I was speaking with a candidate and was dismayed to discover my email to her had been sent to her spam folder, delaying our process. How did it end up there? What happens if she chooses it leave it there, instead of moving it to her inbox? Does it even matter?

Yes, it matters where your email is and what you do with it. How you handle your email affects more than just you; it affects everyone.

For easy explanation, let's say that emails work on a point system. When a company sends out emails, many email providers will scan that email for anything that may seem like a scam or spam and put it into what it thinks is the correct folder. For every email that goes into a spam folder, the company loses a point. They don't lose or gain any points when they go to the inbox; however, they gain points or partial points any time the email is interacted with, such as opened, opened more than once, or a link is clicked on.

The more advanced AI becomes, the more important everything we do matters. When you get an email from someone claiming to have won the lottery and randomly drew your name to send you the money, or they want you to sell $100MM worth of diamonds for them, it's easy to ignore it. but by reporting it as a phishing scam, you lower their rating. If their rating falls low enough, their emails start going into the spam folder more often, and if it drops even lower, they lose the ability to send emails, which can protect others who may fall for their schemes. Blocking the sender puts up a big red flag in the system and costs quite a few points.

As tempting as it can be, (and as convincing as certain YouTubers can be) responding to a scammer legitimizes them in the mailing system. This allows them to reach more people, including those who may fall for their schemes. The best things that you can do is to NOT open the email and flag it as a phishing scam. If the scam claims to come from a real company, be sure to report that as well. Many major companies now have their own departments that handle these hoaxes.

On the other side of the coin, moving legitimate emails from the spam folder to your inbox can help other people receive real correspondence in a timely fashion, and it enables companies to conduct their business. Using Prime Financial Recruiting as an example, we send out tens of thousands of emails every week. Almost 100 of them come back as "flagged as spam" for one reason or another. Some companies set anything from outside the company to come in as spam, even if someone requested an email from an outside source.

This means that someone can sign up for our mailing list, someone else or their company can flag it as spam, and the person will never receive our email. Those who are waiting to see our job openings every Friday might not get them. Investment opportunities, gone. What should be done? Whenever you join a mailing list, keep an eye out for it. Add the sending address, such as marketing@primefr.com or contact@primefr.com to your safe list. If you don't have time or interest to click on anything, simply opening the email can help. At the very least, ensuring that it's in the correct folder can help companies conduct proper business, and others -- such as scammers -- may never reach their target victims.

In this digital age, how emails are treated can make or break a company. For those who find themselves too busy to maintain their inbox, unsubscribing from some emails lists can benefit them as well as you.

On behalf of businesses everywhere, thank you for your time and attention to this matter. As AI becomes more advanced, it hopefully will not be such an issue.

Original seen here.