SPAM – What can I do?

What can be done to reduce spam coming into my inbox?

Spam in general has been dealt with at this web page here https://megganet.com/knowledge-base/spam/.

This page is only for demonstrating to you, some of the options you have to reduce the chances of you receiving spam.

WARNING / DISCLAIMER

If you set your spam filter too high, you increase the chances of having legitimate email classed as spam

There is a trade off between the level of spam filtering and the chances of losing legitimate email.

Your mail service provider

We cannot accept any responsibility for email becoming listed as spam and being redirected to a spam folder or being deleted. The decision to adjust spam filtering can only be made by the client and the client must bear the consequences.

There are usually several spam filtering systems between the email sender and the email recipient, each with its own independent set of rules which may filter out large quantities of spam. They usually only filter out very highly rated spam and neither you nor your mail hosting provider has any control over them.

How can I stop spam?

It’s not possible to stop anyone with good or bad intentions from sending you email. there is no on/off switch for spam. If you have an email address – expect to eventually start getting spam.

Should I reply to spammers and tell them to stop?

Definitely not. If you reply to a spammer, they will know your email address is legitimate and that you have interacted with it. This will rise your value to them and will increase your value as a target.

What about genuine marketing email?

It should be safe enough to use the ‘Opt Out’ option for legitimate email. If you are in any doubt about marketing email and you want to do something about it, just create a rule in your mail client.

Your mail client

Your mail client may have a built-in spam filter. Outlook is a popular mail client which has a built-in spam filter. Its basic but if Outlook spots something with a high spam rating, Outlook will direct the incoming email to your spam folder.

You can adjust this setting in your outlook on your computer.

On the Home tab, click Junk in the Delete group.
Select Junk E-mail Options.
Choose your desired level of protection:
High: Catches most junk, but might move some legitimate messages to the junk folder.
Safe Lists Only: Only messages from people or domains on your Safe Senders list are delivered to the Inbox.
Click Apply and OK

Your mail host

There is a fair chance your mail host has access to spam filtering rules at the mail server end. We can configure 3 levels of spam filtering for our POP mail clients, and we will issue the warning above before we make any changes.

We have found that the Microsoft Hosted Exchange will gradually pick up spam email and begin to block it without any intervention.

What happens if I ignore the spam email?

We have found that the Microsoft Hosted Exchange will gradually pick up spam email and begin to block it without any intervention.

3rd party spam filters

We have had a very bad experience with these and our opinion is that 3rd party solutions can cause more trouble than they are worth (mis identifying email, blocking safe senders etc). We haven’t recommended them for over 25 years.

Extreme solution

The most extreme solution is to use a different email address and yes, there are clients out there who have done this. None of our clients have done this.

APF, DKIM etc

These are configured automatically by Microsoft or manually when Hosted exchange is initially configured. This takes place when you start using Microsoft Hosted Exchange.