Spam Can be Minimized
Posted on March 1, 2006
Filed Under Internet, Security |
A client recently complained that spam was becoming unbearable on their business network. The some 25 network users were being inundated with several 10’s of spam messages every day. Some days this could mean 1000 or more pieces of junk email.
Spam, or Unsolicited Commercial Email, is junk email that arrives in your inbox often with the purpose of luring you into buying all sorts of items from illegal software to Viagra and even logos and penny stocks. Aside form being incredibly annoying, spam wastes Internet bandwidth and can lure you to sites that run scripts which can install spyware/adware.
The email hosting company that my client used had taken measures to control spam but from a hosting provider’s perspective, this can be a double edged sword. Block spam too aggressively and you run the risk of blocking legitimate email. Err on the side of caution and the efforts can be ineffective. Often hosting companies will prefer that clients manage spam as it arrives in their inboxes.
I couldn’t agree with that sentiment more. While it would be nice if there were a magic bullet for spam, there isn’t. A hosting provider might prevent the bulk of spam from reaching a users inbox but the risk of falsely identifying legitimate email as spam is just too real. Preventing legitimate email from reaching a business has the potential of resulting in lost business or worse.
Left to end users to manage their own spam problem, at least they can be sure that whatever is marked as spam is in fact spam. Anything falsely identified as spam can easily be retrieved and action can be taken to prevent similar messages from being falsely identified again.
There are a number of anti-spam products available and more and more email clients (email programs) are coming with built-in anti-spam functionality. Microsoft Outlook 2003, for example, includes a pretty reasonable spam filter that uses the new “Junk E-mail” folder. A Google search for ‘spam filters’ will results in about 9,000,000 hits and is a great start to finding a good spam filter.
In our case the client already had a Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 network which includes Microsoft Exchange. Exchange is a full featured mail server in its own right and the client had been using the Exchange collaborative features only. The environment allowed us to put the resources already available to better use and resolve spam issues at the same time.
By working with the hosting provider we were able to bring all of the email services ‘in-house’ and put a free spam filter for Exchange to work. By having direct control of the mail server, we were able to prevent spam from reaching users inboxes and at the same time easily monitor which messages were being marked as spam and recover them if necessary.
Today only 3 or 4 spam messages per day actually reach users inboxes and we are confident that those that do not truly are spam. Spam unfortunately can’t be eradicated but with some determination and care, it can be effectively dealt with.
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