One of the most common questions we hear from customers is how to reduce the amount of junk e-mail or “spam”. In this article I answer why you get spam, how to avoid getting it in the first place, and how to manage the spam you already get.
Why do get spam? Do you recall when you first got your e-mail address – you probably got little or no spam. The longer you have an address the more likely you are to get spam – and the amount increases over time as your address gets stored on in an increasing amount of people’s address books, databases and in other computers. If one of those computers gets an e-mail virus or spambot or if an e-mail database is hacked, you’re going to get spam. Also if you post your e-mail address on a website, computers that search the internet looking for e-mail addresses will add your address to its list of active e-mail addresses, and you’ll get spam. It’s a cat-and-mouse game as the e-mail providers tune their spam filters to recognize the words and patterns that junk e-mail usually contains, while the spammers are devising new methods to not be detected by the filters. New methods that the spammers are using include: