ReportWire

Tag: Spam

  • NFL-Related Accounts on Facebook Are Posting Some of the Most Shameless AI Slop Yet

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    If you haven’t checked your Facebook account in a while, fear not, the spam accounts are still doing very well. Now with eerie and ever-advancing AI slop in their arsenal—and, lately, football fans to prey on.

    There’s a group of accounts on Facebook that claims to be a bunch of fan accounts for various National Football League teams. But a quick scroll through these pages, each sporting a couple thousand followers, reveals misinformation paired with a series of seemingly AI-generated photos. Based on the comment sections of these photos and the amount of likes some of them get, people are fully believing what they post.

    “After His Desire To Return To The Steelers Was Not Fulfilled, Instead Of Reacting With Anger Or Resentment, The Former Player Chose To Retire And Join The Pittsburgh Police Department To “Wear Pittsburgh Colors Once Again.” a Pittsburgh Steelers fan account with 11,000 followers claimed in a post earlier this week. The post does not mention the name of the so-called player but is accompanied by a seemingly AI-generated image of former football wide receiver Adam Thielen in police uniform. Thielen recently announced his retirement, and briefly played for the Steelers late last year. He has not shared any plans to join Pittsburgh law enforcement.

    Another such account, a Denver Broncos fan account with more than 6,000 followers called “Wild Horse Warriors,” found a victim not in a player, but in Broncos reporter Cody Roark. A post with an AI-generated image of Roark holding a child claimed that he had passed away following a domestic violence incident and left behind a 5-year-old child. Not only was Roark alive and well, he doesn’t even have kids to begin with.

    “Usually you see that happen to, like, high-profile celebrities,” Roark told The Denver Post. “For that to happen to me was just really weird.”

    The account was just created in November and has now been shut down by Meta after The Denver Post reached out for comment. In its two-month existence, the account reportedly disseminated a slew of misinformation posts about Broncos players as well, including a false claim that wide receiver Courtland Sutton refused to wear an LGBTQ+ solidarity armband during a game. But even though “Wild Horse Warriors” is now a thing of the past, similar accounts continue to proliferate on Facebook. One such account, called “Broncos Stampede Crew,” made the same LGBTQ+ armband claim about Broncos quarterback Bo Nix. The phone number attached to that account appears to be based in Vietnam.

    What do these accounts have to gain from fake AI-generated news about football players? While it’s not certain how these specific accounts operate, the pattern seems to fit what has long been utilized by Facebook spam accounts. Each post by these fake fan accounts links out to an article from a website that pretends to be a reputable news organization like “ESPNS” or “NCC News.”

    “Spam Pages largely leveraged the attention they obtained from viewers to drive them to off-Facebook domains, likely in an effort to garner ad revenue,” Harvard researchers wrote in a study from 2024. These websites are usually “heavily ad-laden content farm domains—some of which themselves appeared to consist of primarily AI-composed text.”

    Other pages could be trying to accumulate an audience and good standing with the algorithm by using these fake shock-value clickbait news stories first, before completely changing the purpose of the page.

    “It could be that these were nefarious pages that were trying to build an audience and would later pivot to trying to sell goods or link to ad-laden websites or maybe even change their topics to something political altogether,” Georgetown researcher Josh Goldstein told NPR in a 2024 interview about AI spam accounts on Facebook.

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    Ece Yildirim

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  • Hate Robocalls? Your iPhone Has a New Tool to Block Them

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    Despite laws meant to regulate robocalls by the Federal Communications Commission (as well as several state-specific laws), the problem isn’t going away. In August of this year alone, people in the U.S. received over 4.1 billion robocalls. A growing number of those are being funneled to customers’ cell phones as landlines shrink in popularity. Now, Apple is rolling out a new tool to block them.

    Apple’s latest iOS 26 release includes a feature that screens calls to prevent both the annoyance of dealing with the call and the increased chance of fraud. The new feature lets iPhone owners decide how they want incoming calls from unknown numbers to be handled.

    You can let the calls ring through, as they do now. You can mute them, sending them directly to voicemail. Or you can have the phone ask the caller to give more information about who they are and why they’re calling.

    Should you choose this new, third option, the phone won’t ring on your end. Siri will answer the call, instead, and gather the information. A status message will appear on the phone’s lock screen, letting you read the replies and jump into the live call at any time, if you’d like.

    To activate the call screening tool on your iPhone, you’ll need to follow a few steps:

    1. Install iOS 26.
    2. Open the Settings app.
    3. Select “Apps,” then choose “phone.”
    4. Scroll down and select “Screen Unknown Callers.”
    5. Choose which of the three options you’d prefer.

    The addition of the tool for iOS devices comes several years after Android began offering a call-screening option. The first of those features rolled out in 2018 for Android devices and it has been updated several times since, letting phone owners see a real-time transcription of the caller’s request. (It has also been integrated into Android Auto.)

    Android owners can enable the feature by entering their phone app, tapping “More,” then “Settings,” then “Call Screen.”

