Spam these days can cause serious security breaches and issues and today it accounts for about 90% of emails. There are many types of spam that exist such as unsolicited, unwanted phishing, spoofing, spyware and other malware emails. There are a few ways to avoid from having spam circulate through your business and help prevent the cause of data loss.

Don’t Publicly Post Email Address

Most spam programmes go through the internet in search of email addresses to add to their list and by having your email posted on your website or in chatrooms, can make you susceptible to having your email chosen by a spam programme, thus creating a higher amount of spam emails that you will receive.  To prevent this from happening, it is a good idea to use forms with backend redirects on your site to allow customers to contact you while assuring that your email is still private.

Invest in a Hosted Anti-Spam Service

By trying to eliminate the majority of spam that you receive, investing in an anti-spam service that is applied to your business email will help stop the overflow of phishing, spoofing, malware emails flooding your inbox. This will prevent you from the risk of opening unknown emails or passing malicious emails to your customers or coworkers.  Another trick to stopping spam emails that get through all of your filters is by marking them as spam which will allow the provider to black list this email and stopping it from coming through once again.  As any other virus out there, spam tends to update itself to get around security settings. This is why keeping up with the latest spam that is out there will help your business from getting hit.

Don’t Respond to Spam

When retrieving spam in your inbox, never reply to them  as a response would confirm to the spammer or automated programme that the email is connected to a real person which will than create a higher volume of spam to your inbox.  The best solution to resolving this issue is to flag each spam email and inform your IT provider.

Be Aware of Who You Share Your Email Address with

When giving out your email address, whether it is to a person or to an organisation, be proactive and make sure that you are well aware of emails coming from them and if you would want to receive emails from them.  Always be aware of the privacy agreement with any of the businesses that you give your information to. Some businesses might state that they want your email address to send updates on their products but the smaller print might state otherwise. Always make sure that the sites you give out your information to are secure as there are many spammers out there searching the net for that specific information in order to send spam emails.

At the end of the day, making sure that your information is secure is the best way to prevent you from receiving spam emails and keeping up to date with the latest spam, phishing and malware emails will help you in preventing those emails from reaching your inbox and saving your business from losing data.