Email woes and etiquette

Based on issues that a client of mine has had in recent times with email, I decided to resurrect and rehash my XStore IT Bulletin no. 1 from July 2006.

One of the biggest issues with email is the lack of understanding of how it works. In addition, the requirement to implement anti-spam solutions falls foul of the lack of etiquette and/or knowledge of most email senders. Most email users don’t understand that their misuse or inefficient use ( due to ignorance or lack of knowledge ) of email solutions directly impacts the smooth operation of email systems. The more inefficiencies, the more issues there are.

And so it’s in everyone’s interest to learn how to use email properly and effectively. What are the main issues?

The 1st cardinal sin is the forwarding of emails without merit. Chain emails are often carriers of virus and malware, and as such, the forwarding of these emails, directly impacts the security of your recipients.

The 2nd major issue is formatting of emails. This includes content, subject lines and addressing. Anti-spam solutions look at all these areas  to make a decision as to whether they think an email is spam or not.

3rd is the idea ( and expectation ) that email systems offer guaranteed delivery. SMTP ( the protocol used to send email ) was never designed with guaranteed delivery in mind. Although mechanisms were built-in to work around Internet and system failures, delivery of emails is a haphazard affair. The fact that it works well most of the time is a testament to the original specification’s quality, and additions that have been made since then. However, don’t assume that if you send an email, that it will received. And don’t count on it for critical business or life-threatening situations.

How does email work?

When you send email from your email application, it will travel as follows:

• from your desktop to your sending/outgoing server ( you may have one at your business or use your ISP’s )
• from your business email server or ISP to the recipient’s email server
• the recipient then reads the email off their server

Along the way, there are a number of checks done, both by your sending server and by the receiving server. Your server would for example, make sure that the recipient domain ( @domain.co.za ) exists. The recipient server would perform a number of anti-spam checks.

Spam is an unfortunate reality of life when it comes to email usage. There are a number of ways we can reduce the spam volume received everyday using our email servers without negatively impacting our users.

a. Anti spam engine

Anti spam engines such as SpamAssassin and PureMessage work using a multitude of modes and tests including header and text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases. A score is calculated based on these tests and if that score exceeds a preset value, the email is tagged as spam.

b. DNS blocklists ( RBL / DNSBL )

When an email is received, the email server checks the name of the sending server. If that name exists on a preset database ( there are many of these on the Internet ), the email is blocked or rejected.

c. Content filtering

Checks can be done on the header and body contents of emails to find specific instances of words, characters or phrases. If found, the email is blocked or rejected

d. Grey listing

When an email is received with a first time combination of sender, recipient and sending server, the email is temporarily rejected. On retry the email will be accepted. The basis for this mechanism is the fact the very few spam servers would resend an email.

Email servers can deal quite effectively with spam but one needs to make use of all the available options to combat this problem. The flip side is that we need to take care when sending emails, as this will assist the server actions that are taken.

Here are some basic ideas that one should use when sending email:

• do not forward chain letters or suspicious emails
• do not cc recipients in a general email, use bcc instead – most recipients do not want their email addresses being seen by others and in addition this is a security hazard ( most email clients automatically add cc’d address in received emails to their address books; a subsequent virus infection on one those recipients would then be sent to everyone in their address book )
• only use cc where a recipient is directly required to respond to your email
• do not respond to unsubscribe requests in spam
• never reply to spam
• use text email where possible instead of rich text email with pictures, etc.
• clearly think about the contents of email with respect to spam filters and the like
• check the size of an email before sending it – many companies do not have much Internet bandwidth and these emails might be blocked or filtered as a result
• check with your IT support if you’re unsure whether an email address is valid or not
• make use of filters in your email client to filter out spam
• learn about the built-in anti-spam features in your email client
• make use of good email etiquette – you are representing your company
• do not use your business email address to subscribe to websites on-line unless they are business-related

There is much more to email etiquette and use; if you’d like to know more, please check the following links:

Email etiquette

http://iwillfollow.com/email.htm

The misuse and incorrect use of email systems can directly cause one to receive more spam and security-related emails, so it’s in your interest to learn how to use email more effectively and safely.