Spam blocking

I just received a "second request" email from a customer. She was disapointed that I hadn't responded to her earlier email question regarding colors in designs.

I hate it when I miss an email but it happens. I went back to my "junk" folder and looked for her earlier email, then I checked my "deleted" folder and still didn't see it. Then I checked my pre-filter on our email server. What I found there shocked me!

I use three levels of automated filters on my email. One at our website email server level, one at our ISP server level and another on my pc. I personally get about 3,000 emails per day on our website server. About 2,500 are removed automatically before they ever get to my pc. Then another 200 or so are removed on my pc before I ever see them. Finally, I sift through the remaining 300 or so for the real emails and work through those every day.

The part that surprised me was the number of emails that never even arrive at my pc from my server and how accurately those emails are filtered. I reviewed yesterdays 2,500 that were filtered and found two that were removed incorrectly. My first thought was "2 out of 2,500 is pretty good."  Then I thought about it from the perspective of those two people that sent their email. They were "ignored" by me 100% of the time they emailed me. That's not so good.

I apologize for missing your emails if you were one of the two missed. The really bad news is that was just one day. Over a period of a year it would be about 700 emails missed.

I SEND about 35,000 emails a week. I have had to learn what can get caught in an email filter along the way in order to prevent ours from getting removed incorrectly. In case you're wondering what gets blocked, here's a list of things you can do that will get your email booted out incorrectly...

1) Attachments. Any time you attach anything to an email you run the risk of getting caught in a filter. ZIP files and JPGS are the things people usually attach that get filtered out by antivirus software.

2) Including HTML in the body of the email. Again, antivirus software will filter out emails with HTML. You may be sending HTML without even knowing it. If your email contains a picture, it is HTML email.

3) Email with words in it like "free" or "viagra" or others (I have a list with about 1,000 4-letter words that are booted out) that are likely suspects to be spam.

I use a spam-checker program before sending emails. It reads my email before I send it and rates it with a little meter that looks like a tachometer. Anything above a "5" on the scale is in the red zone. I usually work my emails down to the 1.2 or less area and still I get reports back that my email was blocked by several server filters each time I send one out.

If you SEND emails out and want to check your email for "spamishness" before sending it, take a look at www.spamdance.com for a free outbound spam checker.

My "final filter":  Blocking the SPAM coming into my PC...

My first two filters are done on the server and at my ISP before the emails ever make it to my pc.  The final filter is on my pc.  Once an email gets to my pc the spam is removed but the good stuff makes it through about 99.99% of the time. Thats about 10x more effective than the filter on my servers. 

None of the filters are perfect and if your email is blocked by mistake, I apologize and ask that you please try again.