Spam is not only a thorn in the side of private individuals. For all businesses, regardless of size, protecting themselves from spam is a constant challenge. Today we want to inform you about the dangers that can lurk in spam messages and how you can protect yourself from them.
What are your options for protecting yourself and your business, and why will your customers also benefit if you have effective spam protection in place?
What is Spam?
The term spam refers to unwanted messages that are usually sent as mass mailings for advertising purposes and for fraudulent purposes like phishing [1]. Such messages are sent to millions of recipients. The background is mostly commercial. The aim is to generate sales, because recipients of the message decide to make a purchase or to sign up for a subscription.
Basically, spam can be divided into the following categories:
- Commercial email spam
- Phishing emails designed to grab data
- Chain letters and virus warnings
- Mails sent by viruses
If you can set up an effective spam protection, then you can protect yourself from all these different types of unwanted mail.
How to Become a Victim of Spam Messages?
There are basically two ways in which you can become the focus of spammers. If you carelessly enter your e-mail address in competitions or newsletters, you can expect to receive spam messages in the future. Even if you publish your e-mail address on the Internet, e.g. on a website or in an Internet forum, it can fall into the hands of people who then use it for spam e-mails.
Spam messages are also increasingly being sent via contact forms. As the operator of a website, it is important that users are given the opportunity to ask questions or place orders. Most often, a contact form is used for this purpose.
There are automated programs and artificial intelligence that are able to use such contact forms to send spam. So-called bots send thousands of messages in a very short time. Messages that both tie up resources at the recipient’s end and can contain dangerous content such as viruses or Trojans. Anyone who offers forms on the Internet potentially becomes a victim of spam messages.
Why Is Spam Protection Important for Companies?
Every company, regardless of its size, should activate effective spam protection. This way, you will be able to filter out almost all unwanted messages. The working time that would otherwise be spent on processing these unwanted mails will no longer be spent. Instead, you can focus on important messages from customers and business partners. You will notice a difference especially when a large wave of spam messages arrives in a short period of time, as is often the case.
Spam messages often also contain viruses or Trojans, which can enter the system by opening the message. When spam protection stops delivery, it also prevents dangerous attachments from being opened by mistake.
Criminals from the Internet are becoming more and more skilled. Often it is not even obvious at first glance that it is spam. That is why spam protection, whether free or for a fee, is so eminently important. As a company, you should not leave it up to your own employees to decide whether to respond to a mail or not.
4 Important Ways to Avoid Spam
We have identified four methods for spam protection that are relatively easy to implement and have a high impact. We present all four methods, some of which can also be understood as free spam protection. Furthermore, we recommend implementing all four in your own company and thus making a contribution to data security.
Protection From Messages Via Your Homepage
What cannot be avoided is the possibility of potential customers contacting a company via a homepage. Unfortunately, there are also robots that send spam messages through such contact forms.
As a website operator, you can protect yourself from spam messages with CAPTCHA verification. In this process, the user is asked to solve a task that proves that they are a real person. If you would rather not give such a task to your customers, you can use our Friendly Captcha solution. It runs completely in the background and does not require any activity from the client.
Release Own Data Only Selectively
A basic but very effective way of protecting against spam is to handle your data with care. Relevant e-mail addresses should not be published freely on the Internet. This makes it easier for the senders of spam messages to gain access and runs the risk of being added to their distribution lists.
Do Not Respond to Spam
Another important way to protect yourself from further spam is to ignore all messages you receive that you have classified as spam. Even if it is tempting to unsubscribe from a newsletter by clicking on it, you are giving the sender a critical piece of information.
By unsubscribing, they know that the mail address is actively being used and that every message is being processed. This could lead to many more spam messages. It just requires a bit of discipline to protect yourself from many more spam messages.
Spam Prevention Software
Many email services provide basic protection against spam by separating suspicious messages rather than delivering them to the inbox. This involves checking both the content of messages and the sender. Many email services provide basic protection against spam by sorting out suspicious messages instead of directing them to the inbox. This involves checking both the content of the messages and the sender. Through regular updates, messages created using new patterns can also be identified as spam to a certain extent.
Conclusion: Making Spam Protection Possible in the Company
To prevent unwanted messages from paralyzing a company’s operations, it is important to set up and maintain spam protection. Spam protection will always take some effort, but through one’s own behavior and the sensitization of employees, one can already make an significant contribution to data security at no cost.
This is also influential for the company’s external image because it could cause considerable reputational damage if customers learn that customer data could be stolen due to spam and problems with data protection [2].
We want to make our contribution to spam protection with our technical and user-friendly solution for rejecting automated messages. It is a cloud-based solution that is both Schrems II and GDPR-compliant. We offer various packages that are aimed at both small start-ups and large corporations. Our innovative and proven CAPTCHA solution can make an important contribution to effective spam protection. We are available for a non-binding consultation about our product.