    There are, of course, a number of third-party apps that claim to block robocalls on cell phones, but the track record of most of those is so-so. Some let calls slip through, thanks to advances by scammers, which spoof legitimate phone numbers, letting them bypass the blockers. Others, meanwhile, unintentionally block numbers that are important themselves (including healthcare facilities and auto insurance companies).

    Both Apple and Google have long allowed owners of their phone to send calls from unknown numbers to voicemail, but that option has also led to people missing important calls.

    The new tool from Apple (and the existing one from Android) offers a middle-ground, where owners won’t have to risk dealing with a robocall, but are still able to take the call belatedly if they find it’s from someone they want to speak with.

    Both Apple and Android also offer a separate tool in their texting/messaging apps that let users filter texts from unknown senders, which can eliminate job offer scams and attempts at identity theft.

    Robocalls are on the rise this year. YouMail, which tracks the activity, says the first eight months of the year have seen 36.7 billion robocalls, a 7.1 percent increase over the same period in 2024. On average, Americans receive 133.9 million robocalls per day (or 1,550 robocalls per second).

    Experts point to artificial intelligence as part of the reason for the surge, despite laws passed last year by the FCC that outlaw robocalls from using voices generated by AI. 

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    Chris Morris

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  • ‘SIM Farms’ Are a Spam Plague. A Giant One in New York Threatened US Infrastructure, Feds Say

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    The phenomenon of SIM farms, even at the scale found in this instance around New York, is far from new. Cybercriminals have long used the massive collections of centrally operated SIM cards for everything from spam to swatting to fake account creation and fraudulent engagement with social media or advertising campaigns. The SIM cards are typically housed in so-called SIM boxes that can control more than a hundred cards at a time, which are in turn connected to servers that can then control thousands of SIMs each.

    SIM farms allow “bulk messaging at a speed and volume that would be impossible for an individual user,” one telecoms industry source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the Secret Service’s investigation, told WIRED. “The technology behind these farms makes them highly flexible—SIMs can be rotated to bypass detection systems, traffic can be geographically masked, and accounts can be made to look like they’re coming from genuine users.”

    The telecom industry source adds that the images of SIM servers and boxes published by the Secret Service indicate a “really organized” criminal operation may have been behind the setup. “This means that there is great intelligence and significant resources behind it,” the person added.

    The SIM farm found by the Secret Service, Unit 221b’s Coon says, isn’t the biggest operation he’s learned of in the US. But it’s the most concentrated in such a small single geographic area. SIM boxes, he notes, are illegal in the US, and the hundreds of them found in the Secret Service’s investigation must have been smuggled into the US. In one case he was involved in, Coon says, the boxes were imported from China, disguised as audio amplifiers.

    The “clean, tidy racks” of equipment in a well-lit room shows that the operation may be well-organized and professional, says Cathal Mc Daid, VP of technology at telecommunication and cybersecurity firm Enea. Photos released by the Secret Service show multiple racks of telecom equipment neatly set up, with individual pieces of tech numbered and labeled, plus cables on the floor being covered and protected with tape. Each SIM box, Mc Daid says, appears to include around 256 ports and associated modems. “This looks more professional than many of the SIM farms you see,” says Mc Daid.

    Mc Daid notes, however, that he’s tracked similar operations discovered in Ukraine—some of which have been as large or even larger than the one revealed on Tuesday by the Secret Service. Over the course of the last few years, law enforcement officials in Ukraine have discovered tens of thousands of SIM cards being used in SIM farms allegedly set up by Russian actors. In one case in 2023, around 150,000 SIM cards were reportedly found. These SIM farms have been used to operate fake social media profiles that can spread disinformation and propaganda.

    Additional equipment found in the New York–area SIM farm sites.

    Courtesy of The U.S. Secret Service

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    Andy Greenberg, Lily Hay Newman, Matt Burgess

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  • Google Search Ranks AI Spam Above Original Reporting in News Results

    Google Search Ranks AI Spam Above Original Reporting in News Results

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    For example, I searched “competing visions google openai” and saw a TechCrunch piece at the top of Google News. Below it were articles from The Atlantic and Bloomberg comparing the rival companies’ approaches to AI development. But then, the fourth article to appear for that search, nestled right below these more reputable websites, was another Syrus #Blog piece that heavily copied the TechCrunch article in the first position.

    As reported by 404 Media in January, AI-powered articles appeared multiple times for basic queries at the beginning of the year in Google News results. Two months later, Google announced significant changes to its algorithm and new spam policies, as an attempt to improve the search results. And by the end of April, Google shared that the major adjustments to remove unhelpful results from its search engine ranking system were finished. “As of April 19, we’ve completed the rollout of these changes. You’ll now see 45 percent less low-quality, unoriginal content in search results versus the 40 percent improvement we expected across this work,” wrote Elizabeth Tucker, a director of product management at Google, in a blog post.

    Despite the changes, spammy content created with the help of AI remains an ongoing, prevalent issue for Google News.

