| Dealing with Email Spam Filters |
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Beware! Spam filters are throwing out the baby with the bathwater! In spite of legislative efforts, spam now accounts for more than one-half of all e-mail. In fact, in April 2004, Brightmail estimated that 64 percent of the mail that went through its filtering program was spam. Postini, another spam filter service, labeled 78 percent of the mail it processed as spam. Since spam is now clogging and slowing down e-mail servers around the world, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are becoming more and more aggressive in their efforts to remove the spam. They use computers running programs like SpamAssassin, Brightmail and Postini to filter out the spam before the e-mail reaches their subscriber's in-boxes. Individual computer users are also using filtering programs to get rid of spam. Billions of pieces of e-mail go through filtering systems each day. The problem is that not all the mail marked as spam is actually spam. Unfortunately, spam filters are often inaccurate. So when the spam is being removed some legitimate email inevitably goes along with it. It is a case of the baby being thrown away with the bath water. This happens when your ISP filters email and it also happens if you use your own mail filtering program. How much and which legitimate email is marked as spam depends on the filtering program as well as the type of computer user you are. For instance, I use Eudora 6.1, which is an email program that has spam filtering built into the program. If I put a person's address in my address book, it tells Eudora that I would like to receive email from that person; so much of my personal mail comes through just fine. But I receive a lot of mail from people that I don't know, people with questions, manufacturers with products, newsletters, important email alerts, etc. Much of that mail ends up in my junk mail. So everyday I must go through my Junk folder and check for legitimate email before I send everything to the trash. The same thing happens when I use other email filtering programs. Depending on how your mail is filtered, you may also want to regularly check the email that has been marked as spam to seek out any valid email. Yes, it is a pain, but if your email is important, it is a necessity. Your email account should provide a junk mail, bulk mail or spam folder. You should regularly check inside that folder to see if it contains any legitimate email. If your ISP is filtering your email and you don't know how to access your junk mail folder, check your ISP's homepage or call them for details. If you do find legitimate email in your junk box, click on the icon, tab, or menu selection that indicates that it is not junk mail. If you expect to get more mail from the sender in question, add them to your address book, "safe list," or "white list," so that future mail will appear in your in-box rather than your junk mail box. (The terminology varies depending on the program used). This email filtering is a huge problem for newsletter creators and subscribers. Many legitimate newsletters are thrown into junk mail bins everyday. If you have subscribed to a newsletter and it is not showing up in your in-box, you will probably find that it has been thrown in with the spam. This is happening to many valid newsletters including nxtConcepts.com newsletters. For more information on making sure that your nxtConcepts.com Newsletters are delivered correctly, see our FAQ section. To help get your legitimate email past the spam filters, you often have to add the sender's address to your address book, "safe list," or "white list." Here are instructions for a few of the more common Internet Service Providers. America Online: If you have AOL 9.0 Enhanced, images and links in email are disabled by default unless you add the sender to your address book. To ensure delivery of mail simply go to keyword "address book" and put the email address of the sender in an email address field in your address book. For example, if you want to be sure to get nxtConcepts.com Newsletters and reminders, put in the address field. MSN Hotmail: Select "Options" and then "Junk E-mail Protection" and add the email address to your Safe List. Yahoo Mail: If spam is not a problem for you, you may want to turn off SpamGuard under Mail Options. If you use SpamGuard, check your bulk mail folder regularly to ensure important messages are not mistakenly filtered. Click the "addresses" button, then select "Add Contact" and save the sender's email address to your contacts list. Other ISPs: Some ISPs enable spam filters that you can turn off or tune to your preferences. Check your ISP's Web site or contact their technical support team for detailed instructions. Other E-mail and Filtering Software: Check your email and/or email software options or settings screen to see if you can add the sender's email address to a "white list" or "safe list" of senders. Alternatively, there may be a folder where suspected spam is moved. (Like the Junk folder in my Eudora email program) You should check there regularly to ensure important messages are not mistakenly filtered. Need help implementing a new sales or marketing program? We've got two suggestions:
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