Reynolds Group Blog

See the fumy looking guy in the center of this picture….that is Santa alright! I had the privilege of representing the golly old elf at the Holiday Movie children’s event for the Venice Family Clinic this year. Above you can see me, my trusted elves and some children who enjoyed the show and Christmas gifts. It was really fun and all for a great cause!

Here is some info on the event if you would like to learn more.

Merry – Happy!

The Children’s Holiday Movie event benefits the pediatric programs of the Venice Family Clinic. We are pleased to report that this year’s event has raised over $110,000 in proceeds and growing! It’s not too late to make a contribution, if you would like to donate to Children’s Holiday Movie and the Clinic’s pediatric programs please go to www.venicefamilyclinic.org or call my direct line (310) 664-7940. Proceeds are used to improve the lives of over 6,000 children who rely on the Clinic for their medical care. The Clinic provides a wide range of services, from well-baby and well-child exams to chronic diseases management for illnesses such as asthma and diabetes. Venice Family Clinic cares for children year-round, helping them to grow into healthy adults.

Think it over….You want an email address on your website so customers can contact you directly and before you know it you are getting 100 email SPAMs every day.  How do you “make the bad man stop?” 

The problem is SPAMers use little spiders (or bots) to crawl the internet locating emails to SPAM from websites. The people who bring you SPAM have been collecting emails for years and once they get yours it takes a lot of work to turn it off. It is a pain, but worth doing.

If you are an individual or small business here are some suggestions:

1. You can host your own emails. This means buying a dedicated PC and purchasing a hardware solution installed on that computer to stops SPAM.  Besides buying the computer you need someone to set up this PC and maintain it. This will require having an IT person on staff or finding an outside support service. Outside support seems to cost about $120 an hour right now.

2. You can purchase Postini software which is the best online SPAM protection software. You buy a Postini license for each email address in your company and it cost between $5-$10 dollars per email address per month to use.  Every email sent runs through this online software and it sorts out what is SPAM and what is legitimate email. It does a very good job but can slow email transmission speed down.  All email SPAM is saved in a virtual folder which you can check and delete from time to time.

3. A less expensive way to get Postini is to have your website hosted by Clever Concepts http://cleverconcepts.com/ (a Reynolds Group affiliate) who will host your website for under $30 per month and provide Postini for $1.50 per user email address per month. This is a very good solution from a reliable company.

4. Finally, you can try my trick. I was getting 40 spam messages a day on the tom@reynoldsgroupweb.com web email address that is on both the contact page of my website and my calling cards. First, I went to the control panel on my website and changed the email address from going directly to me to being forwarded to my newly created Google Gmail email account. This email service is free from Google but you have to be invited to join. (Call or email me and I will invite you.) Google has outstanding SPAM protection and acts like a filter, stopping all the SPAM I was getting from that account. It was very easy to set up and Gmail does a great job of sorting the good email from the bad.

The only downside to this trick is that I had to set up a new company email address that I can use from my computer. I will not publish this email on my website.

The SPAM has stopped! I will miss receiving the hundreds of emails a week about drugs, lonely women and enhanced body parts…not!