mail.com, one of America’s leading email service providers, has always offered its users state-of-the-art security for their email accounts. New analysis reveals just how powerful its spam protection is today. Current figures show that almost 99 percent of spam is stopped before it reaches the inbox of its intended recipient. Now mail.com spotlights its anti-spam tools and shares valuable insights on how customers can keep their inboxes free of unwanted messages.

On the cutting edge of spam protection

Spam has been around for as long as mail.com, if not longer. Originally it was simply unsolicited email advertising that could fill up users’ inboxes if they didn’t erase it every now and then. Times have changed – a recent study found that spam messages accounted for almost 54 percent of global e-mail traffic in March 2020. Today spam has also evolved into something more dangerous, a potential source of scams and malware that can put a user’s computer and personal information – and those of their contacts – at risk. So a powerful spam filter can not only save a lot of time and frustration, but also keep hardware, software and data safe.

At mail.com, a dedicated team of mail security experts works to protect customers’ email accounts from spam, phishing mails and viruses. The company’s internet specialists program the filters using highly complex algorithms that are continuously updated and refined. There are several layers of defense in place to block spam mail.

Spam blocked before it reaches mailbox

The mail.com spam blocker is the first step in protecting users. It keeps unwanted emails out of customers’ inboxes using a variety of methods. Frequently updated parameters are applied to mark emails automatically as spam. Checksum methods are used to identify unsolicited bulk emails. The filter also evaluates emails for typical spam attributes and errors as well as checking to make sure that the email was actually sent from the server associated with the domain name in its address. IP addresses and URLs are also checked against blacklists. And mail.com experts do not simply focus on recognizing current patterns – they stay ahead of the curve, factoring in the latest techniques used by cybercriminals and paying attention to data hacks in which large numbers of email addresses are stolen from corporate databases.

When it comes to both harmless-yet-annoying bulk mailings and malicious emails containing malware, mail.com reports an outstanding recognition rate of almost 99 percent, meaning its users rarely even see these types of emails. For the small percentage of spam emails that are more difficult to categorize, the mailbox features offer an additional layer of protection. These tools help users continuously boost the effectiveness of their personal spam filter.

User actions can keep inbox spam-free

There are some emails that do not come from a blacklisted sender, but still might fall into the category of “unwanted mail” from a user point of view. Emails from legitimate retailers, for example, may be sent to recipients because they made purchases from those companies – but the customers see them as a nuisance. This is where each user’s  personal spam filter comes into play. If mail.com customers consistently mark such messages as spam, they will be immediately be moved to the inbox’s Spam folder. Based on these actions, the personal spam filter learns what the recipient considers to be junk mail, and the next email from the same sender will automatically go to the spam folder. The mail.com filter is also sophisticated enough to identify an email with a similar text pattern sent from a different sender address. It works with wordlists that are created from the emails the user has marked as spam. The filter determines the frequency with which words occur in the selected emails and creates a custom model for each mailbox, which is used in conjunction with probability methods to classify new emails as wanted or unwanted.

Because one user’s spam is another user’s ham, this personal filter relies on the account owner to “train” it. However, a recent survey showed that a majority of around 60 percent of email users regularly delete messages they consider to be junk mail rather than marking them as spam. To ensure that the personal spam filter functions correctly, it is important that users move unwanted emails to the correct folder – either by selecting the unwanted message and clicking the Spam button in the inbox, or by dragging and dropping the message to the Spam folder. Every unwanted email that is marked as spam helps the system learn something about what the individual user considers spam and what they don’t. Unfortunately, many users do not take advantage of this opportunity in the fight against spam: the survey also shows that only 20 percent of email users regularly move spam messages to the right folder.

Five mail.com anti-spam tips

In addition to informing users of the benefits of actively training the personal spam filter, as an expert in email security mail.com has outlined the following five tips to help its users avoid spam:

1. Ensure that the mail.com spam protection is activated in their Mail Security settings. The default setting is “activated,” and for their own protection, users are encouraged should not to deactivate it.

2. Only open emails or click on links if the sender is trustworthy and nothing seems “off” about the message. If anything rings an alarm bell, users should mark the message as spam or report it to the mail.com Help Center.

3. Users should not leave messages they consider spam in their inbox. This can be a risk as they start getting low on storage space: When it is finally time to clean out the inbox, during the process of looking and reading they might accidently open one of the unwanted messages and the spammer will receive confirmation that the email address actually exists. The logical consequence is even more spam messages. It really starts getting dangerous if the spam email contains links and content that are infected with malware.

4. Be careful about posting email addresses. They shouldn’t simply be posted all over the internet, in blogs, forums, or social networks. Cybercriminals actively look for addresses in such places for addresses to send spam to.

5. Never reply to email spam. Replying to an email that is obviously spam gives the spam sender a valuable piece of information – that the address exists and is in active use. This will encourage them to send even more spam. Another source of danger is links pretending to offer a way to unsubscribe from spam messages or newsletters. These links are often fake, so it is much safer to visit the homepage of the sender and unsubscribe from the newsletter there.

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