RISMEDIA, February 10, 2009-E-mail, a primary form of communication for a number of years, is now losing effectiveness as SPAM continues to flood to inboxes. Estimates range from 90% to 97% of all e-mail today is SPAM.
SPAM continues to be an issue and a thief of time and productivity for businesses and individuals. Internet Service Providers (ISP) and their systems are stressed and this has led to flawed, fragmented attempts by ISPs and others to filter and block e-mail identified (sometimes falsely identified) as SPAM.
Software companies develop client side applications in an attempt to give end users the tools to eliminate SPAM. Many of these applications are not effective and also block legitimate e-mail in the process.
A Solution
A solution is to use a RealEgateway to help you take control of your e-mail communications.
A RealEgateway solution is a “server-side” system comprised of a hardware infrastructure and software solutions.
A specifically configured RealEgateway server is located at the “very first point of delivery of e-mail,” even before it reaches your ISP or e-mail host. How this occurs is when an e-mail is sent it is first routed to the RealEgateway and then (after the RealEgateway completes its tasks) the e-mail is forwarded to the proper ISP (or e-mail host).
What Kind of Rules Are Applied?
Before rules are applied, every message and its applied tests and routing are logged.
The logging is a vital part of the system. You might have a question of the whereabouts of a certain message (maybe you signed up for something on the internet and didn’t receive it). Or maybe a customer said they sent you a message and you didn’t receive it. In fact, you will be able to document the attempt and delivery destination of each and every message…, or reason it failed delivery.
One of the best features of the RealEgateway is that if a message failed for any reason and it shouldn’t have failed (this is called a false positive…, as it falsely identified a message as SPAM that was a good (positive) message), you can add it to the white list.
With a “Gateway” program, all email is scanned first for known viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc. Then, the system will scan the envelope of the message. The envelope includes the “to”, “from”, “subject” and any of the mail servers that handled the message.
After envelope rules are applied, the message can be sent to “body scanners” if desired for further checking of the content of the message itself.
You may have heard of black and white listing. The “black list” is the opposite of a “white list”. With a black list, you make sure that e-mail that meets certain criteria gets blocked; and with a “white-list,” e-mail that meets certain criteria is allowed to pass through, regardless of the other tests it might fail.
InternetCrusade’s Real Estate RealEgatewayTM
For the past 10 years, InternetCrusade® had been using and refining a RealEgateway.
Because IC Gateways have been in use for over 10 years, it is a “seasoned” system, with many of the existing real estate vendors and villains appropriately identified and tagged.
InternetCrusade’s Real Estate RealEgateway can help you with your electronic communications and will work no matter where you receive your e-mail by focusing on and identifying legitimate e-mail, and at the same time eliminating a large percentage of your unwanted e-mail (spam, viruses, etc).
The spam filter has increasingly ‘seasoned white-lists’ (and black-lists) which will help to insure delivery of your e-mail. The ‘white and blacklist’ is updated continually, using intelligence gathered from around the world from our customers (and vendors
The Real Estate RealEgateway consists of multiple mail exchangers and multiple content scanners (for redundancy) and is a perfect solution for those who consider e-mail communications vital to their business and/or organization. For more information, go to www.InternetCrusade.com and click on e-mail products.
If you have questions about your e-mail, visit the e-mail Heaven community on RealTown.com to review other questions and answers.
Mike Barnett is the CTO and VP Technology of InternetCrusade®. InternetCrusade is the creator and provider of e-PRO (NAR’s only technology certification course) as well as the host of RealTown.com, the oldest and most respected social networking site in real estate. InternetCrusade also manages tens of thousands of e-mail accounts representing millions of pieces of e-mail on a daily basis.
