How Spam Filter false positives damage to your business

Unless you live in a cave – and one without a computer on it – you are well acquainted with the enormous waste of time to sift through mountains of spam can be. And while spam is a huge annoyance for employees and end users everywhere, the actual costs for businesses are in time and money and increasing every day. As costs rise, people in the (especially small and medium enterprises) are desperate for ways to manage it effectively. An estimated 100 million spam e-mails flying back and forth, staining the internet every day. Many of these emails end up in mailboxes for businesses and employees are forced to spend the morning sift mountainous piles of junk. All this is time that the expenditure does not work. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Spam Filters Install anti-spam filter is really the only effective way to deal with the daily spam within a company. These filters work to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, so the sound through the mail and throw garbage in the garbage. They do this by combining several different types of technology and is updated almost constantly. And while spam filters are top-quality facility, screening out about 98% of spam from a company, is still incomplete. Why? Unfortunately, spam filters sometimes have trouble saying what is wheat and what is the boss (to stretch an already tired metaphor) and launch some important messages out the garbage. And even if they do not happen very often, false positives can be another problem for entrepreneurs. A solution to the problem of false positives is the span of spam filters in the company. How it works is simple: the higher the sensitivity, to catch more spam. But the greatest sensitivity, will be more letters in the trash. The increased sensitivity of the spam filter can cost a heck of a lot more money to spam also, after all, customers do not like to ignore their e-mail. The direct and indirect costs of the anti-spam filters Although a bit lost e-mails can get a company in deep water. A society based on Colorado law, such as loss of an e-mail with important information about a court date and ended up losing an important day in court. The cost? They were required to pay all attorneys’ fees, on the contrary. How did this happen? To combat spam, the company’s IT department seemed sensitivity of their email filters. Apparently, U.S. District looks pretty spam filters these super hyper, and costing the company thousands of dollars in fees. Ouch. Although this is a good example of the positive and obvious lie, you may lose money from the company, in most cases is simply not cut and dried. Most are not direct monetary losses, but coming from a loss of business and credibility. When an email from a customer swallowed by spam filters and much falls through because the customer feels ignored, requires hard work and public relations to get the customer back. And sometimes it never happens. Besides the direct loss of a company’s money, false positive impact on productivity, as well as an overload of spam can be. If the employees are accustomed to seeing many of their important emails get spam, they will be forced to spend valuable time sifting through your spam folder for email messages real. How much does it cost? More than it seems. According to Ferris Research, the recovery of a real email from a spam folder on average costs $ 3. 50 by the time the employee. Especially on the experience of numerous false positives, which may not seem like much, but in a company of 500 people who have fish to two emails from their spam folder one months amounts to $ 42,000. Sounds like a waste of Itty Bitty for you? Nor, most other firms, either. And to reduce the number of false positives – and the number of lost customers – many companies do not use any spam filters at all. And although it is difficult to assess because they want to avoid a loss of business, that goes without a spam filter, open to all kinds of problems. Take care of the spam is too important. A question of balance But how to deal with spam and reduce false positives, at the same time? The best method is to put away all email tagged as spam to a separate folder so that users can access it, and you can check often. While this may seem a long time, with good anti-spam program that really does not have to be. The better the program is a recognition of the obvious junk e-mail smaller ports in the spam folder. As spam filters improve, so do spammers. Because of this, spam filters will probably never be 100% effective – which will remove every piece of spam often forgotten some important emails in it. And to get all the important things, but also let in a bit rubbish. But with a good, well-configured spam filter, and integrated with the mail server can actually reduce the amount of spam received by end users and the proportion of false positive experiences.