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I get a lot of email. On an average day I get 200 or 300 emails. You probably think I don't have enough hours in the day the as I am so busy because of all the email I get. In fact about 99% of it is spam.
The term comes from the famous Monty Python comedy sketch where people start shouting the word spam to drown out the other people talking much as spam email drowns out any serious emails you may get.
Just over 50% of all email sent is spam and according to Messagelabs this is set to increase into 2004. If I answered all the spam I get I would be able to live comfortably for thousand years, father a huge family and have no credit card worries for the rest of my life. For some one like me this is a big problem.
There is always a bit of paradox with spam. If you have a website you need to publish an email address. If you put an email address on your website it is very likely that it will get 'harvested' and added to a spam list. I would always suggest having a generic email address on a website an 'info@' address. At least you know that this should be the only address that gets spam.
How do I cope?
On my home computer I use a piece of software called 'POPFile' which is free and pretty easy to install and set up. You set up 'buckets' and then assign emails as they come in to a particular bucket. This is all done via a web browser which makes it pretty easy. After a couple of days the software learns which mail is real and which is spam. This enables you to use the 'Rules Wizard' in Outlook more effectively as POPFile inserts and identifier in to the email to make it easier to sort. The good thing about this piece of software, apart from it being free is that it can be used with many different mail clients. If you want to run it on a Macintosh you will need to install Perl if you are suing a pre OS X operating system. For windows users the Perl come with it.
Other spam filtering applications:
Mailwasher
Norton Anti-Spam 2004
McAfee SpamKiller
Spamnix
There are a number of ways you can filter spam.
Spamcop offers an online filtering service which filters viruses as well as spam. They provide services for individuals, small businesses or large corporations.
Other online filtering companies:
Messagelabs
Brightmail
If you run Microsoft Exchange apparently the 2003 version of this software will have built in spam filtering. If you can't wait or can't afford to upgrade try some of these:
Mailsweeper for Microsoft Exchange
SpamKiller for Microsoft Exchange
SurfControl E-mail Filter for Microsoft Exchange
If you run a Linux server you have probably written one yourself, or already have one set up but just in case:
Spamassassin
