SPAM, the dread of every email account holder. Unfortunately despite a new year being underway the curse of the Internet continues to be a major problem. Late in 2006, Internetrix changed the antispam solution we offer clients in an attempt to improve the situation. We moved from a challenge system where by it was necessary for people who hadn't emailed you before to reply to a challenge email before your email was released to the inbox.

Now we are using a logic based solution that interrogates all incoming emails and tries its best to determine whether it's SPAM or not. If it thinks it is SPAM then it automatically inserts the keyword SPAM into the subject of the email. With the use of the email clients message rules it is possible then to have the incoming SPAM email shuffled of to the Deleted Items, Junk Folder or any other dark place you have created in your message tree.

There are however problems with this approach too. If you have a well published email address or an email address something similar to firstname@my-company.com.au then its likely that SPAM flies into your inbox simply because its simple for spammers to send it. Hence its not uncommon for our clients and our own staff email accounts to get flooded with 2000 SPAM emails a week. The info@ mailbox we run which is published on our website is especially susceptible to 100's a day.

Knowing that we field a constant flow of phone calls regarding the SPAM problem and how to prevent them from arriving, it was interesting to note an article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled 2006: the year we were spammed a lot. The article, published on 18th December 2006 refers to a report from MessageLabs which states that "the firm found that 48.1 per cent of Australian email traffic this year was spam, compared to 39.9 per cent last year." It's an incredible statistic that 48% of all Australian email traffic in 2006 was SPAM.

For any further advice in regards to SPAM protection techniques please feel free to contact us.