Jennifer Carole

A of couple weeks ago I was talking with a business associate who surprised me with some bad news. Happens all the time right – except I got emotional and realized it would benefit our business relationship if I got the heck off the phone and stopped talking. So I begged off to get my head back in the game.

Within a few minutes when I had stabilized and had my thoughts together, I shot my associate an email. For me, email is a safe way to communicate especially when my emotions take over. And it usually works. Except, this time it didn’t. Because – wait for it – he never got it! At least not that day! No, my email was redirect by a spam filter and dumped into the same bin as his message from the Nigerian businessman and the super-duper body-part enlargement salesman.

Another case of an important email missed; sacrificed to the random discrimination of the spam filter.

All of us hate spam – and in fact, spam is on the rise! But let’s get real, how hard is it for us to delete a message we don’t want? In the balance of things, isn’t getting the messages you do want much more important than the half second of time it takes to delete the garbage?

Look at what this poor man is going through trying to protect his company – he’s a wreck. In an article in Business Week, author Gene Marks states it simply; “They all suck,” referring to spam filters.

Can I get a hallelujah? It’s time to pull together a culture of change.

If someone could make a spam filter that actually worked with a modicum of reliability, I am all over it. But so far what I have seen appears to still operate with a woeful amount of random success.

Thankfully, I have a relationship with my associate that could withstand the gaff, but with business relationships at stake, I don’t understand why anyone would trust a spam filter rather than spend three minutes reviewing and deleting the garbage.

So I say throw the filters out. Stop assuming they are doing their job. Check your spam.