Do you know that the vast majority of all the emails sent in any one month world-wide will in fact just be Spam? Everyone is liable to receive these unwanted emails, which can often be vehicles for potentially harmful computer viruses and spyware. However, simply by deploying a spam filtering system on your computer you can not only stop all of those unwanted emails before they arrive at your inbox - but can also greatly strengthen your internet security by removing the potential threats that spam often carries.

Spam emails

Most people think that spam must be an acronym for something, but in actual fact it isn’t and is simply the term we use for any unwanted and/or unsolicited emails. At best spam emails will be trying to sell you something you don’t want or need, which can be annoying enough. If you ever should actual open a spam email to read it, if you’re lucky all that will happen is that you are then deluged with even more spam email. However, if you’re unlucky just opening a spam email can leave your computer infected with computer viruses destroying your valuable data or letting spyware and phishing programs onto your computer that can compromise your banking and finance details. Needless to say, the best way not to open any spam emails is not to receive them in the first place - for which you need a spam filtering service.

Why do I get spam email?

A common misconception is that only people who visit ‘dodgy’ websites will run the risk of being sent spam email. This simply isn’t true - if you’ve got an email address without spam filtering you run the risk of receiving spam emails. Spammers can get hold of your email address as simply as by purchasing lists of email addresses from third parties. Alternatively, especially for email services like hotmail and gmail, they’ll create random email addresses using what internet security companies call dictionary attacks; or, in the case of anyone with their own internet website or domain, they can run email harvesters to scan web pages and harvest email addresses. Of course, if you really want to make it easy for the spammers - just leave your email address open for anyone to view on a social networking website. Of course, once spam starts it can become incredibly tiresome and frustrating and seem to be impossible to stop. If that’s how you’re feeling right now - you need spam filtering.

Spam filtering

Chances are whatever email system you are using there will be some spam filter settings you can make. You might also be using an email client to collect and distribute emails, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, which again have some in-built ability to monitor spam. The problem with those spam filters is that they can be difficult to configure for non-IT experts and are all too frequently not very effective at all, as they might still allow spam to enter your inbox and only flag it up to you as potentially being spam. So, if you are being plagued by spam you want a spam filtering system that will prevent the spam from even getting to your inbox, thereby providing you with much better internet security all round. So, to give yourself maximum protection from spam get a spam filtering system that is both permission based, meaning that you tell it what to treat as spam; and, as the spammers will constantly be trying to circumvent your spam filtering, will also proactively look for new incoming spam. A permission based spam filtering system gives you two main options to help protect your internet security; you can create white lists and black lists of email addresses. For example, suppose I wanted to receive emails from the email address "anyone@A.com" but didn’t want to receive any emails from "anyone@X.com". By putting the A.com addresses in the white list they will get through to my inbox, whereas by putting the X.com addresses into my black list - they will be filtered out as spam. Finally, of course, do make sure you buy a spam filtering system that will work effectively with the email system(s) that you are currently using.