threats that have been outlined may seem farfetched, criminal activities conducted through spam are reported every day and they often can result in disaster. Spam filtering pays for itself in more than peace of mind. It provides efficiency and security from real threats.

With the right spam blocker, your business may get more than you expected. With the spam filter offered by professional providers you can get more than a blocker that will stop 97% of all spam from ever being delivered. You can also receive blocker analytics that are updated 500-1500 times daily, antivirus engines, personalized security options, and a variety of other services that will protect your business from threats without any hassle.

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Article Tags: email, spam, spam blocker, spam filtering



Related Forum Posts
Re: Adobe Flex Developer Team need sales agents in US - This is purely advertising, it should be regarded as a Spam.
Re: A lot of electronics spam today! - Haha... great thread here, guys. Nice name, Michelle, I think that would suit very well. I wonder just how many websites and forums could benefit from a service like this. Anyone ever look into it? Spam is a serious problem for many, many people. I imagine there are those who would be willing to pay for a service to get rid of the never-ending nightmare.
I developed a personal tool - Institute for Marketecology, the flood of gets rich quick schemes and Spam has made a lot of people equate the term with unethical behavior. Fortunately, there are plenty ethical people out there using honest Internet marketing techniques to counteract this.
Re: Building Links By Spamming Forums - Hi Paul, I agree that it is legitimate to use forums to promote your business, and to promote your business in as many forums as possible. One of the problems with spam posting is that the spammer is not interested in giving anything back to the forum community where he or she posts. Spam messages are almost always badly written and very generalized; they fail to contribute anything to the conversation and they are often completely irrelevant.
Global Moderators - I've wanted to suggest this for a long time (pretty much ever since I became a moderator here) but I never seem to remember when I am actually here. It was on my mind just now so I decided to come post it before I forget again. Every forum I currently moderate or have ever moderated (other than this one) doesn't limit the moderators to certain sections like we do here. They have global moderators, which basically means every moderator has moderating powers in all (or almost all) sections of the forum. In my opinion, it is much better to do it that way. Currently only GT and Evan can moderate every section. The rest of us only have one section each. And really only GT does the global moderating because Evan is too busy with other stuff. That creates a problem when GT is not around. Spam often gets left for many hours and sometimes even days at a time. Plus it creates a lot more work for GT when he is here. Yes, he is usually pretty quick about getting to them but he shouldn't have to be the only one doing it. What happens when he gets sick? Or goes on vacation? Or is too busy to come here on certain days? Or just takes a break for a few days? I almost always report several spam posts every day then have to wait an unknown amount of time before GT gets to deleting them. But it would be a lot easier and better for the forum if mods could just delete them as soon as we see them. I'm also a member of a TON of forums that I don't moderate and it seems as though almost all of them do it the way I am suggesting. This is one of the few that only gives mods power over one section. Any thoughts?


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