The best defense against spam is continuously educating the email user community.  As administrators we may sometimes get a little too hung up on the technocratic methods of preventing spam. Although the technical details are important, our email users must be constantly reminded of their role to prevent spam.  It’s an extremely important role.

Many spammers are people in each person’s inner circle who send notices, warnings and heads up emails.  When a person sends a friend a chain letter email, surely they do not think they are proliferating spam.  The forwarding of community announcement notices is surely sent with all the best of intentions.  This does not take away from the fact that this type of email clogs up the email highway.

Our friendly spamming friends then want us to send this email to 10 of our friends in the next 5 minutes.  This “not deliberate spam” sent to 10 people will bring the sender an unexpected positive outcome in their life.  The mere hope of something nice happening, by forwarding friendly spam to people in our trusted network, usually makes people do it faster.

These are the types of innocent situations email users should be made aware.  Through a newsletter or weekly email your email community needs constant reminders of spam they may encourage to go around the internet.

How about those heart wrenching emails about a child having an illness or is missing. True or not, many of these emails float around the email highway for years.  When people receive it they think is fresh news, but are not aware it’s actually old news or fairy tale spam from 2 years ago.  Seems simple enough to email administrators, but we cannot take our awareness for granted with everyday email users.  They are not in our technology business. Each email user is focused on their core skills at work.  So it’s imperative for administrators to heighten the awareness of people sending friendly spam around the world.

Continuing spam education is one of the best tools to fight spam.