This electronic newsletter was produced at the request of our clients, to satisfy their desire for best practice recommendations, product highlights and information on Internet related risks that may adversely affect their businesses.  It's our desire at Sterling to provide the very best customer service possible.  Your comments and suggestions are encouraged.

comments: newsletter@sterling.net   

And you thought SPAM in a can was bad!
SPAM has once again become a household name, unfortunately this version is a lot worse than the last. An article in the Oregonian this last weekend suggested that SPAM email now exceeds 53% of the overall internet email traffic. 

It's really an economic problem. It costs relatively nothing for spammers to send out hundreds of thousands of messages a day, yet the impact it has on businesses is staggering. Add up all the time spent by employees deleting unwanted solicitations. Combine that with the fact that valid business emails are occasionally being deleted by mistake because they are buried in a sea of solicitations. Not to mention the time wasted by employees that are enticed away from their duties by solicitations for pornography and other non-work related material.  The financial effect this has on businesses is something that needs to be taken seriously.

"Oregon's legislature is considering its own law.  A bill passed 57-0 by the house would make it illegal for a spammer to use a misleading subject line...   Unfortunately, these laws won't fix the problem.  They're destined to become just tools on the shelf. Spam is so broadly dispersed, massively produced and proficiently cloaked it can't be stopped.  And the hucksters who bombard you with spam typically are one step ahead of technology. The best shields are technical -- not legal."

The technical staff at Sterling are in agreement, the only way to battle the spam is with technology. We have recently put two new servers in place, with very sophisticated software installed that analyzes each piece of email coming through the system.  It's looking for tell-tale signs of spam.  If the characteristics of a particular piece of mail cause it's score to rank above a predetermined threshold, it's subject line is edited and [SPAM] is inserted at the beginning.  With this tool in place, employees can quickly discern which mail needs to be deleted and which need to be read.

It's our mission at Sterling to make the Internet productive for our clients. The spam filter service starts as low as .50 cents per month. Give the sales team a call if you would like this service added to your account.

Note: Clients with email addresses @sterling.net or @sterlink.net are setup with this service automatically, and there is no additional charge.

POPUP's driving you NUTS? 
Are you getting annoyed with all the pop-ups that appear every time you decide to surf the internet? If so, a small company in Seattle Washington distributes a piece of software called "Pop-Up Stopper" that can help eliminate them. The company is Panicware incorporated, and can be found at www.panicware.com. Panicware offers both a free version of their "Pop-Up Stopper" as well as a feature enhanced version. To download the free version, go to www.panicware.com/product_pshelp.html and follow the download and installation instructions. Although Sterling does not officially support this product, we do use it internally.

Non-profit organizations Win Big.
Sterling has always aligned itself very closely with charitable organizations in an effort to assist them in their ministries and to make a difference in our community. In fact over 4% of the overall revenue generated by Sterling goes back to charitable organizations in our community. 

Many thanks to our incredibly loyal clients. Your continued patronage of Sterling services makes this possible.

Why am I getting email with [SPAM]
in the subject line?
Sterling has employed a powerful set of SPAM detection servers that label suspect emails on their way through the system.  

If an email is determined to be spam, the subject line is edited automatically by our system and the label "[SPAM]" is inserted at the beginning.  This allows the recipient to easily identify spam messages.  

Some clients are configuring their email software to automatically delete these messages, others are simply having Outlook automatically file it away in a folder for later processing. Here is a link to some online documentation that tells you how-to setup Outlook and Outlook Express to provide these auto-file functions.