Email Management - Why It Is Integral to Your Business

Email management is a very common term used in offices these days. Today's offices cannot be imagined without an email. Email has transformed into an excellent means of communication, exchange of information and ideas. It acts as a pathway for making sensitive and important transactions. So, because of this sensitive usage, managing emails has become crucial to securing all your important data. Basically, it is a service that makes sure your email stay at bay from spam and junk mails. It also helps in preventing email overload that causes troublesome situations for the employees.

Most of the business firms take mail management services very seriously since they know that it acts as a shield for professional email storage. In the last decade, Email has become backbone of organizations globally. Due to its extensive use in trade/commerce, email management has become vital and a major concern at the same time.

What Email Management Firms do

Such firms cater to four major areas:

• Security of both message content and email system

• Email storage/email capture/email recovery/back up

• Virus/Trojan protection

• Anti spam, or junk prevention or spam filtering

• Database compliance

Email management has become extremely essential in boosting the success rate of any business. It helps protect all the valuable information related to a business. It also helps in minimizing the cost of litigation and even helps speed up recovery in case of a disastrous information breach.

Spam Identification and Protection

Email is cheap and ubiquitous. As such, it is an easy target for mal-practitioners who aim to harm any business organization. Spam is the most vulnerable threat that prevails at present and email management takes care of such threats. At its very core, mail management strives to minimize spam issues by recognizing what's important and what's not.

Types of Email Management Services

Email management has become an essence for all the business organizations. Businesses can choose from a fleet of options and software related to email management. The mail management services that suit your requirements can be chosen swiftly and put to use immediately. Service providers offer exquisite levels of services that would leave you enthralled with their amazing performance and results. Mail management focuses on securing all business emails and attached data through secure technology.

Integrated mail management products are heterogeneous in nature which is best suited for organizations at large-scale. On the other hand, point products are recommended for small businesses. It is a great idea to use mail service in your business as it makes the communications effective and safe. It also helps in increasing the productivity of business while simultaneously skyrocket sales. Only email management can help you handle the daily load of emails and enable you to have a grip on your inbox. At the very least, it is a service that'll share your load.

How To Stop or Avoid Spam Email

Spam: Meat-Like Substance Or Menace To Society?

If you're a member of the current millennia, you've probably heard the word. For those of us that use email (which is most of us these days), the experience is all too familiar and annoying.

Let's talk about what SPAM is, where it comes from, and hopefully the reader can gain some insight into how to avoid spam and spammers.

If you've ever gotten emails pushing the sale of prescription drugs or pornography, prompting you to refinance your mortgage, or expounding the wonders of the latest get rich quick work from home business, you've most likely been spammed.

Sparing the tedium of a formal definition, SPAM emails often have no "opt out" links (any newsletter you get is supposed to have these in case you decide you no longer want the emails). The ones that do are phony, and you will most likely continue to receive emails or receive even more as clicking the link verifies that the email address in question (yours) is real and is being used. These types of emails are not permission based and usually appear out of nowhere. Legitimate emails from businesses usually have useful information and/or coupons/specials, and are sent out on a regular basis, but not so often as to become annoying. One can easily opt out without worry of repeated offense.

Now for the good stuff: how the heck do spammers get your email address?

There are actually a few ways this is done. One popular method is by way of the spider (search engines use these for legitimate purposes also), also called spam bots or robots. These are just programs that "crawl" the Web or the Internet looking for email addresses posted on websites, such as emailatmyaddressdotwhatever (had to write it this way or I could not submit the article; any way to request an exception for cases like this???). Think twice before you post your email address on blogs, personal sites, online directories, and other websites where it can be easily picked up.

Ever sign up for an online subscription or buy something online? How about those enticing freebies such as eBooks and webinars (note: if we offer something free in exchange for your email, etc don't worry; we are not spammers)? Most web companies use this information to build a legitimate opt in list so they can send out newsletters, specials, and market to you. A few may sell the info to other online companies (read their privacy policy-if they have one, but the ethical ones usually won't; they just want to grow their business).

When you buy something online most of the time you will have to enter an email address to check out. Some sites allow you to check out without registering, while others that make you register keep your email address to themselves and do not share it.

Other guys aren't so nice. Some will sell lists of email addresses to spammers to make extra money. Create a "throw away" email account on Hotmail, Yahoo, of Gmail and use that for online purchases and subscriptions. And as boring as it may be, consider checking their privacy policy (see above).

Special programs can be used to automatically create millions of possible email addresses. Many use names of popular internet service providers (ISPs) and well known companies (i.e. you@largefirm.com ) to create them.

Why many spammers don't get caught or shut down

We've already discussed malware. Some malicious programs are designed to silently take over an ordinary computer or server and turn it into a spam bot which can send out thousands upon thousands of emails in a relatively short time. This makes catching the spammer harder, because your computer or server takes the blame, not the spammer's.

If your computer seems to be running slow for all the sudden or for no apparent reason, you could be a spammer and not even know it! Keep your security software up to date. Install operating system and productivity software patches and updates. If you suspect you have an infection our website can help along with the forum.

Spammers often spoof their IP addresses and/or strip their emails' headers' sender info. They can also make the email look legit to avoid detection by spam filters. Some use funny characters or misspelled words.

All the info on spam could fill volumes, but the basic prevention techniques offered here will be a big help if used with regularity.