    “This is a really rampant problem on Google right now, and it’s hard to answer specifically why it’s happening,” says Lily Ray, senior director of search engine optimization at the marketing agency Amsive. “We’ve had some clients say, ‘Hey, they took our article and rehashed it with AI. It looks exactly like what we wrote in our original content but just kind of like a mumbo-jumbo, AI-rewritten version of it.’”

    At first glance, it was clear to me that some of the images for Syrus’ blogs were AI generated based on the illustrations’ droopy eyes and other deformed physical features—telltale signs of AI trying to represent the human body.

    Now, was the text of our article rewritten using AI? I reached out to the person behind the blog to learn more about how they made it and received confirmation via email that an Italian marketing agency created the blog. They claim to have used an AI tool as part of the writing process. “Regarding your concerns about plagiarism, we can assure you that our content creation process involves AI tools that analyze and synthesize information from various sources while always respecting intellectual property,” writes someone using the name Daniele Syrus over email.

    They point to the single hyperlink at the bottom of the lifted article as sufficient attribution. While better than nothing, a link which doesn’t even mention the publication by name is not an adequate defense against plagiarism. The person also claims that the website’s goal is not to receive clicks from Google’s search engine but to test out AI algorithms in multiple languages.

    When approached over email for a response, Google declined to comment about Syrus. “We don’t comment on specific websites, but our updated spam policies prohibit creating low-value, unoriginal content at scale for the purposes of ranking well on Google,” says Meghann Farnsworth, a spokesperson for Google. “We take action on sites globally that don’t follow our policies.” (Farnsworth is a former WIRED employee.)

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    Reece Rogers

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  • Second man accused of stealing $9,000 worth of SPAM meat in Placer County arrested

    Second man accused of stealing $9,000 worth of SPAM meat in Placer County arrested

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    (FOX40.COM) — A second man accused of stealing $9,000 worth of SPAM, groceries, and alcohol from a local store was arrested after police used his ankle monitor data to find him.

    “With his ankle GPS spamming his every move, he practically gave us a step-by-step guide to his thieving escapades,” said the Roseville Police Department. “Our suspect is now enjoying a luxurious trip back to Placer County Jail.”

    The recent arrest was of a man who was the passenger in the car when police found the stolen items, according to RPD. The driver was arrested after a foot chase at the time of the incident, however, the passenger temporarily escaped. Police said they tracked him down in Stockton and transported him back to Placer County.

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    Veronica Catlin

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  • Google Is Finally Trying to Kill AI Clickbait

    Google Is Finally Trying to Kill AI Clickbait

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    Google is taking action against algorithmically generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy, designed in part to keep AI clickbait out of its search results.

    “It sounds like it’s going to be one of the biggest updates in the history of Google,” says Lily Ray, senior director of SEO at the marketing agency Amsive. “It could change everything.”

    In a blog post, Google claims the change will reduce “low-quality, unoriginal content” in search results by 40 percent. It will focus on reducing what the company calls “scaled content abuse,” which is when bad actors flood the internet with massive amounts of articles and blog posts designed to game search engines.

    “A good example of it, which has been around for a little while, is the abuse around obituary spam,” says Google’s vice president of search, Pandu Nayak. Obituary spam is an especially grim type of digital piracy, where people attempt to make money by scraping and republishing death notices, sometimes on social platforms like YouTube. Recently, obituary spammers have started using artificial intelligence tools to increase their output, making the issue even worse. Google’s new policy, if enacted effectively, should make it harder for this type of spam to crop up in online searches.

    This notably more aggressive approach to combating search spam takes specific aim at “domain squatting,” a practice in which scavengers purchase websites with name recognition to profit off their reputations, often replacing original journalism with AI-generated articles designed to manipulate search engine rankings. This type of behavior predates the AI boom, but with the rise of text-generation tools like ChatGPT, it’s become increasingly easy to churn out endless articles to game Google rankings.

    The spike in domain squatting is just one of the issues that have tarnished Google Search’s reputation in recent years. “People can spin up these sites really easily,” says SEO expert Gareth Boyd, who runs the digital marketing firm Forte Analytica. “It’s been a big issue.” (Boyd admits that he has even created similar sites in the past, though he says he doesn’t do it anymore.)

    In February, WIRED reported on several AI clickbait networks that used domain squatting as a strategy, including one that took the websites for the defunct indie women’s website The Hairpin and the shuttered Hong Kong-based pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily and filled them with AI-generated nonsense. Another transformed the website of a small-town Iowa newspaper into a bizarro repository for AI blog posts on retail stocks. According to Google’s new policy, this type of behavior is now explicitly categorized by the company as spam.

    In addition to domain squatting, Google’s new policy will also focus on eliminating “reputation abuse,” where otherwise trustworthy websites allow third-party sources to publish janky sponsored content or other digital junk. (Google’s blog post describes “payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website” as an example.) While the other parts of the spam policy will start enforcement immediately, Google is giving 60 days notice prior to cracking down on reputational abuse, to give websites time to fall in line.

    Nayak says the company has been working on this specific update since the end of last year. More broadly, the company has been working on ways to fix low-quality content in search, including AI-generated spam, since 2022. “We’ve been aware of the problem,” Nayak says. “It takes time to develop these changes effectively.”

