Every student has an email account, and despite Gmail gradually becoming the free provider of choice, millions are still using Hotmail. Ten years ago, it was the automatic choice, and while there are arguably better options these days, most see the aggravation of changing providers and informing all of their contacts as outweighing the benefits of migrating elsewhere.
One of the biggest issues with Hotmail is spam. Unsolicited junk mail has always been a problem, and always will be; the fact is that Hotmail’s inbuilt anti spam measures are nothing to write home about and lag behind the competition in terms of efficiency.
You get what you pay for
There are plugins available for Hotmail, and if you have your account hooked up to Outlook, this has some inbuilt filters. The problem is that none of these are really up to the job in 2017.
The concept of 99 percent efficiency might sound impressive, but when you think about the number of emails the average student receives, the implication that one in every hundred will be wrongly categorized is decidedly underwhelming. Allowing a spam message into the inbox is an irritation – but sending an important message to the spam folder could be catastrophic.
Everycloud tech solution for filtering spam
One of the most popular tools for spam filtering among businesses comes from a supplier called everycloud tech, and the message is quickly getting out to academic institutions and private individuals, too. The key benefit of using this kind of product is that it is vastly more efficient than any of the freeware. The everycloudtech solution boasts 99.99 percent effectiveness and works across all platforms – including our old friend Hotmail.
It also provides detailed and bespoke spam reports, giving users the opportunity to see exactly what it is doing with what messages. This gives comfort that even in that 0.001 percent chance that something slips into the wrong place, the user will be able to see what has happened quickly.
The rise of spam
There is a common misconception that spam is no longer a problem, or is one that has been magically solved and consigned to the pages of history. Unfortunately, the facts do not bear this out. Just because it has been around since the dawn of email, it is not something that can be simply eradicated any more than other online hazards such as hacking or viruses.
In much the same way as the tools and tricks for dealing with those continue to evolve to stay one step ahead of the hackers, spam filtering technology is also a moving and developing discipline.
It is easy to think of it as little more than a nuisance, but again, this is a dangerous mistake. Annoying marketing emails from unknown sources are just the tip of the iceberg, although even they can be problematical if they fill your inbox and camouflage some important email.
But by far the biggest threat are the scams and viruses that can be propagated by email. Do yourself a favor and ensure your inbox is properly protected.
photo credit: Visual Content Data Security via photopin (license)