And yes, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover: many websites that deal in pornography, get rich quick gurus, and gambling have questionable ethics to begin with; why would they have any qualms about spamming people to make an extra buck?

A Guide for Exchange Server Anti Spam Software

So many people nowadays are reliant on the internet for communication, whether it is for their business, school, college/university, or at home. One of the most common and popular forms of communication via the World Wide Web is email. Having an email address is something that is easy to get, usually they're free, and just about every nowadays has an email address. People have emails for their personal lives, their job and business, and also an email for their education course. It is an important service to have for everyone, and it can be something that enriches and adds value to your life. On the downside, however, is that you can end up with your inbox full of spam messages that you have to sort through in order to get to your actual emails.

Spam is Unwanted and Annoying

Spam is not only annoying in the fact that it can crowd your inbox with absolute rubbish, but it can also contain attachments that can give you computer and computer system viruses, Trojans, adware, spamware and other such nasties that you'd prefer to avoid and stay away from. These can get inside your computer system, and make your life and work impossibly hard, and also decrease your productivity. Some of these can cause your computer's hard drive to be wiped clean, or need to be formatted, losing all your files, programs and applications. Spam can seriously mess up your life or business, and end up cost you a fortune in repairs, or God forbid the cost of a new computer.

Exchange Server Anti Spam Software

That's why many software developers have made exchange server anti spam software. This software is designed to be installed into the inbox of your email client, and will sort through the message for you, deciding what emails are important, and what emails are dangerous spam message. The software uses a known database of harmful attachments and links that are sent through emails to work out whether or not certain emails are safe. It also uses other methods to find spam, such as unknown email addresses, messages sent from dodgy servers, as well as having customizable settings, so you can choose what the software believes is spam, and what is safe.

Software Available

There are a great range of free exchange server anti spam software available online for download, and most are small files that don't take much of your CPU power. There are some on the market at the higher end of the range that will cost you some money to download and use. Often, if this is for your home, or if you are a small business, downloading the free software is enough. The top of the range software is more for big businesses or academic centers who have large computer networks to deal with, and cannot afford to have anything go wrong with any of their computers and systems.

In conclusion, if you are looking to rid your inbox of unwanted emails and spam messages, the best way to go is to download and install exchange server anti spam software.

How to Avoid Anti-Spam Filters in Email Marketing

nti-spam filters are one of the major troubles that all email marketers are forced to face. The most important thing that you have to follow when it comes to avoiding the anti-spam filters is to make sure that all the contents in the email are passed along completely in accordance to the standards of the W3 browser. In other words, you should treat it like an HTML document and pass the contents of your email likewise.

Trying to construct your emails like a HTML design is quite difficult and very tricky and you should be very careful from the very beginning. You whole campaign would become an utter waste of time if you don't manage to avoid the anti-spam filters and it also takes a lot of patience. The worst part is that different browsers have different standards and come up with different issues when it comes to rendering HTML. With the conflicts being different for each browser, the worst and hardest one for email marketing is definitely considered to be the Internet Explorer.

If you are looking for a way to avoid all these problems, you should focus on the three different parts of the email - the header (the address details of the sender), the content body of your email and also the subject line. The first thing you should do to keep your emails out of the anti-spam filters is to make sure that your emails are all sent from the same server. None of the headers should be blank. It is mostly construed to be spam if your email does not have all the headers filled. It would also be a better idea to not use the BCC and CC headers.

When it comes to the subject line, the first thing to remember is to actually put in a subject line every single time. The subject line should also be very concise and also interesting. There are certain words or phrases that attract the attention of the anti-spam filters. 'Free' is one such word and it is a very bad idea to use it. Other phrases that you should avoid using would be words like discounts and teen.

When it comes to the content of your email, it is best to use a normal font and to avoid using all caps. It is best to avoid words that might sound like you are spamming the inbox like 'free' for example. You would have received a lot of spam emails and you should do just about everything they didn't and try to avoid whatever they did. When you have all the rules in your bag, you will not have any problems whatsoever.

Email Marketing: How a SPAM Firewall Works (Q and A)

This whitepaper is in a Question and Answer format and covers 'how a spam-filter works'.

Q: What actions can get me onto a blacklist or cause a spam filter to block our email?

Here are the main ways you can get onto a blacklist or have a spam filter block your otherwise good email campaigns:

• Send an email campaign that receives too many SPAM complaints. When recipients get your email they can click the 'This is SPAM' button on their email client. This registers with spam filters as a 'vote' that your email is spam. Too many complaints and your emails will start going into the SPAM folder or will be outright blocked. Unfortunately some ISPs like Aol.com encourage their users to click the SPAM button instead of unsubscribing, raising your spam rate. Many ISPs have a target complaint rate of less than 1 complaint per 1,000 emails sent.
• Send an email campaign to one or more 'SPAM Honeypots'. (See the next question for a definition of a SPAM honeypot).
• Start sending a burst of emails from a newly configured email server at a new IP address. With spam filters, you are guilty until proven innocent. An IP address that has no email sending history that all of a sudden starts spewing out thousands of emails will look like a spammer firing up a new bank of email spam cannons.
• Send an email campaign that has a high spam score (when analyzed by a spam content filter). If your email looks like spam content, some spam filters and blacklists will blacklist you for 48-72 hours.
• Register your email server with an IP address that is 'close' to other IPs that have been flagged as SPAM email servers. Yes, it matters what neighborhood you 'live' in. Some blacklists will add your email server to their blacklist if your 'neighbors' are known spammers. The logic is that either you may be associated with the spammer, or you are hosting your email at an ISP who is willing to host spammers, so you are guilty by association.
• Send emails to a list with a lot of hard bounces (invalid addresses). SPAM filters track the % of invalid emails you try to deliver. If your hard bounce rate is consistently high (greater than 15% for example), your email reputation will fall and you may be blacklisted for windows of 48 ~ 72 hours.
• Configure your email servers incorrectly. True spammers can be lazy and often do not configure their email severs correctly. Well, at least that is the opinion of most spam filters and blacklists, so if your equipment is not configured correctly, your emails may be blocked.
• Send email campaigns to general email lists and aliases such as support@, sales@, webmaster@, info@ and so on. These are often aliased to dozens or even hundreds of recipients and it is highly unlikely that a person will register on a website using such an address, so you are likely to irritate many recipients and generate spam complaints.

