Spam Filters Do Generate False Positive

Internet is definitely making a visible trail of an improved medium of communication. Online businesses and promotions are but just some of the fields that make use of this worldwide connection. Email marketing is indeed of great importance for businesses that concern online promotion.

A big part of online marketers fail to understand the real score of their mailings. A message prompt like 'message sent' is not a guarantee that the message reached the prospect's inbox. There are instances when promotional emails and even opted-in newsletters get block and thus land on bulk folders.

Most if not all ISP's and email users utilize spam filters. Spam filters are softwares made to limit the effect of spam (these are messages that suggest violence, pornography, obscenity and the like). Spam filters have different spam detection techniques - certain filters check the content of the message, while others depend their detection on whitelist and blacklist. Though spam filters vary in detecting spam, most of them can be configured by the users - such as changing the level of security or updating the whitelist and blacklist databases. Furthermore, because of the unwanted effect of spam, be it in the context of homes, small businesses or large ones, email users and mail administrators tend to increase the security level of these filters. This results to a low false negative (false negative occurs when the filter fails to block a spam) which is very desirable. But increasing the security level increases the false positive as well. Unlike false negative, false positive occurs when a legitimate email is blocked from reaching the inbox. And this is very unlikely for email marketers. Heightened false positive rate hinders online businesses to progress. In addition, large amount of money is wasted during internet campaigns, and false positive can hamper businessmen from building relationships on their clients and prospects.