Avoiding unwanted e-mail

A recent survey by market research firm Ipsos for e-mail consultant Habeas points out that end users are finding new ways to avoid spam and unwanted e-commerce e-mails. According to the study, over 50% of users maintain three different e-mail addresses. In addition, 81% do not forward e-mails from one address to another, keeping the mailboxes distinct. Half of the respondents with multiple e-mails said that they maintained multiple accounts to avoid unwanted e-mails.

As reported in an article in Network World “Consumers deal with ‘e-mail insecurity factor’”, 12/4/07) , the survey found that users “create one for work, another for friends, family and trusted brands, and one for signing up for online offers and lists.”

As companies depend more and more on e-mail marketing, customers are increasingly finding ways to avoid their urgent communications. As the CEO of Habeas is quoted as saying “It’s easy for an enterprise to run afoul of consumer willingness to engage in a dialogue.”

Over the last ten years, one of the big stories has been the growth of e-mail as a marketing strategy. Over the next ten, the avoidance of e-mail will become as big.

Oops

We’ve all done it. Clicked on “Send” and immediately had our heart miss a beat as we realized that the e-mail was on its way to someone it wasn’t intended for.

No surprise, but a recent study found that 50 percent of all workers admitted to sending e-mails to the wrong person. Of course, most of the other 50 percent are probably in denial.

The survey, conducted by IT security firm Sophos, found that misdirected e-mails happen all the time. It’s not just the spectacular blunders we hear about – intending to send to a fellow employee an e-mail that makes fun of the boss, but mistakenly addressing it to the boss himself. More likely, it’s the inadvertent misdirection of confidential material, related to personnel, finances, or business strategy.

It’s a real concern. 75 percent of surveyed companies worry about sensitive information being leaked by e-mails.

Sophos, naturally, is interested in selling its software product that scans e-mail for critical keywords to filter out some of the problem, but that’s unlikely to plug all holes. The natural thought is that employees have to be educated to double-check messages before clicking on “Send,” but that it is not a trivial task. Somewhere between technology and training lies the solution, and this is a problem that more and more companies will have to struggle with.

Sharp’s new fax-based MFP

Faxing may be moribund, but some new products are adding new value by looking at these machines as appliances for routing documents and for enhancing office workflow. Such a machine scans in documents and distributes them using fax, email, FTP, or scan-to-folder.

That’s the approach Sharp is taking with its brand-new FO-IS125N fax-based multifunctional. This $600 (list) machine prints, copies, scans, and faxes. It uses Sharp’s Image SENDER™ technology, based on the same sophisticated scanning software that Sharp has on its high-end copier/MFPs.

According to Sharp product manager Gary Bailer, the concept was to make scanning to a destination as easy for non-tech-savvy users as faxing is. “How do I get a piece of paper form point A to point B very simply? We wanted to keep the simplicity of faxing while responding to current needs for document distribution.” Indeed, no other fax machines on the market offer the full range of scan-to options of the FO-IS125N.

In addition to allowing for the various scan-to options, the FO-IS125N offers a number of security features: including facilities for user authorization, fax rerouting, secure fax, and call restriction. For highly security-conscious sites, it offers a way of having each transmission, whether fax or scan-to-email authorized before being sent. The purpose of this feature is to automate some of the steps in gathering approvals for contract, press releases, and financial documents before they get released. That’s an area that such mandates as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA have made much more important.

Sharp has added some nice user features as well: a functional keyboard, dual-sided scanning, and LDAP addressing. True, the machine is on the slow side (prints and copies at 12ppm), but the concentration on providing an inexpensive station for secure document sending is a smart direction for prolonging the life of the past-its-prime fax machine market.

Green faxing

Here’s another good reason for managing fax traffic—the ecology. According to business consultant Heather Clancy, the best thing would be for everyone to convert to scan-to-email. But many small businesses, in particular, still have customers and business partners that are still very much wedded to the fax age. But traditional fax machines, as Clancy points out,“are notorious paper wasters and energy drainers to boot.” U.S. government stats show that “paper production is second only to petroleum in terms of energy used by U.S. industries.” And if your fax machines are like ours, sometimes they print almost as many ads for replacement toner, software bargains, and deli menus as they do real faxes. Even more wasteful is the cost of just sitting there waiting, according to Clancy: “Energy Star rates fax machines among the most energy-intensive types of business machines out there because most of the time they sit around turned on, basically doing nothing.” She points to an Energy Star Web page with a linked calculator that can help you determine the hidden costs of faxing here. The solutions are more scan-to-email and high-end network fax software that can intercept faxes, digitize them, store them in a secure environment, and perhaps reroute them by email. Being green may not be a priority of your business, but when being green means saving money and increasing security, it makes sense. Network fax software is available, for example, from MyFax, Equisys (Zetafax), and Captaris (RightFax) among others.