This is a guest post by Selena Narayanasamy. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
At the bane of any business’ existence is the dreadful spam email that crowds its inbox and seems to multiply exponentially, even after it’s deleted. The annoyance of receiving unwanted emails and their accompanying links makes any business owner (or even someone who is using hosted email for personal use) almost desperate to find software mechanisms to help avoid dealing with this time-consuming task. Of course, there’s the problem of real mail getting lost in spam too… but that’s a story for another day.
Avoiding Spam Mail
Self-hosted email accounts are especially vulnerable to viruses and attacks, because they often lack the applications and software that larger companies use for security purposes. Whether that’s due to budgeting or personal preferences, self-hosted accounts should take the same precautions to guard against spam as any other.
One of the first things a business should do at its setup is to install anti-spam software on all its systems. Anti-spam software acts proactively by preventing unwanted spam mail and junk email from getting to the email inbox. Most software includes preset filters for tracking and deleting spam, and they also send reports to the sender’s Internet provider. This action should discourage those annoying emails at best while filtering through what is and what isn’t relevant to the business.
Customizing Spam Software
Self-hosted email accounts can also easily customize anti-spam software to filter information based on the email subject, words, or even domain name. This should make it easier for a company to receive the emails it needs and delete those that it doesn’t. This is important to ensure the system doesn’t delete emails that come from clients or prospects. You’ll have some pretty irate clients on the other end, and you may lose out on some good business as well. A business can program the software to initiate at the computer’s startup, which will essentially prepare your email communications on a daily basis using a clean slate.
Email filtering software works in the same way as anti-spam software by organizing its features according to a pre-set list of criteria. When an email arrives, the software will categorize it and send it to the proper folder, eliminating the need to have to go through each piece of mail and manually file it. Depending on the sophistication of the software, the program used can perform certain functions to ease the transition of dealing with particular emails. Some programs will do the following things:
1. Automatically delete the email or file it according to certain keywords or domain names.
2. Instantly reject any emails that originate from a particular sender.
3. Redirect, filter, or edit the message during processing, eliminating the need for it to ever arrive in the recipient’s inbox.
When setting up the account filters, check that there is not too much protection installed. While spam protection is very important in a business’ setup, too much email filtering can cause a business to miss important emails. A company should ensure the software is as generic as possible in filtering keywords so the system will not eliminate important information.
Usually, the email hosting company a business uses will offer anti-spam features to attract customers. When a business installs anti-spam systems and software alerts, it should have an efficient way to eliminate and avoid spam emails while allowing important information through. Make sure you do your research and find out exactly what self-hosted email accounts offer you. It will save you time and keep you from banging your head against the wall when you have piles of spam to sort through.
Selena Narayanasamy loves everything technology, productivity, blogging, social media, caffeine and being sarcastic. You can find her blogging on her social/tech site, Esvienne, or listen to her musings on Twitter- @SelenaVidya