Question

Assume that you are the owner of a large e-business.  Explain the steps that you would take to control spam. Be sure to include advantages and disadvantages that accompany your steps.

Answer 1

As the owner of a large e-business, it is my prime responsibility to protect the company from spam-related losses. Though spam cannot be removed in its entirety, steps can be taken to reduce spam in the e-business-

• Strengthening of the email filters will help a great deal to control spam. I would standardize the Outlook settings (home-junk-Junk Email Options) to choose the filter level from ‘low’ to ‘safe lists’. However, a disadvantage is that important emails may be missed by the employees.
• Getting domain privacy by paying an annual fee for website domain privacy can help to reduce the spam emails considerably. If the business purchases domain privacy, then the business information is masked. No customer can see the business information unless the customer sends a request to see the information. The request is then forwarded to the business and as a manager, I can choose if I want to reveal the business information. However, a disadvantage of the purchase of the domain privacy is that the customers would be suspicious to build long-term relationships with the business. It is recommended for businesses to be transparent.
• Unsubscribing spam emails is a great way to reduce spams. However, a free service like Unroll.me is used to search the inbox and make recommendations on emails that can be unsubscribed from. However, a disadvantage is that important emails can be missed by the user. Unsubscribing needs to be done cautiously to avoid unsubscribing from highly important updates.
• Use of a separate junk email address to move the promotional and marketing messages to this folder, helps more focus on business emails and skip the junk email without wasting time. This will reduce the spam emails in the business email account. However, do not use the junk email address to register a domain because if you forget your login, you would be locked out of your account. Control over the website would be lost.
• I would highly recommend my employees not to respond to the spam emails as they might contain viruses that can be used to hack business information.
• I would install SaneBox to have a control over the spam emails. Once the folders are organized, SaneBox can be used to move the important emails to the corresponding folders. SaneBox is just an application and will not be able to differentiate between important and unimportant emails.
• MailRoute is an important application to prevent the company from being hacked. As a manager, it is my responsibility to stay vigilant from hacking and ransomware that can be directly entered into the business inbox via spam emails. MailRoute can be used to identify the viruses and other threats by cleaning and routing the emails. MailRoute is just an application and will not be able to differentiate between important and unimportant emails.
• Since the e-business is a growing company, hiring a virtual assistant to clean the inbox is a good idea. A virtual assistant can be used to clean up the inbox, sort out or remove the spam and ensure that the inbox is well organized before I enter the office. However, a virtual assistant is an intrusion into the business privacy.

Spam is always an issue in business emails. Steps need to be taken to reduce them otherwise it might lead to othe consequences.