For its first 60 years, Spam (which turned 70 this year) referred to the porkbased meat product. While that spam has spawned its own fans (check sites like spam.com, for example), the past decade has brought about a different, more sinister type of spam. E-mail based spam is loosely defined as any unwanted, inappropriate or unsolicited e-mail usually sent in mass quantities. Spam is the electronic equivalent of junk mail. It clutters our inboxes and distracts us from legitimate business and personal e-mail.

If you’ve had an e-mail address a long time, it’s nearly impossible to avoid spam. There are some steps you can take, though, to become less appealing to spammers. Experts recommend not posting your e-mail address on a website unless it’s secure. These sites have a lock icon in the lower corner of your browser. You may want to consider getting a “disposable” e-mail address from services like Hotmail or Yahoo to use for mailing list subscriptions, online purchases and chat rooms. Most important, never respond to a spam e-mail. Look at junkbusters.com for advice on how to stay off junk e-mail lists.

If spammers have found you and you can’t change your e-mail address — especially if it’s the one you use to communicate with clients — there are a number of products that can winnow the barrage of daily spam. Before investing in any product, contact your internet service provider (ISP) to discover if it has enabled any spam blockers as part of its service. Most ISPs have tools to control about 40 percent to 60 percent of spam. One benefit of these filters is the blocked junk never reaches your e-mail address.

Some ISPs, like Earthlink, include a challenge/response filter. When sending an e-mail to an Earthlink subscriber or similar system, you receive an e-mail requiring you to respond again, type a code or go to a website before the e-mail is forwarded to the recipient. Once you’ve responded, you’re added to the recipients’ “whitelist.”

The next line of defense is to configure your e-mail program to separate spam from legitimate e-mail. Outlook 2003 has a builtin filter. An excellent tutorial on setting up Outlook to filter spam can be found at http://www.sitedeveloper.ws/tutorials/spam.htm. If your e-mail program can block spam, the first step is to enable it to capture junk e-mail. In Outlook 2003, the setting is under Tools/Options/Preferences/Junk Mail. Once you decide how aggressively you want to filter spam, you can reinclude e-mail the filter erroneously considers spam. In Outlook, these are called “safe senders.” In other products, it may be referred to as a whitelist — those addresses from which you want to receive e-mail regardless of subject or text that might have been falsely identified as spam.

Safe domain names

The other exception list you may want to create is safe domain names. Often, you don’t know the e-mail address of people contacting you in connection with work. This is especially important for law firms that may receive e-mail from several people within an opposing law firm. Adding a list of domain names allows e-mail from anyone using that domain name to pass through the spam filter.

The most important step in configuring a filter — whether in Outlook or a thirdparty product — is to continually add to your blocked sender’s list. This is the list of addresses you’ve identified as spam senders and you don’t want these in your junk mail folder or your inbox. With some internetbased spam filters, you’re helping other users of those products by identifying such e-mail so vendors can improve their filters.

Commercial filters

For many, Microsoft Outlook or another e-mail service may be sufficient for managing spam. However, a stronger remedy may be required for those who receive a voluminous amount of spam.

There are two basic types of commercial spam filter products. Software filters are installed directly on a computer (or firm’s server) and literally sieve through incoming e-mail to separate spam from desired messages before they reach the inbox. The other type is webbased. These products are similar in function to softwarebased filters except, as the name implies, reside on the web and are constantly updated by the vendor with better exclusions. Webbased products generally are more expensive and usually are priced per e-mail address managed.

All the products begin with a list of known spam e-mail addresses. Most filters include the ability to recognize more spam based on how you handle incoming e-mail. Early products used contentbased filtering; essentially, looking at words in the e-mail or subject to exclude it. This worked fine years ago when spammers were sending unsolicited e-mail for Viagra, weight loss and other unwanted selfimprovement messages, often for the wrong genderedrecipient. These spammers learned to place spaces or characters between letters to slip through the antispam filters. As a result, the good guys have had to get smarter, too. The more people who let vendors know which e-mail is spam, the better their filters work to exclude newer forms of spam.

Among the leading softwarebased spam filters are MailWasher Pro, CA AntiSpam 2007 and the spam filters included in programs like McAfee SpamKiller. These products cost about $40 but they must be purchased for each computer. For individuals seeking webbased spam filters, look at programs like OnlyMyE-mail, which costs $4 per month.

Next level

While these consumerlevel products may be sufficient for home use and some firms with moderate e-mail traffic, they may not be enough for professionals in most firms. For enterprise level protection, one leading product is webbased Postini, which is priced per e-mail address. For vendors or staff supporting a firm’s network, the administration of products like Postini are minimal. Initially, the ISP must make a change in settings so that e-mail goes through Postini before being delivered to the firm.

Attorneys and staff can go online to review the filtered e-mail to ensure there are no legitimate messages that should be delivered. Postini also filters e-mail containing viruses and can be configured to notify users when virusladen e-mail is received or too much spam has accumulated. Postini also can manage instantmessaging and web threats from sites that may install spyware or do other damage.

Every time a spam filter vendor improves its tools, spammers counter with a new technique. The best we can hope for is to keep the amount of spam to a manageable level so we can get on with our real work.

Carol L. Schlein is president of Law Office Systems in Montclair, a training and consulting firm specializing in law firm automation. Copies of her previous columns are on losinc.com, which also lists upcoming meetings and training classes. For information, e-mail info@losinc.com or check the website. Schlein formerly chaired the Computer and Technology Division of the ABA Law Practice Management Section and can be reached at carol@losinc.com.

Questions for Carol L. Schlein on law office technology may be e-mailed to New Jersey Lawyer at news@njlnews.com or faxed to (908) 226-0165.