Spam email is copies of the same email sent to you without your consent and in most cases used for commercial advertising purposes, which most of the time is for questionable products and campaigns.

A good number of those who receive spam emails never asked to be sent the email and most of the spammers who send the emails usually modify their email addresses to conceal their identity.

It is very important to note that spam emails are also sent from computers that are infected with malware. Virus makers are colluding with spammers to infect vulnerable users’ machines with viruses and hence use them as agents to send spam emails that look like are coming from trusted sources or addresses.

How do spammers get users’ email addresses?

Spammers can get users’ email addresses when such unsuspecting users subscribe to services on unreliable websites that require them to provide their email addresses for subscription purposes.

Spammers can also obtain users’ addresses using automated systems to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible or steal lists of users’ addresses. They also search the internet for such addresses.

The outcome of spam emails

Apart from spam emails filling your precious mailbox space, there are many other effects of spam emails such as;

Spam emails slacken productivity; Precious time that could be used by an employee to do productive work is used to go through spam emails so as to find a legit email that results in loss of productivity and which also lowers the profit margin of an organization.
Spam emails are used to infect systems with malware
Most spam emails will trick you into clicking links within the email body in order to infect your system with malware. This malware is then used to obtain confidential information such as users’ passwords and credit card information. Their main purposes (spammers) for stealing confidential information that is mostly related to your bank account is to steal your money or use your name to commit credit card fraud.
Spam emails contain inappropriate content that could bring about legal suits; An emerging trend is the use of spam emails to send unpleasant contents such as pornographic content which could cause an employer to be sued by his/her employees for exposing them to inappropriate content.
It might cause delays in delivering emails or even email delivery failure.
It affects internet speeds which slow productivity
It brings about overhead costs to ISPs’ when relaying spam emails, which they pass on to subscribers.
It may lead to your ISP blocking your public IP should spam emails be emanating from your network.

Possible steps to take to avoid email spam

Here are a couple of things you can do as a user to avoid receiving spam emails;

Always ensure that your anti-virus is updated in good time.
Always refrain from giving feedback to emails that you are not familiar with.
Always ensure that your machine’s firewall is turned on, this is to block off individuals who are trying to attack your computer and use it possible to send out spam emails.
Always check email headers of suspicious emails to verify its senders
In cases where you are forwarding emails to several users, use the BCC field which gives you the ability to hide your address from the recipients.
Always use strong passwords for your email account that is not easy to gauss. Remember to also change your password on a regular basis.
Elude ‘unsubscribe’ options; If you do not remember subscribing to a service that is suddenly requesting you to unsubscribe from it, avoid it. It is a new way spammers have devised of tricking users to subscribe to a service by asking them to click on an ‘unsubscribe’ link.

If by any chance you continue receiving several spam emails even after implementing the above measures then its time you sort the services of an anti-spam service provider.

Pepea Email Security

Email security gateways monitor an organization’s inbound and outbound email traffic for unwanted or malicious messages and attachments. These products block or quarantine malware, phishing attacks and spam as their core functionality.

Today, it is estimated that about 60-70% of computer and system virus infections can be attributed to viruses, spyware or other harmful programs downloaded via email. These threats to mail security can result in significant downtime, loss of productivity and damage to corporate reputation.

Without email security as a service, you are likely to be experiencing the following challenges even with custom spam filters available on most email platforms;

Keeping up with spammers who are devising new ways of delivering spam each day
Genuine emails being sent to junk folders inappropriately can lead to loss of opportunities and client communication breakdown
Email downtime as a result of too much junk mail slowing down your mail server
Missing emails i.e. emails not being found in their default folder when sent or received e.g. genuine emails being sent to the trash or junk folders
High risk of falling victim to phishing attacks and other business email compromise exploits which can lead to loss of data and revenue
Maintaining rule sets for custom filters can be tedious while attempting to customize spam filters
Typical challenges that come with managing mail servers such as maintaining ambient conditions, high electricity bills, costs of maintenance and upgrades, etc.

This is where Pepea anti-spam and antivirus filtering service comes into play offering the ultimate protection to your business by stopping malware before it reaches your network or your employees’ mailboxes. The spam filter service also ensures that 99.9% of junk and spam emails are quarantined by analyzing each and every email to ensure that your users receive only the important emails. If a harmful email or file is detected, our gateway servers will automatically send it to a quarantined database and these can then be accessed via our antispam portal.

Why does your organization need Pepea Email Security?

To protect the integrity of your organization’s data; inbound and outbound filtering of all emails including attachments prevents malicious emails from reaching your mailbox. It prevents unauthorized access to your organization’s critical data that could lead to corruption, theft or total loss of the data
To improve productivity; email security will give your staff peace of mind knowing that emails sent or received are clean and something as simple as opening an attachment will not compromise the entire organization. Elimination of email downtime will also enhance internal and external communications
Reliable support; our support team responds immediately in case of new outbreaks and continuously customizes spam filters to capture new outbreaks
Fully managed spam filters; you will not have to worry about training your spam filters and maintaining rule sets in order to keep up with spammers
Protection of end-users; outbound filtering ensures that emails sent to clients and other end users are clean before reaching their mailbox
Saves on costs; Pepea email security can work with your existing infrastructure hence you will not have to invest in any additional software or hardware

Features of Pepea Email Security

Pepea Email Security Services in Kenya and East Africa provides you with cost-effective and continuous protection, stopping spam and advanced threats before they reach you. Our email security solution offers;

Inbound filtering; All incoming emails, including attachments are filtered before reaching your mailbox so as to eliminate spam, unsolicited emails and malicious content to provide maximum security against email-based viruses and security exploits.

Outbound filtering; Blacklisting is the process of identifying spammers based on the IP addresses and domains that they send email from, then compiling this information into a list that can be referenced by email servers, which then blocks email from those IP’s from being delivered to the intended recipient. Your IP address or domain can be viewed as such when your network is infected, usually by botnets. Email servers or email service providers will reject emails listed on global blacklist databases and this will manifest as bounce-back error messages on your end. Pepea Email Security provides blacklist protection by filtering all your outgoing emails ensuring only clean emails reach your recipients’ mailboxes.

Email queueing; When your server is experiencing downtime, Pepea email security queues your emails and once your server is back up it delivers the emails as they were sent.

Interoperability; Our inbound and outbound filtering system is platform-independent meaning that it can be deployed alongside any system such as Office 365, Exchange Server, MDaemon, Zimbra, etc.

With this award-winning email security solution, you are guaranteed of;

A 99.8% spam free mailbox
Virus, Trojans, Phishing Scams, Worm and Malware Protection
No bounce back error messages due to blacklisting, communicate without a hitch
No bandwidth loss due to spam which slows your network traffic
Improved employee productivity by cutting back on time wasted searching through your mailbox for genuine emails
Immediate implementation/deployment
No on-premise infrastructure requirements and zero upfront capital costs