Q: What is a "SPAM Honeypot"?

There are blacklists that work directly with registrars to 're-cycle' domains when they expire. Send an email to an address at one of these domains and you will get stuck in their 'honeypot'. Some honeypot-based blacklists are more devious. They actually host websites with embedded email addresses. Utilities that crawl websites and parse out email addresses (which is illegal in the US anyway), will capture the honeypot addresses.

Blacklists that are based on honeypots use this logic. When a company goes out of business or a domain otherwise becomes invalid, you should not be sending emails to anyone at that domain anymore. If a company is out of business for say, 6 months, and you send an email there, then either a) you are not using good list management practices, and should be 'penalized' to clean up your act or b) you likely purchased or automatically generated the email address by combing websites for email addresses.

Q: Do "Spam Honeypots" actively subscribe with bogus data to e-mail lists?

No; however malicious hackers and bots sometimes crawl sites and may register email addresses on signup forms that are from a dead domain that could coincidentally, have been 'harvested' by a honeypot blacklist. This is one of the reasons to use double-opt-in forms on your website to validate that the email addresses used are valid.

Q: Can I get a list of SPAM Honeypots so I can avoid them?

We all wish! No. This would defeat the purpose - if blacklists made their honeypot addresses visible or available, any spammer would just use these addresses as suppression list and avoid the honeypots. These addresses are always changing as blacklist managers/vendors are constantly registering new domains.

Q: What are the best practices in reducing my email marketing campaign bounce rates?

Ideally, remove contacts that have not received an email in more than 9-12 months - see the explanation for 'SPAM honeypots' above. Use valid contacts who have opted to receive your emails. Also if you have received a 'soft bounce' error for an email address after 4-5 attempts, it is best to remove that address from your list. Most ESPs (Email Service Providers) do this automatically.

Send to your clients / email contacts more frequently - at least once a month if possible (assuming you have newsworthy information to send). Most Email Providers automatically remove the invalid email addresses that accumulate each month as people change jobs and move.

Q: Do email bounce rates impact our email marketing reputation and deliverability?

Yes. Some SPAM filters track information on your % of delivery to invalid addresses (hard bounce rates) over time. If hard bounce rates are consistently high, (15% or more for example), then your email reputation will fall and you will be blacklisted.

Q: To check our email sending reputation, which IP address should I use when checking?

Check the IP address of the email servers that are sending your email. If you are using an ESP, ask the ESP for the IP addresses that your account is using or sharing. If you are sending emails from your own in-house servers, ask your IT team for the IP address of your outbound email servers.

Note that there are also blacklists that are based on your 'top level domain'. This is the domain that is used to send your emails. If you are using an ESP you can ask what the sending 'top level domain' is, or you can forward an email to yourself and check the email header (or ask IT to help you determine this).

Q: Could we improve our damaged email reputation by changing our IP addresses every 6 months?

This would almost always harm your reputation, unless you are a spammer. Spam filters and blacklists accumulate historical email delivery information for the IP address of your sending email server(s). Over time, if you are sending relevant, high quality permissions based email, your reputation will *improve* over time. On the other hand, if your practices include purchasing large cheap lists, or not maintaining your lists by removing unsubscribers and hard bounces, your reputation will go from bad to worse. In this case, you might improve your email reputation by moving to a new IP address but if your company is not employing good practices, you will simply burn though new IP addresses every 6 months, which may upset your ISP enough to consider terminating your service.

Q: If I have recipients in my list that never open my email, do these non-responders affect my sending reputation?

At present, probably not. However if you have contacts in your email list that have not opened a single email of yours in 6-12 months, why do you want to keep sending to them? You might be better off sending a final re-engagement campaign to these unresponsive contacts (see earlier question) and deleting contacts who do not respond.

Q: I have email recipients that block my email campaigns. I have done everything. Why is this?

Assuming you have verified that your email spam score is low and that your email servers are not on any blacklists, it is still very common to experience some email being blocked by spam filters. Some IT organizations set their spam firewalls to very conservative settings, often unknowingly creating more problems for end users, since a higher percentage of valid email may be blocked. In this case your options are:

Contact the end customer directly and request that they add your email address to their address book. Local inbox settings usually over-ride general settings and this should permit your email to get through

If the recipient is getting your email but it consistently ends up in the spam folder, have the recipient click 'this is not spam, and request they add you to their address book (above).

