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Full Story:
Spam email. We all suffer from it. Hordes of unsolicited email messages arrive at our desktop email programs continuously, day-in and day-out, with nothing seemingly able to stop the madness.
Spam email is not easy to detect. Even we, humans, sometimes need more than a moment or two to figure out whether a message is legitimate or whether it is just another mass-broadcasted unsolicited advertising. For machines, this detection task is even harder and authors of automatic spam detection mechanisms and methodologies are on a constant battle with email spammers. The latter seem to always have the upper hand.
In an effort to fight spam, the email industry has invented some innovative business email hosting services and methodologies, which however are sometimes really drastic and extreme. For example, the notion of "email white-listing", which was born not long ago, allows email owners to setup and maintain their own lists of email addresses of who is allowed to send them email. The problem is that unless a 3rd party is on a recipient's list, no messages will be delivered to the recipient. Under this scenario, an email owner must first identify and approve a sender as a valid one, prior to accepting any messages from this sender.
Although in theory such business email hosting services and solutions might sound as good propositions, not only are they not practical, but they can also damage a Business. Imagine, for example, a potential customer trying to contact your Firm asking about your services only to discover that their inquiry will not even get through unless their email address is on your white-list. Furthermore, spammers might simply fake such inquiries just to get their addresses on your white-list. Let alone the fact that spammers use multiple email addresses from free-mail services, for their dirty job, making it even harder for you to maintain a "clean" white-list, either on your email hosting server or at the desktop.
At COMMbits we recognize that people require and seek SIMPLE business solutions that do the job they are intended for effectively and efficiently. A solution that solves 90% of the problem with simplicity and no cost - we believe - is better than a complicated, costly one that does the job by 95%. In the world of email spam no solution can be 100% effective, unless of course we conduct a thorough survey for each and every person attempting to send us an email message, verifying their identity and the validity of their messages - something of course not only extremely costly, but not practical either.
Both functionality and accuracy of desktop email spam detection software have increased dramatically. However, such solutions do not contribute to the industry's efforts for lowering excess and wasted bandwidth, both generated by the fact that spam must travel to the desktop before it is detected and killed. In addition, such spam - by definition - still appears at the desktop, throwing that extra cleaning chore at the user's laps.
We believe that the best current approach is to try and "catch" unsolicited email at the Business Email Hosting Server layer, before it even arrives at the desktop.
The obvious advantage to this solution is that detected spam will not even make it to the desktop, therefore decreasing the extra work required by users, while at the same time contributing to the lowering of excess bandwidth across the Internet.
The major disadvantage is that the user is oblivious to any messages that never made it through, unless of course he or she checks the Spam box on the hosting Server on a regular basis - which is time-consuming. Failing to perform such checks regularly also leads to another potential problem: Spam boxes accumulate large number of email messages, and eventually the mail box reaches its allotted quota, something that blocks reception of all email messages, even valid ones.
The COMMbits Business Email Hosting Solution involves the use of Server-based hosting anti-spam filters and to completely eliminate the risk of mail boxes getting jammed with large quantities of spam mail it performs an optional but important function: At the user's request, incoming mail detected as spam at the hosting server is NOT stored inside a server Junk box for future review and clean-up, but instead it is "killed" immediately upon arrival.
The initial reaction of users to this service approach is that they run the risk of missing important email, as a result of the hosting Server deleting email messages that it has mistakenly detected as spam. The reasonable reaction to such an argument is that if the sender of an important business message never receives any signs that the recipient has in fact successfully received the message, the sender will knock our door again, probably using another communication method. Let's also not forget the important email function of "Request a read-receipt", a great way of verifying that our message has indeed reached its destination, and it was not mistakenly blocked by any email spam-detection method or software, or was lost because of any other reason.
After all, here at COMMbits we tune our business email hosting servers with "not-so-tight" email spam flags. In other words, if an incoming email message was detected as spam one can reasonably conclude that it WAS spam.
We would like to report that although some business users initially feel uncomfortable with the idea of never having a chance to review messages that are detected as spam, they eventually ask us to re-configure their hosting mail service for automatic deletion of all spam-detected messages at the source - the email Server.
It should be noted that we do not claim in any way that our business email hosting methodology will totally eliminate spam. We strongly believe that this is not possible. However, true to the notion of "maximum benefit and simplicity for the least cost in time and money" we feel that the high percentage of spam that our methodology will stop - estimated at roughly 90% - is a huge benefit already. Users can then fine-tune the settings of their desktop spam-detection software for even greater accuracy, which might eliminate another 5% of the original number of email spam arriving at the server.
Such a combination of both spam-detection layers (at the Business Email Hosting Server and at the desktop) can therefore accurately detect and delete a total of 95% of spam, with the least cost available. For someone viewing only 25 out of 500 originally received spam messages daily, this is a pretty huge improvement!
In fact, the proposed Server-based anti-spam filtering email hosting system - unlike costly anti-spam Server-based hardware devices - is already integrated at no extra cost in your Business email hosting accounts with COMMbits.
COMMbits also offers complete on-site Computer Technical Support Services, including spam and virus clean-up, as well as professional and expert installation of either workstation or server-based anti-spam and anti-virus systems.
Update - June 2007: COMMbits adds an additional layer of spam-protection throughout its business email infrastructure. Please click here for more information.
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