Electronic mail, or e-mail for short, is the message relaying system that has become a critical business asset very few companies can do without; it’s also a great way to keep in touch with friends and family anywhere in the world. More and more businesses rely on it for communicating with their associates, suppliers, vendors and customers.But e-mail has been exploited by unscrupulous people to prey on unsuspecting e-mail users with the goal of stealing computer resources (by using your computer to relay spam and viruses), selling worthless junk (cheap software, prescription drugs and Web site advertising), and stealing personal information (by impersonating banks and other businesses). I lump all these types of e-mail, which contain spam, viruses, adware/spyware and phishing e-mail messages, into a single category I call garbage e-mail.Anyone who uses e-mail will tell you they receive more garbage e-mail than they do legitimate e-mail. These garbage e-mail messages make it hard to get to important messages by forcing us to wade through the mountains of junk. Besides being a pain, garbage e-mail can pose real dangers to your computer system, your privacy and even your identity. They can do this by increasing your risk of getting a virus, unintentionally installing spyware, or being drawn into opening, answering, or even worse, acting on the information in a phishing e-mail. The best option is to eliminate this type of e-mail before it gets to the inbox.For individual users or micro-businesses with one or two computers, the best option when trying to eliminate these garbage e-mails is to use software that monitors and controls these types of messages. When a message is found that is classified as junk, the software can be configured to move it to a special folder or delete it completely. A good free program can be found at http://www.spamfighter.com. If you like the program, I suggest you pay the $29 to upgrade to their professional version which contains even more protections than the free version and removes the annoying banner ads.Installing software on each computer in a business network is not an efficient way to handle garbage e-mail woes. Not everyone on the network will use the software diligently; therefore, the network will be vulnerable, putting the company at risk of lawsuits from employees over inappropriate content or from other companies who get spammed by your network. A more effective method for businesses is to build a computer inside the network responsible for cleaning all e-mail messages before they are delivered to the end-user computers. These e-mail cleaning machines can be configured to scan email for inappropriate content, viruses and known spam senders on the Internet. Deleting these messages before they get to your employees’ mailboxes will greatly reduce the virus, spyware and phishing e-mails, thereby reducing everyone’s exposure to these threats. Best of all, these spam-killing machines can be built very cheaply using old computer equipmentVisit www.auraistech.com for more information. Send your comments or topic requests to feedback@auraistech.com.Aura Information System Technologies, LLC719-440-1790www.auraistech.com