Contact the recipient and provide the IP addresses of your outbound email server (if you are using an Email Service Provider ("ESP"), ask the ESP what IPs you are assigned. Provide these IPs to your recipient and ask them to request that their IT department add the IPs to the corporate whitelist / non-blocklist.

Otherwise, consider removing these contacts from your list. Note that, if a recipient's email filter responds that your email is being blocked after multiple campaigns, most Email Services Providers will automatically remove the contact from your list or flag the address as undeliverable after some number of failed 'soft bounce' attempts.

Q: How many links can I use in my email marketing campaign?

Based on analysis of our B2B customer data, adding more links will almost always improve response rates. Key points to consider:

• Try to include a link within your initial opening paragraph (Read More.. for example). This can increase overall click rates by 12-15% and is virtually always the top-clicked link of a campaign.
• Do you know where the second best performing link is? In the 'P.S. or Footer section! Don't be afraid to 'advertise' or promote below your signature.
• Work more links into your campaigns. Our analysis shows that campaigns with more links produced higher total click response rates while not increasing the unsubscribe rate. 15-20 links in a campaign is not unreasonable.

Please check my other postings for more email marketing tips.

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5 Expert Tips On Preventing Spam Email In Your Business

Are you sick and tired of opening up your email account everyday just to find countless amounts of uninvited email? Email that includes bold and annoying statements such as: "product recommended by Mary", or "make $6,000,000,000.00 overnight..." or "buy Viagra now"... and so on?

Are you tired of going through your "junk" filter every day just to catch one or two emails that you were actually waiting on receiving, but were buried in pages of spam? If you fall victim to any of these spam problems, read on to learn several HUGE tips on preventing spam email in your business.

Create alternate email address when listing company, URL etc

As a small business owner or employee (depending on your job duties), you may find yourself giving out your email address for many different reasons. Signing up for: online seminars (webinars), newsletters, business directories, search engines or other products or services that capture your data, can become a BIG problem!

Most companies implement a "privacy policy", that usually states how your personal information will not be used to spam you, or to release your information to third parties. Unfortunately, many companies cannot be trusted to safeguard your data, and several companies forward your email address and name to many other third parties, greatly increasing the amount of spam that you will receive. Always use an alternate "throw-away" email address, to be used when registering for anything online; including subscriptions and reports. Creating and using an alternate email address will greatly help in preventing spam email in your business!

When registering a domain, get a "private registration" so no one can see your email address and contact info, to help prevent spam email.

Private registration for your domain name is a HUGE necessity, in your pursuit of preventing spam email. When you register a domain name, your contact information, or the contact information of the person who registered the site, can be displayed to the general public. In other words, a person could log onto a website such as the "Whois" directory (search it in your favorite engine), then enter your URL and your contact information will be displayed for all to see. Imagine a spammer's ability to go onto this or a similar website; find your REAL name, your REAL email address, and quickly start spamming the crap out of you!

By registering your domain under "private registration", your contact information will not be shown when a spammer decides to learn more about your company. It is important to keep in mind, that even though a private registration "hides" your contact information, there are ways for savvy spammers to circumvent this barrier of protection.

Turn spam inbox on "high" depending on the software you are using

One obvious but overlooked feature within most peoples' email software, is the "spam" or "filtering" option. Although the name of the spam filter varies depending on the company who created the software (or website), they all generally serve the same purpose. Having the spam filter set too low, can result in bucket loads of spam email creeping into your inbox. Having your junk filter set too high, can result in many of the emails that you actually want to receive, being marked as spam.

I personally recommend setting your filtering to "high", instead of low or moderate. This will catch most if not all spam, but will also capture many of your legitimate emails. You can create "rules" in your email settings, to allow email from certain domains (URLs) or certain names, to always go to your inbox. If your spam filter is either turned off, or turned to "low", you should definitely make the change needed today, to help in preventing spam email from flooding your inbox.

Try to refrain from creating "easy" email addresses such as one using the first letter of your first name and full last name

Spammers are clever and resourceful people more often than not. Let's pretend your first name and last name is listed on your company's website. If your name is John Smith, and the name is listed on your website, a spammer will try variations of your name such as: jsmith(at)yourcompany.com, or johnsmith(at)yourcompany.com, or john(at)yourcompany.com.

If any of those email addresses actually belong to YOU, guess who will be getting loads of spam to look forward to? Yes, YOU! Always remember to take in consideration the fact that spammers can "guess" your email address, whenever you create an email address, or have one create for your business or company. This will prove to be a very important step in preventing spam email from flooding your account!

Delete cookies from your internet browser daily (stored cookies can be tracked by spammers)

One highly unused tactic in the fight of preventing spam email, is changing your internet browser's "history" settings. When your internet browser stores cookies and files on your computer, websites load faster and many websites "remember" information that you may have submitted during your last visit to the website. History settings also allow an internet browser to store the websites that have been visited within the last hour, day, week, and even months.

Unfortunately, as convenient as it may seem to keep your history settings set to 30, 60 and 90 days, keeping cookies stored in your browser (on your computer) can actually cause the spam email that you receive to surge!

Believe it or not, cookies can be "read" by websites that you visit, spyware and adware installed on your computer and in other ways. Cookies contain information regarding your internet browsing habits as well as personal information that you may not want shared with the general online community; including: which sites were visited, how long each site was visited, the products/services/subject of the visited sites, and more.

