Let’s be very clear, nobody likes to be spammed. You don’t want to see a random marketing email providing details about a product/service you are not interested in. You don’t want to see a mail from insurance or financial institutions persuading to get a scheme you don’t need. We are so used to spam messages that we assume it is part of email communication and tends to put up with it. In this article, we will see why it is not okay to put up with spam, especially in business organizations. We also discuss spam filtering, the most effective way to curb spamming.
Risks of Spam and Benefits of Spam Filtering
It is estimated that almost 60% of the emails circulated on the internet every day is basically spam. Over the years, a lot of techniques like spam filtering, for example, are trying their best to keep spam at bay. However, there has been no success in curbing the spam messages at their source. To put it simply, there is no way to stop people from sending spam messages, they can only be blocked.
- Spam messages are highly dreaded in business organizations because of one reason, loss of productivity. Imagine having to work using emails all day and every time you open your inbox you need to spend a considerable amount of time separating junk from important emails. Eventually, businesses will lose confidence on emails as a means of communications and spam filtering is the only solution to prevent that happen.
- It is estimated that average loss per employee annually due to spam is $1934. This number is only going to increase in the future, stressing the need for spam filtering to avoid unwanted messages. Loss of productivity is indeed tangible and results in business organizations losing billions collectively every year. If spam continues to flourish at the same rate as it is right now, it is estimated that businesses will lose $257 billion every year.
- Apart from a loss in productivity, spam poses many other problems too. One of them is adding an operational overhead that can’t be ignored. If 60% of the emails received every day on an email server is spam, imagine the amount of resources that is wasted every day. If spam filters are employed, your email servers won’t have to process unwanted emails anymore, increasing your cost savings.
- Another reason why business organizations should take spam messages seriously and consider employing spam filtering is security. Spam is, in fact, a major security threat for business organizations as there is a high possibility that these messages will have malicious attachments within. Phishing is another security threat that spam poses to businesses, tricking people to believe that the emails are from credible sources and extracting sensitive information in return. And business organizations don’t have to be reminded the price it takes to cover the damages caused by a simple data leak or information breach.
Article by Securence, a provider of enterprise email filtering software that offers email protection and security services such as encrypted email, spam filtering (www.Securence.com/Spam-filtering), email archiving and continuity solutions to small and large businesses.