What is Spam?
Unlike the ham-like product sold in cans on store shelves, Spam in the online world is unwanted, unsolicited email, usually sent en masse. Much like traditional junk mail that comes to your home mailbox, it often represents sales content. Spammers often use legitimate email addresses to evade anti-spam software. While the emails themselves are often not harmful, they can be used to distribute malware. And the non-harmful emails can still fill up databases, waste staff time, and lead to overlooked legitimate messages due to spam confusion.
How to Recognize This Threat: Most email clients have some type of spam or junk email filter that will identify obvious bulk email, but some messages still get through. If a message contains an ad that you have not asked to receive or seems impersonal, it is likely spam. Harmful spam may also contain suspicious links or attachments, and include typos.
How to Prevent This Threat: As always, training staff to look for the signs of spam is important. And in addition to any out-of-the-box spam filters your email client may have, to secure your organization, look to SonicWall’s email security and anti-spam as an added layer of protection.