Would you want a spammer to have such detailed information regarding your viewing habits? Could you imagine received countless emails that were directly related to the products that you purchase and the websites that you visit? Always delete cookies regularly from your internet browser, or disable your browser's ability to store cookies and history altogether.

How to Block Email Spam

Spam email is such an intrusion into our lives. We don't want it, we didn't ask for it and yet it comes right into our home to bother us. Some spam is very offensive. Some spam is X rated and children might be looking over our shoulder. Spam can take a lot of time to deal with and can seem almost overwhelming. Most of the software programs that we use to read email and many of the Internet Service Providers offer effective ways to deal with spam. The catch is that it requires a small investment of time and study to learn to apply the spam filers that we have within our reach.

There are two ways to filter spam mail: at the server and at our desktop email program. Since I have previously written on setting up spam filters at the server level, on a hosting account, I will touch on spam filtering that works within POP email accounts.

Setting Up Filtering With Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook 2010 has a very simple spam filtering system which will help reduce the amount of spam you have to deal with. To begin right click on the spam mail in question. Go the option entitled "Junk" near the bottom of the menu. You will see options to "Block Sender," "Never Block Sender," "Never Block Sender's Domain" and so forth. If you choose Block Sender you will never get email from anyone at that address again.

There is an option called "Junk Email Options." If you choose that you will get a wizard in which you can turn on spam filtering for your account. Your choices are No Filtering, Low Filtering, High Filtering, and Safe Lists Only. Under the Low and High Filtering options there is a line which describes the meaning of each option. "Safe Lists Only" means that you will need to manually form a Safe List. Then only the email from addresses on your Safe List arrives at your inbox. All other mail is then deleted. At the top of the Junk Email Options wizard is a tab called Blocked Senders. The Blocked Senders option prevents mail from all blocked addresses being delivered to your inbox and routes it to the Trash Bin. You can fill the Blocked Senders list by right clicking on any unwanted email and choosing to block that sender.

Another important setting is one which will permanently delete junk mail. If you chose this option all junk mail is permanently deleted. This option is not recommended for many users since the Trash Bin gives us a second chance to recover wrongfully deleted mail.

If you choose High filtering your email must meet a very high standard to avoid the Junk Folder. These filters are not perfect and you may lose a wanted mail message from time to time. If you are expecting mail and do not receive it you can go to the Junk Folder and check if it is there. To find the Junk Folder just double click your Inbox folder icon. The entire folder directory under Inbox will now open and you will see Junk Folder. Double click the Junk Folder and you will see the messages in it. Go to the message from your friend and right click on it. Choose "Junk" near the bottom of the menu. Then click "Never Block Sender". Now you will not lose mail from that sender.

The Outlook Filters Are Not Perfect

The spam filters built into Microsoft Office are not perfect but they offer some level of protection. Spammers are tricky, creative and very persistent. You will find that some spam mail will make its way into your mail box despite the filters. I recommended that you set the spam filters with your Internet Service Provider to work along with Outlook's filters. Feel free to make some adjustments to your Outlook filters. If you do not receive email send by a friend; don't forget to check for it in the Junk Email Folder. The Microsoft website offers more information about Outlook's email filters.

Setting Spam Filters For Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a free Open Source mail program offered by the Mozilla Foundations which also produces the Firefox web browser. Thunderbird is one of the top alternatives to Microsoft Outlook. Firefox offers a very strong spam filter system. We will take a look at setting up junk mail filters on Thunderbird.

When you have set up your email account in Thunderbird (you may have several email accounts within the program) you will see an icon for it in the left sidebar of the program. Highlight your account and you will see a list of options in the larger right column. Click "View settings for this account." Click "Junk Settings" on the left of the popup that appears. The first option that is available is to "Enable adaptive junk mail settings for this account." Check that box. The next option gives all the addresses in your Personal Address Book exemption from the filtering process. Check that since you approve of all of those senders.

The next option to "Trust Junk Mail Headers set by SpamAssassin" is very powerful. SpamAssassin is a very accurate Spam Scoring system that runs on many hosting servers and Internet Service Providers. If you have SpamAssassin on your hosting account or the ISP where your email originates you may use this option. In using this option you are giving Thunderbird permission to delete junk mail when it is marked as junk or spam by the SpamAssassin program. This means that once you have configured SpamAssassin at the server or ISP level, your email will receive a spam score before it hits your inbox. Thunderbird will read this score and move all mail with a sufficiently high score to the Junk Folder when it reaches your computer. This is very effective. Your only worry is if the scoring is set too severely and occasionally good email goes to the Junk Folder. If this happens you can put that email address in your address book and you will get all mail from that person.

Finally you chose where to put the junk mail. You may chose the Junk Folder for this particular account or another folder of your choosing. Chose the one under this account and you will know where to look if you lose good mail. That is it; junk filters are now configured in Thunderbird.

The setting of junk or spam filters can seen a little complex at first. It may take a little study and trial and error at first. These filters will give you a lot of relief once they are in place.. The effort will be worthwhile if you hate spam as much as I do.

Do you need help figuring out SpamAssassin and all of the junk mail settings that are available to you? I can help. Visit my website and contact me and I will help configure Spam filters and SpamAssassin at your server and offer advice in dealing with POP software settings. I also offer services in dealing for email marketing and Autoresponders.

