What Makes Spam Filter A Necessity For Business Communication?

Know all about spam filtering solutions.

A spam filter is an email service feature that filters and quarantines spam emails from a user’s inbox. It ensures a clean and spam-free mailbox for the user that saves productive energy and provides a high level of work efficiency. A spam filter has become a necessity in recent times as cyber adversaries rigorously work to find and exploit vulnerabilities. Sending spam and phishing emails is one of the most preferred and lucrative ways which they can use to lure users into falling into their trap.

 

spam filter

What Is A Spam Filter And How Does It Work?

As discussed, a spam filter’s main feature is ensuring a spam-free email set up for the subscriber. Email services usually come with a basic spam protection level, but it is barely sufficient to protect from the well-thought phishing scams that attackers deploy. As the adversaries get smarter, it becomes essential to try and remain a step ahead of them to ensure email security and cybersecurity in general. So let us look at the role of a spam filter service.

 

Role Of A Spam Filter Service

A spam filter service detects unsolicited and unwanted email and wipes them out from a user’s mailbox. Different spam filters have various mechanisms for segregating spam from legitimate emails; however, they all strive to attain a common goal – making sure that only genuine and informative emails reach the end-user.

 

spam filter service

 

Spam Filtering Techniques And Usage

Just like any other email filter, a spam filter ensures protection against emails from unidentified sources. A spam filter operates on various spam filtering techniques that can be applied to an email system. These techniques use a set of protocols to determine which incoming emails are genuine and which are spam.

  • Blacklist filter: This is a relatively easy way of identifying spam email. In this system, the filter has been pre instructed to avoid emails sent from specific senders or addresses – known as a blacklist. Any mail from a blacklisted person or email address gets auto marked as spam.
  • Content filter: A spam filter might work by following a content filtering system, whereby it will review the content of every email sent to the user. By doing so, it tries to determine if it is a spam email or not.
  • Rules-based filter: This is very similar to the blacklist filter but contains an added feature. In this filter, a user can not only blacklist users but can also blacklist words. In case an email has any of the blacklisted terms or happens to be sent by a blacklisted user, it gets auto marked as spam.
  • Header filter: Another way a spam filter works is by reviewing the header of every email sent to the user, searching for falsified information, or other signs that could confirm whether the email is spam.
  • Permission filter: This spam filter makes it mandatory for any email sender to be pre-approved by the recipient. This way, only known persons can reach out to you. Although the permission filter is a great way to ensure security from spam, it kills the prospect of authentic and genuine business or academic emails reaching you by becoming a barrier in communication.
  • Challenge-response filter: This filter is similar to the permission filter and requires a sender to enter a code to gain permission to send an email to the recipient.

 

What Do Spam Filters Look For?

The primary task of a spam filter is the segregation of spam emails from genuine ones. It is done by enabling a user to distinguish between the approved and unapproved email addresses. Approved addresses or white addresses are the ones that have been marked as safe by the user. On the other hand, the unapproved or blacklisted addresses are the ones that have been marked as dangerous, unimportant, or spam. Any email from an approved address goes straight to the user’s mailbox. In contrast, all emails from blacklisted sources get auto blocked or deleted based on the instructions that the user feeds into the system.

 

How To Find The Best Free Spam Filter?

While spam filters are necessary, not every individual or organization can afford to subscribe to a monthly or yearly spam filter. Based on your profits and online interaction, you may choose a spam filter that is reasonable, effective and has positive reviews from users. But if you have no intention of spending on a spam filter, you can always opt for a free service.

 

Choosing The Right Spam Filtering Solutions

To find the best free spam filter, users can keep the following points in mind

  • Minimal or zero charges: For organizations whose goal is to look for a free spam filter, this becomes their first criterion.
  • Phishing email alert: The spam filter should not only block spam emails, but it should also be able to notify if there is an underlying phishing trap for the user.
  • Minimal chances of false positives: While no spam filter can ever provide 100% protection against spam, it should at least be able to ensure minimal instances of falsely marking an email as spam. False positives are not a unique concept, and assuring zero chances of false positives goes a long way in choosing the right spam filter.
  • Spam identification notification: Once a spam filter marks and blocks a suspicious email as spam, it should also notify the users so that they can be cautious of such emails in the future.

 

How To Set Spam Filter Gmail?

Google, too provides some level of spam protection for its email users. Here’s how to enable your spam filter Gmail

  • Open your Gmail Account.
  • Click on the “Gear” icon, which appears at the top right corner.
  • Then click on “Settings.”
  • Select “Filters and blocked addresses.”
  • Click on “Create a new filter.”
  • Go to the “From” section.
  • Enter the email address that is not to be marked as spam.
  • Click on “Create filter.”
  • Enable the “Never send it to spam” option.
  • Enable the “Also apply a filter to matching messages” option.
  • Click on “Create filter” again.

In this way, you can easily make sure which contacts will send you emails in your inbox and which contacts will get marked as spam.

A spam filter is necessary for the establishment of a safe and efficient working environment. Although no spam filtering solution has ever been able to assure 100% protection against spam and unwanted emails, they still form an indispensable part of any business email system. There are various ways in which spam filters function. Any spam filter solution that’s the most suitable for your working mechanism and proves most beneficial for your objectives is undoubtedly the best one for you. You may even choose from the free spam filtering solutions and check if their provisions work for you.

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