    Some SEO experts are cautiously optimistic that these changes could restore Google’s search efficacy. “It’s going to reinstate the way things used to be, hopefully,” says Ray. “But we have to see what happens.”

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    Kate Knibbs

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  • Is Your Website's Traffic Plummeting? Stop Making This Toxic SEO Mistake — And Do This Instead. | Entrepreneur

    Is Your Website's Traffic Plummeting? Stop Making This Toxic SEO Mistake — And Do This Instead. | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Have you noticed your site’s organic traffic has plummeted over the past few years? This may have been caused by evidence of spammy link-building practices finding their way into your SEO work.

    Google’s link spam update was rolled out in December 2022, supported by the AI algorithm SpamBrain. This update is intended to combat spam and improve the browsing experience for anyone using the search engine. Successful marketers need to be aware of its effects to maintain a squeaky-clean backlink profile that helps, rather than hurts, their site’s organic visibility.

    In this post, I’ll take a closer look at what SpamBrain is, its effects on SEO and three of the most effective strategies for aligning your link-building strategy with this element of Google’s ranking algorithm.

    Related: How to Shake Up a Stale Link-Building Strategy

    What is SpamBrain?

    SpamBrain is an AI-based algorithm made by Google to identify poor-quality spam content and make it less visible in Google search results. Though it was first launched in 2018, Google only acknowledged it publicly as part of the company’s 2021 Webspam Report, suggesting that it’s become a larger part of Google’s ranking system over time.

    Google’s 2022 link spam update was rolled out to identify and neutralize backlinks that come from low-quality, spammy sources, preventing webmasters from artificially inflating their rankings.

    What does SpamBrain mean for SEO and marketers?

    The link spam roll-out caused a lot of websites’ rankings to plummet. These were websites with backlink profiles characterized by spammy link-building practices that Google has consistently warned against, including:

    • Buying links to artificially inflate a website’s rankings.
    • Excessive link exchanges between one website and another.
    • Using spammy, low-quality directories and “link farms” that provide no value to the end user.
    • Link building through forum comments with spammy, over-optimized anchor text.
    • Excessive distribution of links in widgets, footers, etc.
    • Using automation to generate links with no concern about relevance or context.

    If you noticed a drop in rankings or organic traffic following the December update, it’s possible this was caused by evidence of spammy link-building practices that have made it into your backlink profile.

    As Google’s algorithm updates become more focused on delivering the best possible user experience and more adept at identifying backlinks that go against its policies, it’s essential for SEOs and webmasters to consciously build links that avoid spammy practices and run a tight ship when reviewing the state of their link profiles.

    Related: 19 Sure-Fire Subject Line Formulas for Link-Building Emails

    Three link-building strategies to avoid being penalized by SpamBrain

    Now that you have an understanding of what SpamBrain is and its function in Google’s algorithm, here are three crucial link-building strategies you can use to maintain a healthy backlink profile, maximize the value of your link-building campaigns, and avoid getting penalized by Google’s link spam policies.

    1. Regularly audit your backlink profile

    It can be easy to let backlink profile audits fall by the wayside as part of your routine SEO work, especially if you’ve been investing in organic marketing for some time and your backlink profile is already large and diverse. However, this is an essential step towards ensuring your campaigns operate within Google’s policies and not putting your rankings at risk of penalization.

    Block off some regular time in your calendar to analyze your site’s backlinks, checking for any signs of poor-quality, spammy links that can be flagged for removal. This should include links with low-quality or irrelevant referring domains or those that use unnatural, over-optimized anchor texts. While using Google’s disavow tool will ensure that spammy referring domains won’t affect your rankings in the future, it’s important to exercise caution before entering a huge list of domains for disavowal.

    Occasionally, you might come across a link with spammy or irrelevant anchor text resulting from poor-quality past SEO work but it exists on a quality domain that could be a major asset to your SEO. In these cases, it’s better to disavow specific referring pages or ask webmasters to remove the links manually.

    2. Review link-building practices

    To ensure that you’re not going to be affected by link spam in the future, it’s a good idea to set clear link-building policies that you or your staff can follow when executing a link-building campaign. This will ensure new backlinks meet a certain quality threshold and don’t run the risk of creating a spammy backlink profile.

    Some of the things you might want to set policies about for a robust link-building SOP include:

    • Minimum domain authority.
    • Pointers for ensuring your content is relevant, high-quality, and authoritative in line with Google’s EEAT guidelines.
    • Approved anchor text.
    • Strategies and examples for framing backlinks in the content.

    By going into each link-building campaign with a set of firm anti-spam policies, you’ll eliminate the risk of spammy practices being flagged by Google as you build your backlink profile.

    Related: How To Maximize the Number of Linkable Assets on Your Website

    3. Commit to high-quality content

    Remember that the ultimate aim of SpamBrain and every Google algorithm update is to improve the experience for anyone who uses Google. They want to keep their users loyal, which means serving up the content that’s most relevant to their search queries.

