The Art and Science of Spam Filtering and Its Working Process!

Spam filtering refers to a program which is used to detect unwanted emails on your email server and prevent them from displaying on your inbox. There is a large amount of spam that persists globally, and only an effective spam filter can successfully maintain spam-free inboxes.

There exists no perfect technology which can be called a perfect spam filter. Even the best spam filters are sometimes unable to block 100 percent of all the spam messages, and secondly legitimate emails are sometimes thrown into the junk or spam folders of the email server. Hence all spam filters do require a certain amount of manual filtering too.

Spam filtering working process-

So how does a spam filtering actually works? Spam filtering uses a number of protocols to determine whether the incoming messages to your emails are spam or not.

There are different kinds of spam filters.

1. Content filters- this filter reviews the contents within the message to determine if it is a spam or not.
2. Header filters- this filter studies the header of every incoming email to determine if its spam or not.
3. Rules based filters- these refer to the user defined criteria that has been determined in response to a messages subject line or body. If the rules correspond to the user defined rules it goes into the spam folder.
4. Blacklist filter- this spam filtering stops unwanted messages from entering your inbox email system. It records the email addresses or IP addresses that have been used previously to send spam. When a message comes, the spam filtering checks if the IP address or email is there on the list or not. If it is there, it is instantly given to the spam.
5. Grey list filter- This is a relatively new spam filter. It takes advantage of the fact that many spammers tries to send a bunch of junk mails at once. Under this filtering system it initially rejects the messages from unknown users and sends a failure to the originating server. If a reattempt to send the mail is taken by the originating server it is regarded as a non-spam email.

Though it has been proved that no spam filtering is 100%, perfect yet a business email system cannot do without it. Many spam messages may contain viruses that can destroy the business network and data system. However, spam filtering is inevitable for all businesses. Spam filtration works as a security to your business data. It prevents malicious mails from entering your system.

How can you pick the right spam filter?

Choosing the correct spam filter largely depends on the quantity of emails that you and your employees receive on daily basis. It is also determined by the types of emails that are being dealt with. A business requires a tightly controlled secure system permission based spam filter and a content filter based spam filtration program.

Spammers will continue to grow as technology advances. The more the technology advances the higher will be the chances that spammers will look to hamper your system and havoc the business network. Its best to choose a spam filter that will provide the best level of security to your network to prevent a havoc wracking on your business network.

Securence is a leading provider of enterprise email filtering software that offers email protection and security services such as encrypted email, spam filtering, email archiving and continuity solutions to small and large businesses. To learn more about our email filtering solutions, visit www.Securence.com/Solution.

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