I’ve been thinking lately that Spam is all but gone from my life. I almost never get Spam at work and what I do get is usually clearly related to some email list I signed up for. One of my New Years resolutions was to unsubscribe from any mailing lists that I don’t really care about, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well that is being handled by most companies.
The best companies have a link in the email, that when clicked takes me to a very simple page that says something like "Sorry to see you go, thanks." The worst make me login to an account, that I’ve generally forgotten so I have to have them remind me of my account and password, resulting in several more unwanted emails.
This was on my mind because last night I logged into my email account tied to terrygold.com, which I almost never check. Usually it is full of spam, but somehow magically my ISP had implemented spam filtering and it was all gone.
At work we’re using Spam Assassin, but we’re in the process of moving to Microsoft Forefront. I have no idea what my ISP uses, but it works.
If you are still slogging through spam, make a New Years resolution to change email providers or to get a good Spam defense application. Given the crude nature of a lot of spam, I’m surprised some attorney hasn’t claimed "hostile work environment" on companies that don’t deal with the problem. Do it now and don’t keep wasting time slogging through all the spam.
(And as always, thanks to the unsung heroes of IT for getting this under control!)