Today, I ran across yet another person who still provides their email in the following format as some sort of maladaptive coping mechanism to spam protection:

myname at mydomain dot com

Folks, you don’t need to do this if you have Gmail or Google Apps and I’ll explain why in a bit. I’ve also seen people put annoying third-party email verification systems on top of Gmail. Completely unnecessary.

Whenever possible, I try to educate these folks and help them understand the root problem with spam and how Google addresses it for the millions of email users, businesses and organizations they support.

photo credit: SBeggsMiller

Why people get spam

Spam is unsolicited email.  Unfortunately, many people working at companies walk in, sit down at their desks and then wade through their email, much of it being advertisements, promotions and now phishing scams.

If they are done by 9:30am, they are feeling pretty good about their day!

photo credit: patriotworld

Email doesn’t have to be this way.

It is the responsibility of the email host to filter spam before it reaches your inbox.  If you are receiving unwanted emails on a daily basis, the company in charge of your email is not doing their job.  Many companies are still running email servers out of their offices like Microsoft Exchange and although there have been improvements in the last couple of years to this mail server platform, it’s complex and misconfiguration is common.

Another example is where the email is hosted remotely with the company who does the website hosting or…the company is using a free email service.  Again, the responsibility of getting rid of that spam fall squarely on their shoulders.

How to reduce spam in your inbox

First, figure out who hosts your email.  This may be as simple as asking your IT person, looking at your website hosting agreement or making a phone call.

Next, explain what and when you see spam.  If you can give 3 example subject lines like:

• “Discounted Viagra”
• “Buy A Home With Your Tax Refund”
• or “Authentic Rolex Watches For $300″

this will help immensely because your technology staff or email host can now scan for these specific items and work to determine their source.

The Difference Between Free Web Based Email Services

Maybe you are using a free service.  There is a HUGE gap in terms of quality when it comes to free email. Read this carefully…

AOL is very, very bad.

Hotmail is very, very bad.

Yahoo is very, very bad.

Gmail is excellent, amazing, awesome, easy and efficient!

Why are the first 3 bad?  They are horrible at filtering out spam (aka junk mail), they have distracting advertising throughout their web interface, they charge if you want to download your email (POP3) or connect to it with your favorite desktop app (IMAP) and they don’t even come close to offering the amazing list of features that Gmail offers including:

• 7GB of inbox space
• Works on the web, with your PC/Mac or Linux system
• Mobile clients for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, PalmOS
• Keep using your desktop client – Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird
• Built In Chat
• Calendar
• Online Google Docs
• and more!

I’ve had a Gmail account since June 2004 and receive less than two spams a month in my inbox.  That’s right!

I’ve been setting up Google Apps for clients since 2006 and think it’s one of the best email solutions out there.  It’s scalable for small companies with less than 100 employees and can give enterprise email systems a run for their money too!

Google Has Built In Spam Filtering

photo credit: tkjoseph

How is it possible?  Google made a smart move in 2007 and purchased Postini, a world leader in spam filtering services.  Not only do users of Google’s free, personal email service Gmail use it but business and organizations signed up for Google Apps benefit too!

This means if you have a Gmail account or are a Google Apps user, you don’t need to spell out your email address in hopes of tricking the robot scripts that harvest email addresses from websites.  In fact, I’ve had my email publicly posted on my websites, social networking sites and in forums for years and still have no problem with spam using Gmail.

You also have the option to add Postini’s excellent spam filtering services in front of your email server.  Here is what they describe as your new experience with Postini in place:

Your users will no longer have to spend hours sorting through spam. You will also see a tremendous reduction in your overall inbound email traffic (Google stops the bad traffic in the cloud). Also, most customers notice a dramatic drop in their mail server utilization on the first day the service is enabled. This gives you more scalability with your existing systems.

I agree.  I’ve seen too much time wasted chasing down blacklisted servers, inbox meltdowns and lost productivity from poorly configured email servers and overtaxes servers.

Email Inspired Blog Post

In an effort to double educate, I sent the following email today in hopes of helping the person save time and not continue using outdated methods to protect their email account from spam.

*First part of email removed for relevance*

Also, to let you know, it’s not necessary to spell out domain names as a form of spam control in general.  The real issue is that the company manage the email MX records is to blame and end users should not have to use “evasive” methods like that.  Also, the University of Minnesota migrated to Google Apps last year and Google purchased Postini to provide exceptional spam filtering.  I have been using Gmail since 2004 and Google Apps since 2006, receiving less than 2 spams a month.  My email address is all over the internet and on every single one of my contact pages like http://butyoureagirl.com/contact

You can read more about the University of Minnesota switching to Google Apps at the Minnesota Daily and on their own website.

Hope you find this helpful in your quest to be more productive in the office!

At this time, I am going to do a shameless plug that I offer Google Apps administrator and end user training.

Sign up to be notified of upcoming classes I teach online http://signup.freshworkshops.com