I joined project Honey Pot quite awhile ago.  Project Honey Pot is a community of tens of thousands of web and email administrators from more than 170 countries around the world who are working together to track online fraud and abuse. The Project has been online since 2004 and each day receives millions of email and comment spam messages which are catalogued and shared with law enforcement and security partners.

This article link will provide some great insight into Spam..  Things like who has the best and worst IT security, how much space is wasted, etc…

1 Billion Spammers Served | Deep Insights into Spam | Project Honey Pot

Check it out!

WordPress allows me to block this spam in a number of ways including Akismet (their spam filter plugin) and options to not post comments automatically but to wait until they have been approved by me.   Unfortunately, I do not have the time needed to review every piece of spam so Akismet has been a lifesaver for me.   I can periodically just load up my comments and see that Akismet has already flagged them as spam.   With one click they are gone and if I never do anything with them in 30 days they are automagically gone.

Bloggers beware…  If you are new to blogging you need to get yourself protected and sooner rather than later.  I found when I first started the blog that I very rarely received a piece of spam but now it can be literally a hundred or more in a weekend and as I continue to post additional content and opinion it just gives them that many more messages to latch onto.  Do yourself a favor, get your spam protection in place early!

Email is a strange thing.  The more you send the more you get which causes you to send more and you end up in this vicious cycle where you can’t seem to get caught up.   If email is part of your work this can result in literally hundreds of email exchanges in a day.   The purpose of this Blog Carnival is to highlight what others are doing to become more productive with their email and to keep email as a friendly medium not something that you HATE to visit every day.

Email Etiquette

On my blog here – ProjectsPossible you will find the post: Email Overload and Reminders – The Nagless, Productive Way! This post highlights a real effective strategy of getting a response to things that you need without really looking like you are nagging the person that you are needing to get it from.   I use this one all the time.  It works great!

Email Utilities and Addons

This category lists posts that point us to other programs that we can install that will help us in our goal of increased email productivity.   They will fall into the categories of spam filters, information management, searching, indexing, or in some cases the email program themselves.

Spam is a nasty problem, but then so are all of those mailed pieces of junk mail that I never open and just toss into the recycle bin.  Nesher presents 30 Top Freeware Spam Filters as posted at Freeware Reviews.  This post also has some interesting statistics about spam.   Scroll to the bottom for the link to the 30 Filters.   I have used Spam Bayes and I find it one of the best out there. 

Nesher also presents another list: 40 Free Disposable Email Address Services to Fight Spam posted at Collection of the Web Freebies, saying, “The best way to avoid spam in your mailbox is not giving your address to the potentially spammers. Free disposable addersses will assist you to keep your address safe.”  I’ve never really considered this as an option because usually when I leave my email I am wanting a response back or something similar and I don’t want to have to go to a ton of different email addresses to find what I’m looking for.   Again the rateitall link is at the bottom of the page.

For those of you that use your email to make money, Robbie presents Money Talks: Using Autoresponders posted at MMS Make Money Online.  The purpose of these autoresponding programs is to make sure that when someone does send you an email that they receive some kind of information or exchange in return.   For example if someone is seeking general information they could send an email to a specific address and an autoresponder would send them a brochure.   Personally I think there is a fine line between a true autoresponse and spam.   Take a look there are a number of suggestions.  Some better than others for sure.

Email and Creativity

In this category our lone entry goes to Madeleine Begun Kane she presents Spam Haiku posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.  You can’t take life too seriously and Madeline has done a great job in the area of Spam Humor.

Email Tips and Tricks

The Art of Personal Productivity presents How to Answer E-Mail Overload posted at The Bubble Planner.  The methodology mentioned here is very similar to what you will find with the Getting Things Done movement.   File It, Delegate It, Do It, or Defer It.

Our last posting for this month comes from Guy Patterson. If you use a Blackberry and Microsoft Exchange this How-To article provides you with the “need to know” information to get encryption working.  Blackberry & Microsoft Exchange Email Encryption How To – Nullamatix – Technology Made Simple posted at Nullamatix – Technology & Security Made Simple.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of email productivity using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: email productivity, blog carnival.