Entrepreneur

Let me start out by saying..I hate spam!

I am, of course, talking about the unwanted e-mail that appears hourly in my Outlook selling me all kinds of products to decrease my waistline, increase certain unnamed private parts, and sell me every type of mood enhancing drug. There are countries attempting to protect their treasury and women whose husband’s are never home. Warnings about men hiding under my car and solicitations to send business cards to kid with cancer.

Like most of you, I have a spam filter that is supposed to keep the garbage out of my inbox but still they get through. 100, 200, sometimes more per day. And, to add insult to injury, while letting through the spam my filter stops legitimate e-mail. 4 times in the past 2 weeks I have had a “real” e-mail get caught in the spam filter.

One day I spent a half hour sifting through the debris of my filter (2,000+ messages) looking for an expected e-mail. I also know that my outgoing e-mail has been subject to filtering when I send a message and never hear back from the recipient.

What can be done to stop this? Not much but I do have one or two requests.

If you have a spam filter, don’t forget to check it occasionally just to make sure there is no “good” mail stuck in there.

If you are sending an e-mail put your full name in the “from” box. If you don’t know how to do this-find out ASAP. E-mail that shows an address (e.g. 123@aol.com) instead of a person’s name is more likely to be sucked into spam filter limbo.

And finally, if you are sending me an e-mail and I don’t respond in 24 hours, please try again or call me. I respond to all my e-mails (except those referenced above) and if you haven’t heard from me you are probably in the filter.

Despite my seemingly poor outlook (pun intended *lol*) about the state of e-mail, I am a huge fan. This technology has allowed us more freedom and productivity then ever before. If I have to put up with sifting through silly and stupid e-mails to get 24/7 access and productivity-I”ll take it.