    One of the most effective things you can do to ensure your link-building stays on the right side of Google’s spam policies is to keep an ironclad commitment to high-quality content. This is important for your linkable assets and the content that will serve as referring URLs in your campaigns.

    This means creating content that provides tangible value to its target audience, demonstrates a high level of expertise in the subject matter, and is written for a human audience rather than in a style that’s intended to artificially “game” a search algorithm.

    Though it’s not always easy, maintaining a high content standard in all aspects of your link building will prevent spammy practices from seeping into your backlink profile and will set you up for future success with Google’s user-focused algorithms.

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    Jeff Peroutka

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  • Employees Check Their Emails 36 Times An Hour — Here Are 5 Proven Tips to Get That Time Back. | Entrepreneur

    Employees Check Their Emails 36 Times An Hour — Here Are 5 Proven Tips to Get That Time Back. | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    A recent study says the average worker receives 304 business emails a week. The average employee checks their email 36 times an hour, and 80% of workers simply resort to working with their inbox open all the time. Thereafter, it takes them around 16 minutes to refocus.

    We live in a world full of different ideas, people and businesses all vying for our attention. Nearly every app, website and company wants the same thing: your email address. This has turned our inboxes into a battleground between time-sensitive emails, valuable information and occasionally fun but useless messages.

    For entrepreneurs, effective communication is vital to the success and livelihood of your business. Receiving a torrent of emails is the new normal. Trying to read each one might feel like trying to drink water out of a fire hose.

    Productivity expert Merlin Mann saw this coming in 2006 when he coined the term “inbox zero.” Some have erroneously thought this to be advocacy for constantly checking and going through your emails every time you hear that distinctive ping. But according to Mann, the zero isn’t about reducing the number of emails in your inbox, but the amount of time your brain is in your inbox.

    Let’s look at how to reduce the stress brought on by the near-constant onslaught of emails in our modern world.

    1. Create a system

    The goal of “inbox zero” is to increase productivity. There are few more deadly productivity killers than the practice of constantly checking and replying to emails all throughout the day.

    An estimated 62% of all emails are unimportant. Therefore, increasing productivity is a matter of reducing the amount of time you spend sifting through the unimportant. Creating a system for how and when you view your emails is crucial.

    Set specific times that you view emails. Perhaps once at 8 a.m., once again at noon and one more time at 4 p.m. You could even designate certain contacts as VIPs to ensure that you receive their critical email ping at whatever time of day it comes in.

    As Stephen Covey wrote, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

    Related: 3 Reasons Entrepreneurs Struggle When Building Business Systems

    2. Prioritize

    No one knows better what your priorities are than you do. The average worker spends 28% of the workweek reading and responding to emails. As you peruse your emails at those designated times, take note of important emails that require your instant approval or sign-off, and those heftier emails that require thoughtful input and analysis. More on those later.

    But then there are the emails scheduling meetings, sending promotional content or simply cc’ing you in. Either move them to another folder, delegate them to your secretary or just delete them. Make the firm decision. Differentiate between what deserves your attention and what is stealing it away. In that same vein, unsubscribing from useless newsletters can make a world of difference.

    3. Defer

    “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants,” says Henry David Thoreau. “The question is: What are we busy about?”

    Effective communication boosts productivity. When emails have to consume your time, ensure that it’s worth it.

    As we’ve already established, the majority of emails aren’t worth your time. Some are important but don’t need to take up much of your time. But there are a few that demand and deserve your attention. You can usually tell when you receive it. Instead of allowing that sinking feeling to settle and dominate your thinking all day, move them into a designated folder for your most important emails. Reply to them when you can dedicate the mental bandwidth they desire and deserve.

    And remember what Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”

    Related: Don’t Let the ‘Urgent’ Overtake the ‘Important’

    4. Eliminate waste

    I’ve alluded to this already, but here it is plainly: Many newsletters and subscriptions are a waste of time. It’ll take a while initially to achieve it, but going through your inbox and unsubscribing from useless newsletters will go a long way in decluttering your inbox.

    One useful way of ensuring that your important mailbox remains unsullied would be to create a spam email address to ensure that all your spur-of-the-moment sign-up emails are redirected to an unimportant email address. An estimated 245 billion emails are sent every day. Make sure you only have to deal with the important ones.

    5. Be flexible

    “Inbox Zero” is about reducing mental clutter and stress to increase productivity. But only you know what optimum productivity looks like in relation to your business. If the quest to declutter becomes a drain on productivity, then it’s just as bad as a packed mailbox.

    Don’t obsess over the minutiae. Instead, create good habits that allow you to be flexible. Create your own schedule, set of labels, criteria for delegation and deletion, and inbox management system that allows you to focus on productivity, eliminate pressure and a false sense of urgency. Set goals for yourself and for your business.

    Follow these five tips, and you’ll be well on your way to focusing on the most high-priority tasks, staying organized and managing your mail efficiently. And most importantly, you’ll reduce the amount of time your brain is in your inbox so it can be on other, more important things.

