In checking on our Spam Filter, I am greeted with a page of bar charts. I typically only have a second to ensure that the box is actually running and that it has at least processed an email in the last second or so. Our Public Relations coordinator, or Statistician as she can be, has been pumped me for some interesting tech numbers. For the first time since I first used a spam filter, I decide to pay attention to the numbers. We have had this box for about 5 years and we have a fairly low number of email users (200). We have received almost 8 million emails and about 6.5 million of them have been blocked. But still these users want to tell me about every spam message that makes it through as if I stare at this thing all day long and catch every bad email. So this has prompted a list of misunderstood email concerns:
1. "I don't think the spam filter is working" "why?" "I just got an email from someone selling viagra" After seeing the statistics above I hope you realize if the spam filter was not working you would be getting hundreds of spam messages not one or 2. We can block on keywords, but that doesn't stop the vi@gra ads. We can block on reputation, but that doesn't stop the emails that are being sent from you hi-jacked home computer from some guy in the middle east (yeah, really). We really cannot block the message that has the sender "spoofed" so its appears to be from someone who works here. But thats a good idea. Would make my job easier.
2. "My brother sent me this email about a new virus out there" this is sometimes followed by an attempt to make the source sound reliable. "He works for HP" Ok your brother does payroll at HP and knows about as much as you about all the scary viruses out there. If you are going to warn the entire company about a virus, how about running your concern through the very department that's responsible for protecting the computers. If you want to warn people about their home computers, send it to them at home. I have personally never recieved an email like this that wasnt a: a hoax, b: a virus from 2003 that the anti-virus companies had a fix for 2 days later. Viruses cannot "write zeros to your hard drive" if your hard drive is completely reformatted the virus will be wiped with the rest of your files, trust us, we do it all the time.
3. "Send this to 10 people and see what happens" if you send an email to 10 people, 10 people will get an email. Unless some of your friends are now blocking you as spam for sending too many of these. There is no way for the email to know how many times you forwarded this. I can track how many times emails are sent, because I manage the server that sends them, but no email tracker. So while I am back here catching spam messages with a net, I can count the number of times emails are forwarded so I know when we've hit the magic number and I should make something pop up on your screen. Sorry, but no one is going to pay you to forward emails, either even if there was some way they could track it.
4. Email Petitions. This seems to be getting less frequent, either because people are understanding the asininity or because my friends have heard my rants enough. A petition that is emailed to a group of contacts is like an organizational chart for a company with too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It starts with one name who forwards it to 10 people (because they were afraid they would get struck by lightning if they sent it to 9). Those 10 people sign it. Now we have 10 petitions, all 10 have the same #1, and all 10 have unique #2. They send it to 10 people. Now we have 100 Petitions, all 100 have the same #1, 10 of them have a unique #2 and 100 have unique #3. Now who is going to compile all of these emails at the end and remove all the duplicates and send it to the interested party? No one, because you'd need an email tracker.
5. "Oh my God don't use Tide it will kill your pets!" I am not sure if these originate from people who are disgrunted with companies or just like to scare people. Please do us all a favor and go to snopes.com or some similar site and check the vailidity. 99% of the time, you will be glad you did, and be glad you did not forward too all your friends. It ruins your reputation when people regularly hit Reply All with a snopes link saying your sensational email was just a hoax from 15 years ago. This also goes for missing children who were found in '98 and are now married with children that have email and get these forwards.
And lastly, that guy in Africa who wants to wire you money, and who randomly got your email address but somehow doesn't even know your name, just wants to drain your bank account. But you knew that, right?
