Spam Filter

A spam filter is a piece of software that analyses your incoming email and uses a number of rules to decide whether it is spam or legitimate email. It will look for words like Viagra, Cialis and regard them as spam. The filter will analyse words in the body of the message, the headers, pairs of words, phrases, where the words appear in relation to other words.

Spam filters are a necessity in this day and age. The volume of spam and email has seriously increased over the years. Removing spam used to be quite painless and simple, you could just look at an email and tell straight away whether it was spam and then just quickly delete it. With such an increase in the volume of spam and spam getting a more sophisticated it is becoming harder to distinguish. Spammers now disguise words and try to write natural text. This is why spam blockers and spam filters are now so important.

You should never underestimate the amount of time and money company employees waste on trying to filter spam. An hour a day can easily be wasted trying to sift through your email and distinguish what is spam and what is legitimate mail. You may have a spam filter with your email client which only does so much. It makes mistakes so you end up having to sift though your junk mail box anyway. Say this takes an hour a day, that’s 5 hours a week, 20 hours a month which is 240 hours a year. If you look at time is money and you work for £25 an hour then for 5 hours a week spent filtering spam you have will have wasted £125, £500 a month and £6000 a year! That is a huge amount of wasted money and resources. This is why companies should seriously look at spam filters as a way to save this time and money. A good spam filter costs between £30 and £50. With a spam filter costing £30 there is still a massive saving of £95 a week, £380 a month or £4440 a year.

As well as time-wasting, spam can also have a detrimental effect on your pc. Computers are easily infected with viruses, Trojans which create havoc with your pc which can cause the whole system to come crashing down. If you want to end your headaches and get the most out of your employees' time then you should buy and install a spam filter. They are not highly priced and once set up could have a huge impact on the productivity of your company. And think what could be done with the money and time saved.

Spam is pervasive. According to a Radicati Group report published in 2003, 45% of all email messages we receive are mass marketing ploys intended to sell a service or product, scam unsuspecting email users, distribute viruses, or annoy us with fake claims.

Marketers are having a field day with UCE (unsolicited commercial email). Small entrepreneurial companies buy email lists for several thousand dollars and then pitch their wares to unsuspecting masses. They send email blasts to every conceivable name and letter combination at AOL and other ISPs (Internet service providers), hoping at least a few are duped.