No One Likes Spam

There's nothing worse than being welcomed to an inbox full of spam. Millions of people all over the world wake up in the morning, check their email, and find all sorts of odd (and sometimes graphically vulgar) messages, most of which are attempting to peddle wares that you wouldn't purchase even under normal circumstances!

Plainly speaking, spam is email that you did not request from someone you don't know. It is also referred to as UCE, or unsolicited bulk email. The general purpose of spam is for the spammer to advertise some product or service that they will receive a commission from if some unwitting recipient decides to purchase.

Spam is also sent for the purpose of collecting personal information from a person. If you've ever received an email claiming to be from a financial institution or a website that you may not have ever been to asking you to verify your account information, you are probably aware of this tactic. These emails will contain a link that the recipient is supposed to click through on to verify their information, but instead of the link directing them to a legitimate website, it takes them to a spoof page that only harvests that information to be used for nefarious purposes.

Not only is spam an aggravating inconvenience, but it can also be a huge time waster, when you consider how long it can sometimes take to wade through all of the junk to get to any worthwhile ones. In addition, it can be easy to overlook those messages you actually want. Sometimes really important emails can be accidentally deleted.

Many businesses have noticed a significant drop in employee productivity due to spam and the time it can take to get rid of it during the course of an average work day.

One thing to avoid when trying to reduce spam is to use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. Many spammers use this link to figure out whether they're reaching a "live" email address. By clicking the link and inputting your email address for removal from the spammer list, you have let them know that you are there and that your email account is actually being used. Many spammers make up for a lack of sales by selling those very unsubscribe lists to other spammers. It is for this reason that by thinking that you're unsubscribing from a list you never put yourself on in the first place, that you may end up receiving more spam than you were before.

What you can do is make good use of the filter systems already in place in your email account. Add commonly used spam words into the blacklist, and add the email addresses of friends and relatives and other places you want to receive email from in your whitelist. This won't get rid of the spam completely, but it will help cut down and help you regain some semblance of order to your inbox.

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