Everyone Needs an Email Spam Blacklist

Spam Blockers, Spam Blacklist, Spam filters, or Email Blacklist whatever you call them they have the same purpose that is to combat spam emails. These kinds of security measures were really important especially if you run an email marketing campaign in your business. To tell you honestly not just business owners are in need of spam filters even for personal use especially if you want a clean spam-free inbox of yours and always expecting an important email from relatives on the states.

To avoid receiving spam do not give away your emails especially to those who you do not know, avoid leaving your email in websites that you have visited because most spam comes from their email newsletters. Also stay away from online advertisements that ask your email for an exchange of whatever they are offering. Do not publish your e-mail on internet until absolutely necessary. Turn on your firewalls for extra added protection against your network it can help black spam emails immediately. Actually there are three types of anti-spam software including plug-ins for email clients. It will run on your computer and will require all received spam to be downloaded before sorting them out. There is also what we called stand alone applications in which communicate with the email server several times to check the POP mailbox for spam and will delete them automatically. Lastly there are also server-side email spam filters, this kind of filters scans emails for certain trigger like spam keywords, phrases, formatting, and other spam methods though some spammers have discovered how to fool this security measures.

Spam Email Protection Is The Idyllic Solution

Spam email protection services are created to check the incoming emails and tag the emails that have subject header of those that identifies spam. Such emails are delivered to the inbox of people but with the advanced technology prevailing in today's world it is very easy to identify spam.

It is easy to protect spam messages from emails by setting up message rules in the inbox to remove or delete spam. Most of the emails such as outlook are protected by setting up message rules to assist in identifying spam messages and deleting them. with this the incoming mail that are email protected are tagged as spam and are automatically deleted or removed and put away in personal folder.

There are some email messages that might receive phishing scams that might carry viruses. There are some instances where spam email contained pornographic or web beacons which are created to secretly send an email or a message back to the sender.

For spam email protection it is vital that whenever you receive a phishing email messages, then it should not be responded. It is always wise not to open a junk email ever. If any email looks suspicious then it should not be risked for personal information by responding. It is also better to delete the junk email messages without reading because sometimes reading spam emails can send alert messages to spammers or else put the computer at unbelievable risk. Another option is not to unsubscribe to any email which is unknown or not from a trusted sender.

It is better not to approach links in email messages that look phishing messages since they encourage providing financial or personal information. The web beacons which are messages with pictures or light in emails are used to send message to the spammer secretly; should be avoided. The images in the emails might contain harmful codes to locate any active email address. The best defense in such cases would be to prevent downloading pictures until there is a chance to review them.

For spam email protection it is advisable to avoid approaching attachments in email messages since they might contain spy ware or viruses that get downloaded automatically to the computer system when opened. A safer way for email protection against spam is to treat a trust email message just like an unknown sender's message because fraudsters use the spoof of identity information. It is also ideal not to trust offers that look very much good to be true. If a message is received from a trustworthy website of an organization but looks suspicious then the same should be reported immediately to the organization but not through email. Another method is not to enter any kind of personal or financial information in any type of pop up window messages. It is wise not to forward chain email messages because through that you might aid to the spreading of virus. The last vitally important action would be to keep the computer software updated regularly.

How to Block Email Spam Part II

Online Email Services Offer Spam Blocking Filters For Your Email Account

Many people use Yahoo Mail or another online email service. Many Internet Service providers also offer a webmail option for online email reading. These services usually offer some sort of spam blocking email filters similar to those featured with POP mail. The use of spam filters is a bit confusing but helps reduce the amount of unwanted email. We will look at a couple of common spam filters for online email services.

Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail has a very simple spam filtering system. In your Yahoo mail folder click on the Options link on the upper right side. From the drop down chose "More Options." Choose the "Spam" option on the left sidebar. Spam Guard is the name of the online mail filtering system. Tick the box next to the option to turn on Spam Guard. Chose an option for the frequency to empty the spam folder. There is a box to block any email address. When you have entered the options that you want click "Save Changes" above the main column. Now click "Back To Mail" at the top of the left sidebar. Spam filtering will be automatic. If you do receive a message that you think is spam you can check the box next to it and send it to the spam folder by clicking the "spam" button on the menu bar.

Zimbra Collaboration Suite

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite is a program installed on the servers of Internet Service Providers to make online reading of email possible. My ISP has Zimbra installed as an option for online Webmail. I can read my mail in a POP mail program such as Outlook or I can read it online with Zimbra. When I log into my Zimbra account I see a main column containing all of my current email and on the left is a smaller column for the account's directory structure. At the top under the search bar is a small menu. Choose the Preferences button. In the preferences folder you will see several options at the top. Choose the Mail Filters option. You will see a work area in the center with the title Mail Filters. Choose the "New Filter" button. Now you have a Pop-up box and the cursor is flashing in a box called filter name. You can name the filter anything. If you are trying to filter out spam dedicated to weight loss products you might want to call it Weight Loss.

