Just by looking at the emails that you receive
you may notice that some of the emails are not meant
for you. Although they have been addressed to you,
you may know that the sender is unknown to you and
the subject of the email is something that you have
not expected. Such emails in your inbox are spam.
These spam are meant to promote some product or
service. It is easy for a human to go through the
mails that they have received and identify them
as spam although it is a tough job for the software
that are meant to filter spam.
How spam affect to the normal e-mail communication?
Spam affects the normal email communications in
many ways. The spam puts unnecessary load on the
network traffic. It is not possible to reduce this
load anyway. Moreover if you get lot of spam in
your inbox it takes a lot of time to clear those
junk emails. This takes away lot of your precious
time in clearing your inbox. There is need to search
your inbox if you are to reply to some important
email immediately.
How to recognize a typical spam?
Spams are being sent out in a clever manner as
days pass out. Some of the easy ways to identify
a spam are to look for the following signs in the
email that is sent to your inbox. The subject line
of the emails would be very bad and they mostly
have grammatical errors and spelling errors. This
is clearly an indication of a spam. Some junk letters
in an inappropriate combination would be seen in
the subject line. An example of this would be something
like “FW:FA:STE:RE:CT:USTemucut“. The
words in the subject line may not be connected and
it may be irrelevant.
Sometimes the subject lines include some user id
and password requesting you to go to some website.
Some of the spams would have attachments that are
not intended for you. If you download these attachments
and open them in your system the system may behave
erratically. There is a possibility that the attachments
may have some virus or worms in them, which may
send out sensitive information from your system
to somebody in the world. The best way to deal with
this type of spam is to simply delete the emails
that are not for you, without even opening it. It
is better to have anti-virus software installed
and updated in your system. Never open the attachments
if you suspect it is a spam.
Preventing the mail you send to be treated as spam
There are chances of your mail being treated as
spam and sent to the junk mail folder. To prevent
this you have to configure your email so that your
full name is sent out to the recipient. Proper typing
of the subject matter is essential. For example
if you type your email in all capital letters it
may sometime be treated as spam by the spam filter
and sent to the junk mail folder. Give a clear subject
line for your emails and do not give generic subject
lines like “Hi!”, “Wow”,
and “Great!”. Let the subject line be
specific to the subject of the content that is sent
out to the recipient.
Preventing spams in your inbox
It is better to take some precautions when you
give out your email address to somebody particularly
to some organization or a website. Most of them
ask for email addresses. If you fill out a form
in a website you are sure to get some emails from
them. Most of the time the companies that get your
email address sell them to other companies and you
keep on getting emails from them. So do not give
out email address to websites or companies unless
you feel it is necessary.
Why do spammers send junk e-mails?
Spammers send junk emails to the users mostly to
market some product or a service. Some of the spams
are meant to reconfirm that the email address is
a valid one, so that they can sell those addresses
to someone else or to send some product information
to you. There are many individuals who are contracted
for this purpose of sending emails to the persons
they have in the mailing list. There are direct
marketers who genuinely market their products from
a particular email address only. Some of the junk
emails are from the websites you would have registered
and requested some content or newsletter from them
as a part of the registration process.
Lot of spam calculators is available in the Internet.
A typical spam cost calculator in the internet calculated
a wastage of nearly 5 hours per year for an employee
if the employee is getting 10 spam emails per day
and if the employee wastes 5 seconds on each spam
received. Around $80 per employee is lost. If the
organization is having 100 employees then the amount
lost per annum on spam alone is around $8000.
If you go for some anti-spam solutions so that
the spams are filtered out and only the genuine
emails are sent to the employees, the anti-spam
solution is going to cost the organization around
$2500. You can see the benefits of using anti-spam
software. There are many anti-spam softwares in
the market. Depending on the cost of the anti-spam
software the amount of gain in the organization
varies. Hence it is worth investing in anti-spam
software.
Anti-spam laws
It is really a question whether the laws against
spam would actually prevent spam. Anti-spam law
in the USA is effective from January 1, 2004. there
are some regulations that have to be followed when
a spam is sent to a user. This law states that there
must be provision for the recipients to get removed
from the mailing lists if they opted for that. Moreover
the spammers should also send in their complete
information. Although the law states like this we
have to see whether the spams received adhere to
these regulations. This law does not prevent spam
but it enables to send spam with some information
for removal. The spams have to be labeled as advertisements
and clear warnings should begiven if the content
contains sexually explicit materials.