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    Lucas Miller

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  • Google Is About to Delete Inactive Accounts. Here’s How to Avoid A Massive Gmail Bounce Rate. | Entrepreneur

    Google Is About to Delete Inactive Accounts. Here’s How to Avoid A Massive Gmail Bounce Rate. | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    “If a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least two years, we may delete the account and its contents,” Google announced in a blog post, and that time is coming soon. In December, the tech giant will begin removing inactive accounts along with their content across Google Workspace, which includes Gmail. The policy applies only to personal Google accounts — but for businesses like yours, that may result in a spike in bounces.

    Why Google will start purging abandoned accounts

    Google’s decision to weed out inactive accounts is another step the company is taking to prevent security threats like spam, phishing and account hijacking.

    “If an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised,” Google’s VP of Product Management Ruth Kricheli explains. Abandoned accounts have weaknesses bad actors could exploit. Old passwords and a lack of two-factor authentication make them vulnerable and “a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam,” adds Kricheli.

    How to prepare and avoid a massive Gmail bounce rate

    For businesses like yours that use email to connect with customers and prospects, Google’s move is a high bounce rate alert. With Gmail being the largest email provider in the world, your email list likely contains many personal Gmail accounts, especially if your business caters to consumers.

    Email providers consider a bounce rate under 2% acceptable. But once you’ve crossed that threshold, your emails can start landing in the spam folder. Bounces tarnish your sender reputation, which is a 0 to 100 score Internet service providers (ISPs) use to determine whether you’re a legitimate sender or a spammer. The closer to 100 your score is, the more ISPs trust you as a sender – and deliver your messages to the inbox. Lower scores mean your emails could be spam.

    So, how can you prepare beforehand and avoid emailing addresses that may bounce? Being proactive is much easier than fixing the damage.

    Related: 5 Simple Tweaks for Better Email Deliverability

    Remove inactive subscribers

    Many businesses hold on to subscribers longer than they should. Having a sizable email list can give you a wider reach. However, in email marketing, engagement trumps such vanity metrics. Also, if someone hasn’t opened your emails in more than six months, what are the chances they’ll ever start engaging again?

    So, segment unengaged subscribers and try to win them back with an enticing offer. Make sure you put it right in the subject line and preview text so they can’t miss it. Then, remove non-openers and keep only prospects who click. Before Google starts deleting them, it’s best to prune these accounts yourself to avoid any bounces.

    Validate your entire email list

    Observing how your inactive subscribers react to a targeted campaign gives you useful audience insights. But inactive subscribers aren’t the only risky types of contacts you could have on your list. Abuse emails, for instance, belong to individuals who tend to report many emails as spam. To avoid potential spam complaints, some email marketers prefer to weed them out using an email verifier.

    There’s also the issue of temporary email addresses, which many people use to avoid giving out their real address. Temporary emails self-destruct and cause your emails to bounce, so deleting them from your database is good prevention.

    On average, almost a quarter of your database goes bad yearly, according to ZeroBounce’s Email List Decay Report. The upcoming Gmail purge will only add to this natural data decay, so validate your list again to ensure it’s safe to use.

    How Google will delete inactive accounts

    While Google’s policy took effect in May 2023, it won’t affect inactive Gmail users until December. The tech company will delete abandoned accounts in several phases, starting with those people created and never used again. Could you have any such email addresses in your database? Check your email marketing reports. If any subscribers signed up for your emails but never opened your messages, remove them immediately.

    Related: How to give your email marketing a boost ahead of the holidays

    Abandoned accounts are hurting your email marketing

    As a business owner trying to reach your customers’ inboxes, you must always be aware of your sender reputation. Bounces and spam complaints affect it dramatically, but so does poor engagement.

    When people don’t react to the emails you send, ISPs interpret that as an indication that your content isn’t helpful. As a result, your emails are more likely to go to the junk folder. That’s why email marketing best practices involve regularly pruning unresponsive subscribers. Their mere presence on your email list hurts your email deliverability. And when they’ll start bouncing, the damage will be even more severe.

    So, reevaluate the health of your email list so that your newsletters and campaigns can make it to the inbox. The Gmail purge is the best reason to look into the quality of your contacts today.

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    Liviu Tanase

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  • Block Spam Calls and Texts with This Top-Rated Tool | Entrepreneur

    Block Spam Calls and Texts with This Top-Rated Tool | Entrepreneur

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    Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

    Spam calls have gotten out of control. They’re annoying enough on your personal phone, but when you’re actually trying to get work done, getting spammed over and over is a serious nuisance.

    So, end the spam calls and texts once and for all. During our Labor Day sale, you can get three years of RoboKiller Spam Call and Text Blocker for just $49.97 when you order before 11:59 p.m. PST on 9/4.

    RoboKiller is made to eliminate 99% of spam calls, ensuring only the calls you care about get through. With a predictive call-block algorithm, RoboKiller can intercept spam calls in as little as 0.01 seconds, so your phone never actually rings.