To set up the filter we must enter the conditions which will cause the filter to act. The first option is to set the filter to act on either "any" or "all" conditions. I chose "all" since I will be targeting mail which has a number of characteristics which recur frequently. If you chose "any" of the conditions you would need to set up many filters because you are defining things too narrowly. One single condition may exist in mail from all sorts of sources and may cause a lot of false positives. Suppose I set a filter for "any" condition and use the word "fat" as a string. This filter will act on all email that includes phrases like "lose fat fast", "fat juicy steaks" and "Johnny's fat lip". Without adding more conditions we are not able to bring together the common traits that spell "Spam". Our spam mails may include the words "fat", "weight loss pills" and "sign up now". This is why we want more than one condition to trigger the filter. By setting a filter with several conditions pertaining to weight loss we will get rid of spam mail and not the message from Aunt Jen who wants to tell about her "big fat bingo jackpot".

The next step is to choose a section of the email document to set conditions on. The best ones for filtering spam are subject, from, to and body. "Subject" is important in that Spammers want to catch your attention so that you will read the email. The "Body" will contain many of the common terms that people use to try to sell weight loss products. "From" may help but not often since spammers change their addresses and names often. "To" is important since spammers will insert any name if they are not certain of what yours is.

From the "conditions" box choose "Subject" and then "Matches Exactly" as the Comparison Operator; the second part of the condition. There is a blank next to Matches Exactly. Enter the name of a weight loss pill in that slot; one which appears often in your mail. This condition requires that a word in the subject match the term you have entered into the blank. Now click the plus symbol and you will have another condition to fill. Choose Subject again. Choose "Matches Exactly" once again and then enter Rapid Weight Loss in the blank. You then may click the plus sign and add another condition. You may want to do this several times for words that you find often in the subject line. After clicking the plus symbol again you may choose "Body" from the left side of the condition. Now you may enter "Matches Exactly" as the Comparison Operator. Then a word that appears in the body.

As you add the conditions to this filter be careful that you are building a common combination of terms. By adding some rare words you will be making a filter which will rarely be activated. You should also be careful not to add words commonly used by your friends. This will make loosing valid email less likely.

There are a several different Comparison Operators which do different things. "Matches exactly/does not match exactly" is an easy Operator to understand. The word we are filtering for must exactly match the term that you place in the blank. Does not match exactly will trigger the filter if the term is not found in the email. Matches Exactly will work if the spam always contains the word "Pills." If the spammer makes a change in the spelling and uses "Pillz" instead the condition will not work.

The Operators "contains/does not contain" is a little less strict than matches exactly. If the chosen phrase appears somewhere within the subject or body the filter will trigger. Therefore a filter for Contains "diet pills" would match: "fantastic diet pills", "harmful diet pills" and "illegal diet pills" but not "large diet pill."

The third set of Operators is "Matches wildcard/does not match wildcard." The wildcard allows you to match your chosen word with any string of characters that contains it. In other words the wildcard is a placeholder for other letters that you choose to merge with your test word. The asterisk (*) is the wildcard symbol. We set the filter to trigger with (*) placed at the beginning or the end of a word of choice. Then the filter is triggered no matter what combination of letters or numbers are added to the specific word. Therefore by using red*diet the filter will match "red apple diet", "red pudding diet", or "red heads don't diet". The wildcard is useful when the spammer merges words with other words. The tactic of merging words in the Subject line is a favorite one for spammers. You cannot use "Matches Exactly" Pills when the line is CheapEffectivePills. But a condition set for "Matches Wildcard" *Pills would work with the phrase CheapEffectivePills, or AnythingAnythingPills.

In the bottom part of the box there is a section for setting the action. The action is what the program does with all mail which fits the condition you set. Zimbra is not only for spam so some of the actions are not appropriate for dealing with email. From the drop down choose "Discard." Now we are almost finished. You may have a number of other filters set up which will sort or flag mail rather than filter it for spam. All of the filters in the list will act on each email unless you state otherwise. You don't want a piece of identified spam mail to go through the other filters and be acted on by them also. To prevent the other filters from acting on your spam mail check the box in the lower left corner of this spam filter. By doing this your spam filter alone will act on this mail and not the remaining filters. Finally click OK at the bottom of the box. You have set your first spam filter.

Filtering with Zimbra is a complex process. Some study of terms may be necessary for effective use. It might be necessary to use some trial and error before the filter works as planned. If you are still getting the spam mail go back and work the conditions again. If you think that you are loosing good email you can go back to your filter and set an action to "Deliver to Folder" and have the mail sent to a folder in your account. Check the folder and if your valid mail is there go back and rework your filter. Spam operators change their tactics constantly so the filtering tactics will need to change also.

Many online email services offer a spam filter system. Services such as Yahoo Mail may not matter much to us since we consider them to be throw away email accounts. For many people, their main email account that comes with their ISP is more permanent and also more important. ISPs are offering Spam Filters now along with their other services. The filters in Zimbra Collaboration Suite are not as powerful as those in other packages which include software like SpamAssassin. Zimbra will offer some help when combined with filters in your Desktop software such as Outlook. More information on Zimbra is available from several sources. The best and fastest way to get help with spam filters is to ask a qualified Web Designer or IT Professional.

Do you need help figuring out SpamAssassin and all of the junk mail settings that are available to you? I can help. Visit my website and contact me and I will help configure Spam filters and SpamAssassin at your server and offer advice in dealing with Outlook Mail Filter settings. I also offer services in dealing for email marketing and Autoresponders.

