The Importance of Spam Filters

Spam Filters – Why do you need this?If you have an email address, you most likely have received a message at some point asking you to buy something or click on a link that looked suspicious. You may wonder how someone got ahold of your email address to begin with? There are several ways that spammers could have acquired this information:

• Scanning the web for anything with an @ symbol. If your email address is posted publicly somewhere on the web, it will get found.
• Guessing! Lots of trial and error.
• Social Engineering. Your email address could have been a part of a group message or list for a friend or colleague that has had their email compromised.
• Lists. Lists can be purchased by spammers, whether it is done illegally or legally.

Spam can be annoying, but it can also carry malware that could potentially infect your computer and in turn compromise valuable company data/information. What can you do to prevent spam from reaching your employees to begin with? This is where a spam filter will come into play. Spam filters can vary on the kind of protection that they offer. They can filter email based on headers, content, specific rules, blacklist policies and much more. The type of filter and policies that one would implement depends on the needs of a business and the type of data that they work with daily.When you have a spam filter in place all your incoming mail will go through it and will be scanned before it reaches your inbox. This way malicious emails can be quarantined before an employee even has a chance to read it. Because this sort of filter can sometimes catch good email unintentionally, most spam filters have some sort of quarantine page or login where you can view flagged messages and release email as needed.It has been estimated that roughly 50% of all emails sent in a day are spam. Spam is a billion-dollar business that is not going anywhere, and you need to do what you can to protect yourself and your employees from it.