In today's business world, spam e-mail has emerged as the biggest evil that is cutting productivity and adding troubles. Companies receive thousands of deceptive, indecent and irking e-mails in bulk on a regular basis. Spam is a jargon used commonly to express discarded, undesirable and promotional e-mails or junk e-mails. Spam comes in many forms. Latest forms are pdf and MP3, so spammers are on an ongoing basis exploring new ideas for getting their messages through. It is not an acronym so it does not really denote something. Actually, a spam e-mail is usually a commercial mail sent to the recipients who did not request any kind of information from the company or the individual sending it.
Getting huge volume of unwanted commercial e-mails can significantly cost the individuals and businesses a lot of time and resources as they have to sort out the legitimate mails, removing the unsolicited messages and this process, at times, become very exhaustive and frustrating, thus hindering efficiency.
Removing spam is a lengthy process; performance of the e-mail server gets several affected and network security is also put at greater risk from malevolent e-mails. Furthermore, the company also faces the risk as these spam mails might lead to irreparable harm to the systems, thus causing disorder and big loss of work and capital to the company. Spam mails can also carry virus and malware that can really hurt an organization.
The only measure against the spam threat ensuring total security and protection is professional assistance. Thus, the server should be shielded to assure that all the passing information is filtered and fire-walled against spam.
Typically, a server spam filter is a software application that scrutinizes the incoming messages, spotting spam on the basis of pre-determined configurations while detaching the unwanted e-mail so that it never reaches the users? inbox. And one of the widely used servers is that developed by Microsoft. Dubbed as Exchange Server, this Microsoft product makes e-mailing more speedy and resourceful. However it is often not efficiently enough when handling spam and junk.
Spam devices can be of great help to carry out filtering at an exchange server or spam blocking at exchange server. A server spam filter facilitates the users to automate the spam removal procedure at the server level - the receiving source ? before it reaches the network of personal computers. Automating is a suggested task as it saves the personal computer, and time of users in addition to the network from damage which can lead to data loss and downtime.
Installing extra spam filters at exchange server level allows businesses to be more efficient in controlling spam and maintain the confidentiality of their mails without revealing it to external factors. Exchange Server filters operates from a central server, generally linked to several spam ?blacklists? that spots the recognized spam senders while evaluating every e-mail on the basis of its individual features.
I only have one e-mail account. That's right, one. In this day and age where it seems like everyone and his grandmother are webmasters, it's a little surprising for someone who runs websites to only have one mail account, isn't it? Truth to tell, I've had this same e-mail mailbox for the last several years, and in that time I've signed up for thousands of web services and countless one-off website accounts created just to be able to see an article or download a file, used once and then forgotten.
And for all of them, I have seen the introductory e-mail appear in my primary mail account, as well as the confirmation that my e-mail address is valid and won't you click this link to confirm that for us thank you very much. Yet I don't have a spam problem. Why? Because I host my own e-mail along with my own domains, and I use a catchall.
What is a catchall and how does it work? Simply put, a catchall is a configuration setting for a mailbox that defines it as the default receiving mailbox for one or more domains. You have a domain yourdomain.com, and mail comes there. Normally, if they e-mail joe@yourdomain.com and no such account exists, the mail is rejected. A catchall was invented as a lead-capturing marketing technique, so that you could respond to people (potential customers) even if they misspell the e-mail address of the sales guy at your company, or if they just generically e-mail "sales@yourdomain.com" or "support@yourdomain.com" which may or may not exist.
There is another sneaky use for a catchall, though. By setting up a catchall for the domain I use for receiving e-mail, I can dynamically on-the-fly create spontaneous e-mail addresses whenever I choose, in whatever amount I choose, and without having to configure anything beforehand. Since all mail address to *anyone*@mydomain.com shows up in my mailbox (which is configured as the catchall mailbox), whenever I'm at a website that wants my e-mail address for me to use their services or to download a PDF or whatever I'm doing that day, I can make up whatever e-mail address at my domain that I want.
Say I'm trying to read an article at the NYTimes (which requires registration), or say I'm trying to buy something at a computer hardware website that I'll probably never visit again. I have to give them an e-mail address to create an account, right? So if the website I'm buying from is CheapoComputers.com, I will sign up with the e-mail address "cheapocomputers.com@mydomain.com". Since my mailbox is set up to be the catchall for my domain, I will get all the e-mails that I should.
However, since I don't know CheapoComputers from anyone else (or any of the other million places that want my e-mail address every day), if they should happen to sell my info to another firm, or use it themselves to send out unsolicited advertisements or spam, as soon as the e-mail comes in I know who the guilty party is because the e-mail address it is sent to says where that account was first created and for what purpose!
I can then, at my leisure, either contact the company that sent the spam and confront them about where they got my e-mail address and that they had better not send me spam, or if I don't want to bother with it I can just block that TO address in my e-mail settings. It will shut off that one method of reaching me that is now being spammed, but anything else continues to reach me just fine!
Both Spamfighter & Lucas Green are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Spamfighter has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet, Software. SPAMfighter is Europe's leading developer, providing spam protection across the globe for home users and. Spamfighter's top article generates over 2400 views. to your Favourites.
Lucas Green has sinced written about articles on various topics from Microsoft SQL Server, Computers and The Internet and computers and the internet. ===================================================This article was written by , a professional private web developer for WebContents.org. To visi. Lucas Green's top article generates over 22200 views. to your Favourites.