Last update: August 28, 2002
I have had basically two email addresses for the last seven years: delco@dcs1.com and a private email address. I have used delco@dcs1.com as a public email address that Rachel and Keith also receive and help me answer. delco@dcs1.com has been published on many web pages and referenced in many articles that I have written and is used as the Delco Cleaning Systems of Fort Worth as a general Email Address. Because of the longevity and usage of this email address it has been obtained by about every Spam Emailer in the business. This address is buried in a lot of places and carries quite a value for us. On a typical day we receive 100 to 300 Spam Emails in addition to legitimate Emails. This has caused us to miss some important emails. The obscene emails have become the most annoying, as the subject lines get more and more explicit and crude! It finally reached the point to where something had to be done or we were going to be spending all of our time sorting through Email.
Keith Kunkel, our Network Administrator and Webmaster, was assigned the task of bringing this mess under control with a practical solution so that we could still use our present Email Addresses. I have known of companies and individuals changing email addresses to solve this problem.
The following article by Keith Kunkel should be interesting reading for anyone that has been on the Internet longer than a couple of months.
Are you being bombarded with junk mail every day, so much that you wonder if there's a filter blocking all the useful stuff. There are a lot of solutions to the junk mail problem.
Delco Cleaning Systems took steps to curtail the massive numbers of junk/spam email that we received on a daily basis. We were spending several hours every week just trying to weed out the trash, just to find the important mail from our customers. The biggest problem for Delco was the enormous volume of spam mail (Spam is defined as any unsolicited electronic communication that is sent to any number of recipients who did not specifically request or express an interest in the material advertised in the communication) and letter bombs (Letter bombs are extremely large or numerous e-mail messages that are intended to annoy, interfere, or deny e-mail use by one or more recipients).
After researching many products like Mirapoint's Message Director, MAPS Realtime Blackhole List, McAfee's SpamKiller and several others on how to solve this ever growing email dilemma, we at Delco Cleaning Systems choose to go with McAfee's SpamKiller due to price and the ease of use. In one week's time, Spam Killer eliminated over 1100 junk/spam emails out a total of 1400 emails from 1 users email account.
SpamKiller blocks specific addresses of known spammers, just as other programs do; but SpamKiller goes far beyond lists. It uses a comprehensive preset filters also watch for subject lines and text within messages. In fact, SpamKiller can filter on the sender's address, subject line, body text, message header and can even block spam based on its country of origin. SpamKiller comes with thousands of filters already installed and new filters are released regularly, based on careful analysis of McAfee.com's spamtraps. SpamKiller checks McAfee.com servers once a day for new filters - so your protection is always up-to-date.
What can you do to be sure that the email you send isn't treated as junk/spam mail, first of all insure that you follow some simple rules.
1. Never type in all CAPS, spam filters throw out these types of email and also typing in all CAPS is considered to be shouting.
2. Insure that you use a valid email address.
3. Make sure there is a subject in the subject line.
4. Do not use an email address that begins with a number
The following practices will help you reduce the number of unwanted spam messages that pollute your email inbox:
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