Anti-spam

Spam (unsolicited email, often of an offensive nature) has become a real bugbear of email users of the Internet in recent times. It is an extremely easy method for the purveyors of cut-price Viagra and enhancements of certain parts of the male anatomy to use the Internet for marketing their wares.

These parties have even partnered with virus writers to use infected PCs for distributing billions of these messages making a hugh impact on Inboxes and filling them full of this rubbish. It can often happen that valid email is deleted erroneously when the volumes of spam are also being deleted. A recent survey suggests the productivity impact of dealing with spam on employees could cost thousands of Euro per annum, per user.

However, there are steps that can be taken to avoid at least, the worst affects of spam. Opening an account with a provider who has a proven track record in reducing spam to the end user. It is also important to actively discourage spam by learning to recognise the general formats of unsolicited email, marking it as spam in your mail application and making sure not to reply.

Inevitably though, if you really want to reduce the rivers of spam to a trickle you will need to install anti-spam software from the many free and commercial quality products available.