Managing SPAM in an Email World

By: Scott Jemison
Contributing Writer

Long ago the scourge of modern man was junk mail. Mass marketers flooding your mailbox with unsolicited, unwanted sales circulars. Junk mail was, while incredibly environmentally unfriendly, mostly harmless if annoying. However, with the advent of the Digital Age came the next evolution of junk mail, SPAM. SPAM is not only annoying but potentially dangerous and malicious.

There are a number of weapons in the war on SPAM; programs and filters to evaluate your incoming email and block SPAM. But, the greatest weapon in the fight against SPAM sneaking into your poor unsuspecting inbox? You.

Just as you rarely want mail from someone you don't know, you rarely want e-mail from someone you don't know. Set your email preferences to Exclusive and populate your whitelists. Whitelists are lists of addresses from your contacts that you designate as Safe. By routinely updating and monitoring your Whitelists and being equally diligent with Blacklists (your list of addresses to block) you can maintain control of your inbox. If you take it a step further and set up folders you can even categorize your email and group your personal email from your business email from the forwards from your college buddies. In other words, no more looking through the emails from your mom to find your monthly statement for your credit card.

The best, most efficient -- and yes, most time consuming -- way to manage SPAM is to diligently manage your Whitelist and Blacklist for your email program.