smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Whether it is special offers on Viagra, cheap software, pharmaceuticals or pornography, unsolicited emails or spam is a perennial problem for businesses, accounting for around 80 per cent of email traffic in some cases.

This is a major drain on productivity as it clogs up bandwidth, and means that legitimate emails are fighting for space with spam that carries the potential danger of viruses, phishing (emails attempting to obtain your bank details, for example) and Trojans. The latter turn a computer into a “zombie machine” that sends emails unbeknownst to the innocent owner and account for around 70% of spam.

“Education is key,” believes Steve White of email security specialists Messagelabs. “Email is so crucial to business, computer users need to be aware how valuable their email address is and be careful who they give it out to. Treat it like any other personal contact information, like your home phone number.”

White also warns that if a suspicious email is received to delete it straight away and not to click on unsubscribe links as these could identify you as a “live address”, potentially leading to increased spam levels or perhaps introducing a virus or other unwelcome electronic intruder to your machine. It should also go without saying that you must never supply password or account details in reply to an email apparently from your bank.

If the problem is getting out of hand, there is the option of outsourcing email security. “All emails are sent to the security company first and spam is stopped,” explains White, “by identifying messages sent to bulk recipients, by monitoring content, images, attachments and by running virus checks. The legitimate mail is then delivered on to the client with negligible delay.”

(5/5/05)

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