NFIB

Fighting Spam
02/ 13/ 2003

by Tamara Holmes

If you think junk email is nothing more than a nuisance to you and your employees, think again. According to the San Francisco-based consulting firm Ferris Research, junk email -- commonly referred to as spam -- will cost U.S. organizations more than $10 billion this year.

You might wonder how the cost of email can be calculated. Think productivity. The time your employees spend sifting through junk email to find messages that require a response is precious time that could be spent running your business. And the daily flood of junk email messages that are becoming more and more common tax your business's network when they take up space in your employees' email in-boxes. Finally, help desk costs for managing all of that extra email can impact a company as well.

Despite the fact that spam is expected to become an even bigger problem in the future, there are ways that your company can reduce its impact.

Many email programs such as Microsoft Outlook offer filtering capabilities that let users designate certain key words to be flagged and filtered out of your in-box. For example, messages with the words "Make Money," a common subject line for spam, could be sent immediately to a separate spam folder that you can peruse at your leisure to make sure nothing got filtered out that you didn't want to get filtered out.

If your email program does not have robust spam filtering capabilities, consider purchasing a dedicated spam-filtering program such as McAfee Associates' SpamKiller (www.mcafee.com/myapps/msk) or Sunbelt Software's I Hate Spam (www.sunbelt-software.com/index.htm).

Another option you might want to consider are services such as Brightmail (www.brightmail.com), which stop spam at the server level before it gets to the individual in-boxes of your employees.

While filtering programs can help your small business cut down on the amount of junk email that travels across its servers, your employees' Internet behavior can make a difference as well.

Under no circumstances should you reply to a spammer. Even if a message promises to take you off of the mailing list should you reply, don't do it. Replying to junk email just lets the senders know the email address is valid and they will keep sending messages or even sell your email address to other spammers.

Also instruct your employees not to use company email addresses on Internet message boards and chat rooms. Spammers use software programs that scan message boards and chatrooms searching for email recipients. If you're going to participate in those forums, use a free email account such as Hotmail or Yahoo for that purpose.

There are currently efforts underway to fight spam with legislation. Several bills are gaining favor among both federal and state lawmakers, but for now the best ways to tackle junk email is with a little filtering software and a touch of common sense.

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