    The app has a global scammer blacklist of over 500 million known phone scams, and it’s growing every day. When spam calls are intercepted, RoboKiller’s Answer Bots get to work wasting the spammer’s time instead of yours — so you can flip the switch on the spammers.

    This service offers a range of customization features you won’t find from other spam call blockers, including a personalized AI call screener, pause call blocking, block and allow lists, and more. You can set and adjust your levels of call blocking in case you’re worried about inbound leads getting blocked, too.

    RoboKiller even tracks emerging spam call trends in your area, and you can help others in your area avoid scams by reporting anything that gets through. RoboKiller claims they can eliminate 95% of spam texts, too.

    Featured on NBC News and Ars Technica, it has earned 4.5/5 stars on the App Store. Find out why for yourself when you sign up as part of our Labor Day sale.

    Now through 11:59 p.m. PT on 9/4, you can get a three-year subscription to RoboKiller Spam Call & Text Blocker for just $49.97 (reg. $119).

    Prices are subject to change.

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  • How to Use New Technology to Combat Phone Scammers | Entrepreneur

    How to Use New Technology to Combat Phone Scammers | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In 2019, Congress passed the TRACED Act to give the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) additional tools to combat robocalls. It’s a problem plaguing public sector call centers and constituents; people still receive millions of robocalls (automated or pre-recorded messages) and scam calls (made by criminals) every year in the U.S.

    It is incumbent that government agencies utilize the technological tools available today to combat fraudulent, phone-related activity, boosting public trust and the constituent experience.

    The not-so-smartphone problem

    The household landline is steadily declining; roughly one-third (37%) of homes still have one. In an incredible technological revolution, smartphones have become the preferred telephone device for most homes and individuals. Smartphones are powerful, but their ability to root out scam calls is still decidedly inefficient. Today’s smartphones don’t pull caller ID data from a centralized registry of phone numbers. Instead, they rely on information from your contact list to identify incoming calls. Essentially, you tell your phone who’s calling — not the other way around.

    Most people don’t realize cell phones lack a caller ID, causing problems for public agencies trying to reach beneficiaries or constituents. To deal with the over 3 billion spam calls received per month, most people simply ignore numbers they don’t recognize.

    Due to this breakdown in public trust, many government agencies won’t initiate contact via phone. Rather, they’ll return calls from consumers who request help. However, if a recipient misses a call, they’re faced with the daunting prospect of returning it — only to navigate endless menus and jump through hoops to reach a live person on the other end. The result is a further breakdown in trust and loss of confidence in the efficacy of public sector call centers.

    Phone service providers have developed technical ways to alleviate the problem of eroded trust. Many major providers employ a certification system for phone numbers registered to customers. This development resulted from the STIR/SHAKEN caller identification framework set forth by Neustar Management and mandated by the FCC as part of the TRACED Act.

    With caller ID authentication standards like STIR/SHAKEN, phone service providers verify a caller’s actual number matches the caller ID information, enabling higher trust for the receiver of the call. It’s a small step, but it indicates how the public sector can better leverage technological tools to solve these problems. Unfortunately, the scammers have a vote in this process too, and they’re not going away without a fight.

    Related: Rising AI Threat Sounds Like Your Loved One on the Phone — But It’s Not Really Them

    Robocalling isn’t going anywhere

    Robocalls and scam calls aren’t subsiding anytime soon — they’re too lucrative for the fraudsters who perpetrate them. In 2021, fraudulent calls cost Americans over $29 billion. Without positive identification in the form of verified caller ID, the public is never sure they’re talking to a legitimate service. The result is a concerning loss of trust in government call centers.

    Fraud doesn’t stop at government call centers. Law enforcement agencies have seen an alarming jump in a spoofing technique known as swatting. The basic concept is the same, but the agency is the initial victim of the scam — with potentially deadly consequences for those whom agencies are charged with protecting.

    Many government call centers have tried to combat spoofing practices by eliminating initial contact with customers via telephone, but millions of people fall for these scams every year. Some agencies send public reminders that they won’t call about an issue, but scammers make their calls convincing enough to succeed.

    Related: How To Avoid Spam Calls And Focus On Important Ones

    How technology can help

    All is not lost. Scam calls are a technical problem that requires a technical solution. There are many tools public agencies and private organizations can implement to rebuild trust with consumers. One example is emerging technology in providing better caller ID by applying a token to verified phone numbers or displaying a branded logo on the receiver’s phone. Services like this allow organizations to ensure outbound calls aren’t mislabeled as spam calls or blocked by the telephony system and that they actually originate from the correct entity.

    It’s similar to your fingerprint: difficult to fake and uniquely tied to your identity. Calls can be certified as they’re routed by verifying the phone number belongs to the person (or call center) placing the call.

    Major cell phone providers often use each other’s databases as trusted sources, too, so this tool isn’t limited to a single provider. It can also stop spoofed outbound calls at the source and identify likely fraudulent calls so people can screen them appropriately.

    Another emerging caller ID technology has worked remarkably well for the Virginia Department of Health (VDH). During the height of COVID-19, the VDH reached out to patients and close contacts daily. When only an unidentified phone number was displayed, many calls went unanswered, wasting the department’s time and resources.

