Tip of the Week: How to Prevent Email Spam

While email offers several great benefits to those willing to deal with it, the most popular method of communicating in the office has its flaws. One of the most crippling is spam, which can ruin your inbox and your productivity. The unfortunate truth is that even the most diligent workers get hit with spam, but that doesn’t mean that your business’s productivity needs to suffer from it.

Spam can strike when you least expect it to, even when you aren’t doing anything wrong or out of the ordinary. In fact, spam is quite commonplace in the online world, and you can easily subscribe to spam simply by following up on an offer, or even signing up for an e-newsletter service from one of your favorite websites. The reason this happens is that your email address gets thrown into an email address bank without consulting you first, and then proceeds to send you content through the mail without your consent.

While most spam will do little more than cause a headache, it’s still a notorious time-waster. That’s not to mention that the few malicious spam emails can be incredibly dangerous. The lesson here? Minimize the amount of spam your business acquires, and you’ll be more productive and more secure. Here are four steps to decrease the amount of spam your business has to deal with.

Don’t Give Out Your Email Address
If you keep your email address to yourself, there’s less of a chance that you’ll become the target of spam. You should treat your email address the same way that you treat your physical home address; with a sense of precaution and security. If you handed out your physical address the way you handle your email address, you’d literally never be able to get a moment of rest. People would constantly be knocking on your door wanting to play board games, or shouting at your window about the latest “great deals.” Instead, reserve your email for only the most important websites which you know you can trust. Additionally, many websites have text somewhere on their sign-up forms declaring that they won’t send you any unapproved emails, which means you can rest easy.

However, if you’ve already shot yourself in the foot and signed up for a bunch of spam, it’s not too late. There are a couple of things you can do to mitigate the damage done by spam.

Integrate Email Filters
Most email clients allow you to set up filters, which will help you sort and identify your email according to certain keywords or subjects. You can also filter specific addresses to make sure certain messages are let through, while you can simply hit delete for others. This way, you won’t have to worry about your inbox getting cluttered with pseudo-spam, which will save you plenty of time you would normally waste going through your email. You can then devote that time to other, more-important tasks.

Take Advantage of Third-Party Services
Sometimes it can be beneficial to take advantage of third-party applications that are built to work with your preferred email client. These products differ, depending on your email service, but there are still plenty of options to choose from. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, Macro Systems is happy to help you decide on a spam filtering solution for your business based on your unique needs.

Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists
Most spam comes from websites which have your email address on record for a mailing list, from which they can continue to send you messages, even without your initial approval. However, some websites give you the honorable choice to unsubscribe from further messages. You can often find this in an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. However, it could also be an elaborate phishing trap, so make sure that the link its legitimate by hovering over the address before clicking on it.

Keeping your email address to yourself is your best bet to stay protected from spam, but sometimes that isn’t an option. Spam blocking solutions are often required to get the most productivity out of your workday. Macro Systems can equip your business with the appropriate solution, blocking both threatening and annoying emails alike. We can even host and manage your email for you so that you don’t have to worry about spam ever again. Just give us a call at (703) 359-9211 to learn more.