It may seem strange, but originally the idea of junk mail was quite innocent: in 1978 Gary Thuerk, currently known as the Father of spam, decided to create such mail invitations that would be quick to send and wouldn’t cost much. As the mailing list of Digital Equipment Corporation, where Gary worked as a marketing manager, numbered 600 persons, it would take a long time to make up a personal message for each of them. So, Gary just drafted one invitation and sent it to all 600 people.
This way spam came into the world – the world that not only didn’t expect it but also was completely horrified by the annoying “newcomer”.
Today the average computer user gets around 10 junk mails per day, and this amount is increasing year by year. Spammers never rest, sending about 90 billion spam messages a day, mainly through botnets or zombie networks – Internet computers used to transmit spam and viruses. Thus, spam damages both the national economy as a whole and separate companies in particular, making people spend time on reading junk messages and money on installing spam filters.
One of the most irritating things about junk mail is that once your computer is equipped with some spam detection mechanism, permission-based messages can happen to be never delivered to your inbox only because your filter treated them like spam. Just imagine that your business partner addresses you a list of tempting discounts, but as the mail contains such prohibited words as earn or discount, your spam filter classifies it as spam, and you remain absolutely unaware of a profitable business offer.
To prevent the formation of false positives – legitimate messages which are determined by spam checkers as spam – you should follow these spam filtering advice:
First create more than one e-mail address. One or more addresses are used for business contacts, friends and family, while a separate e-mail is dedicated to dealing with commercial companies and service supplies. This way spam is unlikely to interfere in your business affairs and personal life.
Secondly, if you receive a mail from a familiar sender, but the message contains a suspicious attachment, check with the sender. In case he/she didn’t send any, delete the message without viewing it.
Generally the subject line of business letters have a definite well-thought topic which reflects the content neatly. However, some people neglect this rule and leave the subject line empty, or, which is worse, write something like !!! and some words in capital letters. In this case email protection systems think the message is spam and eliminate it. Ask all your correspondents to indicate the topic in the subject line properly.
Besides that, you can show your junk mail filter what is spam and what is not, using such systems as Barracuda Quarantine or e-filtrate which also help to identify the spam rate for your own outcoming messages.
Finally, if you want to stop receiving newsletters you subscribed to before, don’t use the “Report as Spam” button, but just click “Unsubscribe” instead. Otherwise the mailer will block this message not only from you but also from other recipients, and you may become an obstacle to people’s correspondence.