    When the VDH branded the calls as they displayed on recipients’ phone screens, presenting the department’s logo and name on the recipient’s smartphone, its first-time answer rate jumped 105% almost immediately.

    Related: This Saas-Based Startup Is Disrupting Call Centre Market With AI-Based Voice Bots

    Tools to repair trust

    Scammers are constantly innovating, but the technology sector innovates alongside them. Call carriers, third-party service providers and the federal government continue to develop new anti-spoofing tools, processes and policies to protect consumers — and public sector agencies must be sure to use them. Through constant vigilance, they can combat fraudulent phone calls, bolster public trust and improve the customer service experience.

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    Scott Straub

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  • How to Build Your Email List the Right Way | Entrepreneur

    How to Build Your Email List the Right Way | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Email marketing works. According to Statista, 49% of people say they like to get promotional emails from brands every week. But while checking their inboxes for offers, there’s a chance your customers and prospects won’t find these emails. If your email list is outdated, or if you purchased it, your campaigns may be redirected to the spam section.

    Keeping your database fresh is paramount to your email success. In email marketing, it’s not about how many people you email — it’s about how many you manage to reach.

    How your email list health affects your deliverability

    Emailing invalid, fake and outdated contacts damages your sender reputation. Also known as a “sender score,” this is an indicator internet service providers use to gauge your legitimacy as a sender. The higher your score, the more likely your campaigns and newsletters will go to the inbox.

    That’s why the health of your email list plays such an important role in your email deliverability. Gathering many contacts seems tempting, but what matters more is that those contacts are valid and engaged.

    Related: 5 Mistakes You’re Making With Your Email List

    Build your own email list

    Planning to buy or rent an email list? Think twice. These people have never heard of you, so the most engagement you can get is a bunch of spam complaints. The best-case scenario is that your emails will never get opened, and instead, they’ll get deleted in bulk.

    To prevent wasting your resources, build your own email list. Here are five tips to do it right.

    1. Get permission

    Emailing someone who hasn’t granted permission is another surefire way to sabotage your own deliverability. People who haven’t opted in to receive emails from you are not only unlikely to engage, but they may report you as spam. Get permission before adding someone to your database. Even if it’s a customer, they must express a clear interest in getting marketing emails from you.

    2. Double opt-in should be the standard

    Some companies are still reluctant about using double opt-in. There’s this myth that it slows down your email list growth. In reality, it helps you build a healthier, more active email list. Setting up double opt-in should take minutes in your email marketing platform. It automates sending an email to every new subscriber, asking them to click a confirmation link. This way, you prevent fake signups and ensure you’re emailing only people who are expecting to hear from you.

    3. Check every new email address

    Double opt-in can prevent some fake email signups, but your list can still acquire undesirable contacts. To prevent them from infecting your database, check every new email address yourself. The most prominent email verification platforms allow you to check a few emails for free. It’s a good option if your list is growing slowly. However, at least twice a year, make sure you run your entire list through an email verifier.

    Related: These 3 Strategies Will Grow Your Email List for Free

    4. Use Google’s reCAPTCHA on your sign-up forms

    Any obstacle you can put between your email list and fake sign-ups helps you build a healthier email program. Apart from verifying your database periodically, add another layer of protection against automated bots. A program like Google’s reCAPTCHA uses a variety of algorithms to tell humans and bots apart. While some spammers can bypass even the most advanced anti-spam systems, reCAPTCHA will still help you protect the health of your email list.

    5. Part with dormant subscribers every three months

    If you want to build a vibrant email list, you need people who engage with your emails. Many factors affect your sender reputation, and your overall engagement rate is one of them. Keeping dormant subscribers on your list tells inbox providers that your content isn’t relevant. To avoid the junk folder, remove unengaged contacts every three months. It’s beneficial to your email deliverability. Moreover, you avoid potential bounces as some of those dormant emails may get deactivated.

    Related: How To Start An Email List And Succeed From Day 1

    Bonus tips to grow your email list faster

    Growing your email database isn’t as simple as setting up a couple of sign-up forms on your website. You also have to make sure the emails you gather are real and active. The tactics above are easy to apply, but at times, you may feel that your email list is growing too slowly.

    Here’s how to change that.

    • Add more sign-up forms to your platforms. Have at least two on your website and add one to your blog, as well. Make the process frictionless.
    • Use social media more intentionally. Your social media channels are great for capturing more email addresses. Promote your email list consistently.
    • Include a sign-up link in all of your emails. That way, if one of your emails gets forwarded, the person who receives it has a way to opt in.
    • Encourage word of mouth. Talk to your peers, friends and customers about the great emails you send. Encourage them to not only subscribe but also to share your form with others.

    Finally, and most importantly, send those emails. Be consistent with your schedule so that people come to expect your emails. Whether it’s once a month or three times a week, show up with helpful content. Being present and providing real value to your audience will allow both your subscriptions and engagement to grow.

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    Liviu Tanase

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