Fighting Email Spam

Feb. 26/2008

In the last few months email spam activities have increased dramatically.

Some customers have been asking what we have done that caused this sudden increase in spam in their email boxes. Some have also wrongly attributed this increase in spam to the recent migration to the Dallas Data Center. The answer is, we have been doing everything we can to fight spam. Our network admins have been very proactive in this fight and we want our customers to know what is going on behind the scenes regarding this issue. Since the migration we have actual increased our spam filtering capabilities and we are filtering more spam then ever before.

This problem is not only related to the services of MIDITECH. This is a global problem affecting every email account provider and ISP. (read this: http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9865282-57.html)

MIDITECH has taken a very proactive approach to lessen the spam you receive. In fact, even with the large amount of spam you may still be getting, we already block thousands of spam emails every hour of the day that you never see, 7 days per week!

This document was prepared to help our customers in the fight against Unsolicited Email (commonly referred to as "Email SPAM") and other effects of what the spammers do in sending such unsolicited email.

KNOW THIS: WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE!!!

Some customers say why not just block the spammers IPs. The answer is because that is not going work. Spammers either keep changing their mail server IPs or , like in most cases, they send out and infect millions of computers with a virus. A person having a computer without virus protection on their local computer can cause the computer to become infected and not even know it. Today with hi-speed internet access, many people leave their computers on. Once thousands of computers are infected, the spammer can flick a switch and all these infected computers start sending the spam. So hosts and ISPs focus efforts on filtering and reducing incoming spam to our customers mail boxes.

WHAT DOES MIDITECH DO TO HELP IN THE BATTLE AGAINST SPAM?

We have STRICT terms in our Terms Of Service Agreement regarding SPAMMING. We do NOT tolerate a spammer on our network. Such account holders will find their hosting account deleted without notice and without notice and in some cases find a hefty penalty price.

If our servers get blacklisted because a customer sent unsolicited emails from our servers , we work quickly to shut down the offending account holder and work diligently to get our server IPs off the black list.

MIDITECH provides FREE Email Anti-Spam Filter and Email Antivirus Service on the server side (before you download your email) to every customer.

PLEASE NOTE: We provide you with these tools.
However, YOU MUST TURN THESE FEATURES ON and SET THEM AS YOU NEED.

Learn more about these tools and how to use them HERE. That said spammers have started using a new tactic in the last 3 months and the spam filter companies are scrambling to create the fix to stop this new tactic. THEY WILL HAVE A FIX to prevent this new spam method but it takes time to develop it.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP LESSON THE SPAM EMAIL THAT YOU RECEIVE?

There are many things you can do that most customers have not done. This is understandable. Who has the time to keep up on what spammers are doing right? This is one of the reasons that MIDITECH has created this document. Knowledge is power! We have done much of the work for you in determining what you can do to help lesson the amount of email spam you have to look at.

#1: TURN ON BOTH EMAIL ANTISPAM AND ANTIVIRUS IN YOUR CONTROL PANEL FOR EVERY EMAIL ACCOUNT YOU HAVE

These tools are server side and work to reduce viruses and spam before they reach your email inbox on our servers. (before you even download your emails)
Learn more HERE

#2: DON'T JUST TURN THE ANTISPAM FILTER ON AND EXPECT THAT TO FILTER ALL YOUR SPAM.

You MUST learn how to use the settings of the Anti-spam feature and then implement them properly. This is NOT something MIDITECH can do for you in light of the fact that we could cause you to lose legitimate emails and we will not be responsible for this. Using the spam filtering needs to be monitored by you until you reach the appropriate setting level that help lessen your spam while still receiving the real emails. This level will be different for every customer. There is a small learning curve to use the spam filter but it is well worth the effort! Learn more HERE

#3 TURN OFF THE EMAIL CATCHALL FEATURE ON ALL OF YOUR MAIL ACCOUNTS

This was once a great and convenient feature that allows anyname@yourdomain.com to still reach you. Originally it was a great way to have sales@, info@ etc all end up in one email box. And if someone misspells the email address but gets the domain name right, you would still receive the email.

Today, with spammers running rampant, using this feature is no longer good practice. The problem now is that spammers send to various random names and nonexistent names @yourdomain figuring that they will be sending to many people.

IT IS BETTER TO USE EMAIL ALIASES THAN EMAIL FORWARDS

Also, a common practice of spammers is to set the REPLY TO email address of outgoing spam to an email address like hghdfts@yourdomain.com. They pick domain name randomly from scripts that search domain names. You see, a spammer sits at their computer and is ready to send out 2 million spam emails (or more!) across the globe. Now they know that of the emails they send, there will be thousands and thousands of bounce backs from servers telling them that the email address they sent too does not exist on the receiving server network. Spammers do not care about, nor do they want to see, all these bounce back messages. They also do not want recipients of their spam to know what domain name they sent from. So their scripts pick a random domain name (YOUR DOMAIN NAME!) and use a fake name such as jhygtdfr@yourdomain.com as the reply email address. All the bounce backs will not go to that fictitious email address. You can see what the problem is, if you have the catchall on... your email box will be full of spam in no time at all. If you get hit big... your email box could become useless and need to be deleted and recreated, losing your legit mail in the meantime.

Turning off the catch-all (using your account control panel), and activating only the email names you wish to use, will eliminate some of the spam. It will also eliminate you receiving such bounce back email spam. Anything sent to a nonexistent email address will bounce back to the sender and you will not see the spam that you were going to see with the catchall feature on.

EMAIL DOMAIN BLOCKING

Some customers have contacted us stating that their email works but no one with a hotmail account or sympatico account or rogers etc can receive their emails. We now know why:

Many ISPs (such as hotmail, sympatico, comcast and many others) are also having to tighten their grip on the amount of spam they are receiving. If you have a catchall turned on and email forwarding to one of these ISPs email addresses you could find your domain name blocked on their mail servers! Why? Because email spam hits your catchall account and is forwarded to their servers, now they get hit with the same spam. Their spam filters see that it is coming from YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS (because it was forwarded from your email address account) and they blacklist your domain to lessen their spam. Spam costs in terms of bandwidth - all hosts and ISPS (MIDITECH too!) try to eliminate as much spam as possible because it costs us and hurts all of our customers.

AGAIN.. TURN OFF EMAIL CATCHALLS! USE EMAIL ALIASES INSTEAD OF EMAIL FORWARDING AS WELL.

#3. PURCHASE, INSTALL AND KEEP UP-TO-DATE ANTISPAM AND ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE!!!

Products such as Norton Internet Security can help you in the fight against spam. EVERY computer you have should have such software installed. And make sure that you keep the definition files up-to-date.

#4. USE YOUR EMAIL CLIENT "MESSAGE RULES" FEATURES.

Most email software applications have a feature called message rules. This allows you to add rules that help you eliminate some of the repeat spam that you may receive by scanning the message and subject of incoming emails. Also, Mozilla (makers of the popular Firefox browser) has a new email client called THUNDERBIRD that actually learns as you use the software and helps you to lessen spam as well. It is very useful and the software works much the same as Microsoft Outlook.

MIDITECH does everything we can to help reduce the level of spam you receive. Following the above guidelines will go far in helping you reduce the amount of spam that you receive. We cannot eliminate the spam that we all receive, but we can fight and greatly reduce the burden!

We want you to know that we are fighting!!