Contributed post –
For businesses, email and text spam is a significant issue. Not only does it interrupt flow, but it is also a potential security risk. Unsuspecting employees could click on dodgy links, exposing your network to viruses and other kinds of malware.
If you already tried to cut down on the amount of spam reaching your employees’ inboxes, you’re probably at your wit’s end. No matter what you do, emails are still getting through.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. With the right anti-spam efforts, you can slash the number of unwanted emails your team must process and focus more on the task at hand.
Here are some of the reasons why your anti-spam efforts aren’t working – and what you can do to turn the situation around.
You Respond To Spam
When spammers (or scammers) send you an email, it is usually an attempt to get you or your colleagues to hand over sensitive information. Sometimes you can do this unwittingly by merely clicking a link.
Many offices, therefore, operate a zero-tolerance policy on spam. They NEVER respond to any unrecognized email in their inbox, just in case it is a phishing attempt.
You Publish Your Email Address Publicly
Businesses like to put their email addresses out there publicly to help their legitimate customers get in touch with them. It seems like a good idea at the time, but it can cause more trouble than it is worth. Scammers use sophisticated search techniques to trawl the internet for potential target addresses to spam with their messages.
Putting your email address up on a website, therefore, can be a substantial risk. A scammer could come along at any time, skim your site, and add your address to their target list.
Fortunately, with the right IT support, you can apply more sophisticated systems that provide you with the best of both worlds: spam protection and email contact options for legitimate customers.
You Don’t Block Senders
Spammers can only get through to email inboxes if the person on the receiving end has not blocked them yet.
If you run a cloud-based email platform, then blocking these messages at the administrative level is easy. You just tell the software to put a block on the address, preventing any messages from coming through.
If your email is more fragmented, then you may have to train employees to do this individually. Either way, if you don’t block senders, your problems will continue.
You’re Not Using Spam Managers
While standard email services are getting better at detecting spam, they’re not entirely on a par with spam manager plug-ins. These products have sophisticated systems that allow them to identify potential spam in user inboxes and eliminate it before it has a chance to do any harm.
These tools also offer further benefits. You can, for instance, use them to route specific emails to different folders, helping to keep them more organized. Important emails, for example, might go to a primary folder, while newsletters go to another.
