What is a Spam Blocking Service?

We all have received spam at one time or another.  It has become quite an annoyance, and has even cost businesses in lost productivity.  The most widely known say to stop Spam is using a program on your PC that filters the Spam into a separate folder, or deletes it as it downloads e-mails.  A spam blocking service stops spam BEFORE it gets to your computer.

Spam Blocking services are hosted on a server on the Internet.  Currently most people get their e-mail with little or no spam filtering before it is downloaded to their computers from an e-mail server.  When a spam blocking service is used, the spam never makes it to the e-mail server

But, how does this all work?  Without the service, the path of an e-mail goes like this:

1. Source (E-mail written) 
2. Sent to their e-mail server
3. Sent to Recipient e-mail server
4. Downloaded to e-mail program on computer

It is pretty much a direct route from the source e-mail server to your e-mail server.  With an Spam Blocking Service, it goes like this:

1. Source (E-mail written)
2. Sent to their e-mail server
3. Sent to Spam Service Server where they filter out spam
4. Sent to Recipient e-mail server
5. Downloaded to e-mail program on computer

How does this help?  Simply this, you download less e-mail to your computer.  It will take less time to download your e-mail, you will spend less time filtering through your e-mail to find the good ones, and you will not waste your time on scams that can cost you real money.

Occasionally you will miss an e-mail, although it is quite rare.  Most Spam Blocking services allow users to create their own white lists.  This is a list of people whom you always want to receive e-mails from, just in case you need that service.

This type of service can only be used if you own your own domain name, and can control your ‘MX’ records.  The MX records are the key.  Those are on the Internet to tell all e-mail servers where to send all of your e-mail.  Once you sign up for the service, you change the MX records to point to the Spam service servers, and then point the Spam service servers to send to your current e-mail server.  This is how you set up the step #3 in the list above.  The service you sign up with, or the service provider will help with setting this up properly.

The one issue with this is that you cannot set up your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, or any other public e-mail service with this type of service.  It is intended to be used by companies only. 

I have personally seen my clients have a 90% or more reduction in e-mails received.  This means that their Internet bandwidth is used more effectively, and not wasted receiving spam.  One CEO had been getting 300 – 500 e-mails A DAY.  In the span of one weekend, that went down more than 90%.  After the weekend, he was receiving 30-50 e-mails on a normal day.  And none of them were spam.  If you take that number and spread it out over the 30 e-mail accounts, that is A LOT of e-mail going away. 

The bottom line is this, if you own a business that has it’s own domain name and e-mail, you need to have this service.  It will save you and your employees a lot of wasted time in sifting through e-mails.