It’s been reported that 95% of all email sent is spam. Considering that email is essential to doing business, spam is a nuisance to say the least. As an HNCxMail user, you have taken the first step to managing your spam effectively as combating spam is a key focus for us. However, there are additional steps you can take to keep spam at a manageable level.
This document will outline what spam is, why you keep receiving it, and how you can protect your Inbox from the diabolical forces of email spammers.
What is spam?
E-mail spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE) or unsolicited commercial email (UCE), is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail message — frequently with commercial content — in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.
Harvested address spam is the most common type of spam. Spammers use a computer system ('spider' or 'spam-bot') to check almost every Web site on the Internet (including yours). The 'spam-bot' looks on every Web page for an '@' symbol. When it finds an '@', it knows it has found an email address. It then captures the email address and adds it to the spammer’s database of harvested addresses.
E-mail spoofing is a term used to describe fraudulent email activity in which the sender address is altered to appear as though the email originated from a different source. Virtually any email address or domain can be spoofed.
Why doesn’t anti-spam software prevent all of the spam?
Most anti-spam software identifies spam by the following methods:
- Blocking email from known spammer addresses.
- Identifying obscene words in the email.
- Identifying a form e.g. 'click here to buy this rubbish'.
- Identifying certain sales/marketing or other flagged words.
Many spammers have learned to beat these systems by:
