I was talking to a customer recently that told me that they were running out of disk space on their mail server and decided to try and figure out why.  Upon closer inspection, they figured out that there was over 20 gigabytes of spam sitting there.  "Don't you do spam filtering?" I asked.  "We do now he said."  Wow....it's unbelievable how incredibly disruptive and expensive spam can be.

We've cut down the amount of spam that comes through our FireStream e-mail sever dramatically by implementing some tools that catch it before it ever gets to our domain, but I do remember the old days when I spent too much time deleting messages that simply had no business or personal value at all.

So what can you do about spam?

1.)  Consider having a third party that is known for spam control host your e-mail.  FireStream is a Google Apps reseller.... and Google has tremendous tools for blocking spam with its Gmail platform.  We provide complete e-mail hosting for your business starting at $49.50/user/year.

2.)  Discourage employees from using their business e-mail address for personal use (like logging into Amazon or eBay).  I'm not saying these companies sell e-mail addresses to spammers, but some sites that require login sure seem to.

3.)  Encourage your employees to "unsubscribe" from e-mails that they don't want.  Unsubscribing is often an option at the bottom of unwanted e-mails.  Do it once, and save yourself from seeing junk mail from that particular source.

4.)  Remove e-mail lists from your website.  Use links to e-mail addresses that forward to the appropriate people inside your organization instead.

5.) If you are not comfortable outsourcing your e-mail entirely, consider outsourcing your spam filtering.

Take Care,

Glenn