I am not sure why these messages were not automatically blocked by my security software. Therefore, any business hoping to cut back on unwanted email should consider these examples.

During a weekend, my work email address typically receives 900 email messages. I expect that number to increase around major holidays and/or long weekends. However, there was -no- excuse for over 5000 messages arriving in the inbox from the end of July 1 to the beginning of July 5. Somehow, it seems to be the fault of a single person. Part Two of this tip will attempt to explain what went wrong.

I am not sure why these messages were not automatically blocked by my security software. Therefore, any business hoping to cut back on unwanted email should consider these examples.

7. A message titled "NEW!! Promotional Gifts For Your Choice" is distinctly spam because of its awkward upper case characters and exclamation marks. Perhaps the fact that the senders's name begins with characters that Outlook does not recognize caused a problem. Obviously, a business spanning several nations will want to make sure it can read several languages and distinguish all its customers' messages. But it should not blindly accept email just because its software can not understand all the languages and fonts.

I have seen a fair number of efforts to disguise webmasters' email addresses. Some are simple and apparent to the viewer, such as seeing the person's address typed out as "person@NOSPAM.email.com" or "person at email dot com." If one avoids the Mailto HTML tag as well, I imagine one will receive much less spam.

However, I am not sure if solutions such as are this effective enough, since I have seen individuals typing out their email address in much more elaborate manners. These begin to look comical, such as "-person- a t SPAMBLOCK /email/ p e r i o d COM." If these distracting spellings and protection software can not prevent unwanted mail, something is wrong.

Some small businesses refuse to place any of their email addresses on their sites. Instead, they use contact forms. While I imagine this might help cut back on unwanted email, it makes contacting these sites a struggle. A person will not know if the form no longer works, or if it was accidentally discarded.

That said, I recommend putting at least one genuine email address on any business site. It may make matters difficult for people who answer email, but it will benefit any customer who wishes to send a real question.