3 Tips for Simple Email Spam Prevention

Email spammers are persistent. They go by the words of Napoleon Hill, "Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success." With spammers the first two ingredients are certainly present; they have persistence and patience. This makes spammers very difficult to get rid of. They believe that if they make only one sale out of 50,00 pieces of mail sent they are successful. Therefore those wanting to get rid of spam mail are going to need to practice certain principles diligently. There are 3 good tips that everyone should use to prevent most spam mail.

Don't Sign Up Without Taking Precautions

The Internet offers many interesting offers. There is everything from free software to free advice. Every time someone signs up they will end up on another person's mailing list. Those Internet marketers who are legitimate will send you a confirmation email and ask you to confirm that you indeed signed up. By this method, called Double Opt In, they give you the chance to rule out that your husband or teen did not sign you up. Under this method, you may opt out at any time want and you will stop receiving the emails. The problem is that there is also an irresponsible way to run email marketing. The marketer who uses these dishonest tactic sill never give you the option of getting off of the mailing list and ending the flood of unwanted spam. Some who practice this even place an "un-subscribe" link at the bottom of the message but they do not follow through and take you off the list. Everyone who signs up for free deals on the Internet should do so with a free "throw away" email account. It is a given that you will get spam so why use your good email from your Internet Service Provider? When you use a free account from say, Yahoo, and it gets full of spam, you can simply throw away. If you sign up you will get spam mail. This is unavoidable. If you want to sign up and not be worried by spam, take some precautions and use a throw away email account.

Don't Post Your Email Address In Public Places

Social networking has become a huge industry and a big topic of interest among many people. It is fun to take part on forums and Facebook and receive the desired interaction. For those who are serious about staying free of spam there is one simple word of advice which you should follow with unwavering persistence. Don't post your email address unless it is a free account that you will one day get rid of. People who use spam practices will find your address in short order. And in case you are not aware, there are computers which scan the Internet relentlessly and harvest email addresses from forums, Facebook and every other place where people post them. It is not necessary to understand the technology which makes this possible; it is a fact. This carries over into website ownership. If you are having a website built insist on having a good contact form installed with captcha security. Those who list their email on their website will have span. There are a good number of free contact form scripts available which will give your visitors the ability to contact you. You need not post your address on your website.

Don't Open Spam Mail

Once you get spam in your mail box you can limit it by deleting it without opening it. Spammers have certain tricks that they use in order to verify whether or not you have opened their mail. Once they find that you have opened they will lunge ahead with all enthusiasm. After a spammer has verified that your email address is valid he may add it to a large list and sell it to other spammers who want to send you their unwanted mail. You might see a lot of mail, which you do not recognize and this might make you curious. If you want to get rid of spam, don't open it. Microsoft Outlook offers a preview pane. If you must know what is inside of a piece of spam mail you can take a peek at it through the preview pane. The best advice is to gather all spam mail in your box and delete it.

It is nearly impossible to make sure that you will never get spam email. If you persistently follow these 3 tips you will be able to limit spam to a manageable level.

Spam Filters - How Can They Help In The Fight Against Spam?

Spam filters are programs that sift through a person's e-mail and search for content that is likely to be spam. Spam is unwanted e-mails that either advertise and promote product and services, or invite the user to visit a page. Some spam mails direct people to web cameras and other pornographic sites. More illegal spam mails will ask for information on an individual's bank account or PayPal account. There are so many people attempting to make money with affiliate marketing that spam is getting worse.

PC users are starting to receive hundreds of spam messages per day rather than just a few like it used to be. Spam filters helps to weed out spam mail before it hits the inbox. Messages with certain titles are automatically sent to either the trash or the spam box. Filters created by the user will re-route the spam based on what he or she enters into the box. After about a week or so of having the spam filters intact, you should notice a significant decrease in the delivery of unwanted mail into your inbox. Users may also report illegal spam mail to the sender's internet provider or to the appropriate authorities so they can deal with the spammers.

Why Is Spam Filtering So Important?

How can you read the emails you really want to read, emails from loved ones, important information if your email box is clogged full of spam? Lucky most email providers have some sort of spam detection software built in but sometimes that's not enough. There is email software that assists in blocking that unwanted spam. Why would people send spam mail in the first place? Some people do it as a desperate reach for customers. Maybe they hope somebody will read there offer and respond?Some are legitimate offers and deals but we just don't want it. After all spam is subjective. An offer from Walmart might be spam to me but a great deal to somebody else.

There are also that dark presence of scammers that set out to steal money and identities and other crucial information from their victims. So would you want to block this nonsense with a spam filter? Of course you tell yourself. "I would never fall for a scam I am to smart!" You proudly exclaim. But the thing is even smart people can be scammed. So a spam filter will help you in your online safety. Don't give your email to anything or anyone that you might regret. Having a secondary email for offers and promotions can help in preventing spam as well.

Where to Find An Email Spam Filter

Since most people use email everyday, tools for fighting and stopping spam from overloading your email inbox have become a necessary part of your security software, especially if you use a desktop email client such as Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird or Post-box Express. All three of these programs have their own internal anti spam filters as part of the software. If you have your email account with Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo, you already have their built in anti spam features monitoring your account. If you are using your ISP's email servers, then you may want to find and install a good anti spam program.

Fire up your favorite search engine, and look for spam filters online. There are more than a few very good programs that will integrate with your email client. some are free, some have a trial period so you can assess whether the program will meet your needs and work with your system before you have to pay for the program. Check out places like CNET.com, Majorgeeks.com and other places online to find what you need.