E-mail Filtering
Spam Filtering
What is spam?
In its new meaning as the Internet equivalent of junk mail, 'spam' (or unwanted email messages, rather than canned meat) is accounting for an ever increasing percentage of all e-mails delivered, and is becoming an increasing menace to Internet users.
What is wrong with spam?
Unlike postal junk mail, most of which you probably just throw in the bin, spam is more intrusive. If your Internet use is reflected in your telephone bill, you are paying to receive information you don't want and haven't requested. Moreover, many spam e-mails are on subjects that many people may find offensive or concerning, particularly if they have children using their Internet account.
While you might find the occasional spam message mildly amusing at first, it will probably become an irritation after a while as the number of messages grows: some Internet users are now receiving several hundred spam e-mails every day. Apart from the time wasted in deleting this quantity of messages, trying to locate 'genuine' e-mails can start to resemble looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. While various legal initiatives have been set in motion, these are having little impact so far.
A solution to spam
We have developed an all-encompassing system that is being continually refined.
The primary feature of our anti-spam solution lies in its ability to examine the contents of an e-mail before it is delivered to determine whether it looks like spam. You can then choose to either have such e-mails marked as such in the message header (making them easier to identify in your inbox), directed to different address or mailbox, or even deleted before delivery. A 'graduated' system is also possible, with the probability of how likely any individual message is to be 'spam' can be indicated.
Our anti spam system also lets you set up and manage blacklists and whitelists. A blacklist allows you to specify e-mail addresses (at individual or domain level) from which you do not wish to receive e-mail: any messages from these address can then be either marked as spam or simply deleted automatically. A whitelist has the opposite effect: messages from addresses on this list bypass any of the spam filtering process. A valid address list feature allows customers with multiple email address to operate similar filtering based on the receiving e-mail address.
Future developments include the use of managed black hole lists (a method of recognising where spam is originating from and selectively blocking e-mail from those servers) and auto-generated 'bounce e-mails' (which can actually getting you removed from the spammers list of e-mail addresses).
All e-mail delivered through Powernet can be passed through our anti spam filter. For further information, including pricing details, contact one of our Business Development Managers, or call us on 01908 605188.