SPAM handling

[osirion]

Heya,
I dont know about anyone else, but SPAM is becoming more and more of a problem. Its all good and well when its "reportable SPAM" but when its that nonsense that contains images and uses spoofed/non-existant e-Mail addresses and what not - nothing much we can do about it.

This is becoming more and more of a problem for me and my clients.

SPAM Assassin (even on "very strict handling") just doesnt cut it and I still get hundreds of these damned SPAM e-Mails.

Is there nothing better out there that HostGator could implement?

Save Our Souls! (or rather, our Bandwidth/Space/Inboxes)

[blakeh]

I'm mixed on spam. Yes, spam assassin is not an end all solution, but I don't know that I want HG fixing the issue, especially since I'm on a dedicated box and there are tools out there to do it myself.

I found the following link I think on WHT that I was going to try, anyone have an opinion?

http://forums.serverbeach.com/archiv...hp/t-2071.html

I've implemented several dnsbl lists on our high-end email hosting product that we're an asp for and that works rather well.

Keep in mind, there is no magic bullet.

bh

[osirion]

Yeah, I know theres no magic bullet - but I also know that there are better solutions out there!

All good and well if your on a dedicated server; like you said - there are tools out there (and like I said, "that are better than SpamAssassin").
Unfortunately, if your on a reseller plan - your stuck with what HostGator implements, hence my suggestion at looking into alternatives

[kbroderick]

My combination of whatever HostGator uses serverside and Apple's Mail.App Junk Mail filtering clientside work pretty well for me. The only significant source of spam in my inbox is my old college account, which has the ability to forward messages as inline text rather than just redirecting them (so everything appears to be from that account rather than the original senders), and I'm hesitant to aggressively mark emails from that account as spam (lest filtering software on my end starts rating all emails from that account as spam). Other than that, I'm pretty happy--300+ spams a day from my various accounts (including some not hosted w/HostGator) in my junk mail filter with very few false positives and only a handful of false negatives.

[osirion]

Only problem with client-side filtering is that, well, its client-side.
You have already used up your HostGator traffic and ISP traffic (depending on your country/ISP/internet access type and so forth).

Essentially, one wants to get rid of the problem at the root so that it causes as little trouble as possible.

[Serra]

Spam Assassin is good enough when combined with client side filters. It doesn't take that much bandwidth, so that isn't a problem.

If there were a better solution, I'm sure HG would use it. If you can find a better solution, suggest it.

Edit: I was just looking over my spam logs and SA is blocking about 50-60% of the messages I'm getting. I'd say that is good.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by blakeh

I'm mixed on spam. Yes, spam assassin is not an end all solution, but I don't know that I want HG fixing the issue, especially since I'm on a dedicated box and there are tools out there to do it myself.

I found the following link I think on WHT that I was going to try, anyone have an opinion?

Mailscanner uses RBL, so no need to install more. Just install mail scanner. Mailscanner is a step up from just SA alone and does a better job. So far, it is the best I can find.

[newhall]

Originally Posted by osirion

Heya,
I dont know about anyone else, but SPAM is becoming more and more of a problem. Its all good and well when its "reportable SPAM" but when its that nonsense that contains images and uses spoofed/non-existant e-Mail addresses and what not - nothing much we can do about it.

This is becoming more and more of a problem for me and my clients.

SPAM Assassin (even on "very strict handling") just doesnt cut it and I still get hundreds of these damned SPAM e-Mails.

Is there nothing better out there that HostGator could implement?

Save Our Souls! (or rather, our Bandwidth/Space/Inboxes)

I agree!! I am having the exact same SPAM issues and the problem is getting worse.

We definitely need better SPAM filtering software on the server. I've been with HG for 2+ years and would really appreciate a better spam solution.

Thanks!

[blakeh]

I'm doing email hosting on a dedicated server in-house using a different product and the best way we found to drastically cut down on our customers spam was to block all email via DNSRBL from the following countries:

japan
china
south korea
poland
denmark
brazil
romania
russia
malaysia
thailand
taiwan
and a few others.

This cut down spam that we were getting by about 90%. Filters and surbl does the rest. But this method isn't really effective for HG to implement on shared boxes unless people want to live on a box that doesn't get mail from the rest of the world. We did it because we have a dedicated box and our customers on that box don't need email from anywhere outside the US.

Just thought I'd share that.

bh

[cjnoyes]

Spam is a real pain, SpamAssassin picks out a lot, but I wind up downloading and segregating an deleting a lot of spam. I have a bunch of rules configured both on outlook express and in CPanel to manage mail and handle the spam issue, but it still is a pain and a waste of time.

Originally Posted by Serra

Mailscanner uses RBL, so no need to install more. Just install mail scanner. Mailscanner is a step up from just SA alone and does a better job. So far, it is the best I can find.

Based on what the users on the dedicates that use MailScanner report, I would ask encourage Gator to consider Replacing Spam Assassin with MailScanner.

From some things Serra has told us, it would also help performance as it can react to spam and reject it before it has to go through the whole mail system.

[Serra]

The only problem is that the mail scanner system is server wide, so resellers and shared users will have some what limited access to the reports.

[esl]

I do have spam problems but I use software on my computer to seperate the spam from the 'real' email. I am happy with that software. The thing that I regret doing is listing email addresses on websites in text, not creating an image of the address and putting that on websites instead. From what I hear that is supposed to help cut down on spam and having your email address sold.

[vtrain]

Originally Posted by esl

I do have spam problems but I use software on my computer to seperate the spam from the 'real' email. I am happy with that software. The thing that I regret doing is listing email addresses on websites in text, not creating an image of the address and putting that on websites instead. From what I hear that is supposed to help cut down on spam and having your email address sold.

Rather then using an image you can encode the e-mail in HTML entities or Hexadecimal code:
http://www.katpatuka.org/pub/doc/anti-spam.html

or using both:
http://www.zapyon.de/spam-me-not/index.html

with this one expects that the browser is able to process and show the clean e-mails to the internaut while the spammer only sees Hex/HTML.

Hope it helps,

Vtrain

[krugdm]

My old hosting provider had greylisting enabled, and I rarely got more than 1-2 pieces of spam sneaking through per week, and those were caught by my email app's spam filter.

[cjnoyes]

The big problem for me is that certain spammers are getting too smart and are doing things like put the text into the message as an image with other meaningless text around it to fool spamassassin. A lot is with stock advisory things that spamassasssin misses.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by cjnoyes

The big problem for me is that certain spammers are getting too smart and are doing things like put the text into the message as an image with other meaningless text around it to fool spamassassin. A lot is with stock advisory things that spamassasssin misses.

I'm getting the stock stuff too. The only thing I can say is that my local spam scanner isn't doing any better than SA. They are getting by both.

[tcolling]

Originally Posted by cjnoyes

...Based on what the users on the dedicates that use MailScanner report, I would ask encourage Gator to consider Replacing Spam Assassin with MailScanner. ...

I would hate to see that happen. I moved here from another hosting service because of continual mistakes and dumb moves that they made (the service was Page-Zone).

One of the BIG mistakes they made was switching to MailScanner. Either they did not do it correctly (that's ALWAYS a possibility) or in fact MailScanner was a true disaster. After Page-Zone flaunched and flailed around for a month or two, they gave up on MailScanner and returned to SpamAssassin.

I can report one serious problem that they (and I) had with MailScanner: I own and moderate quite a few YahooGroups accounts, and MailScanner would block moderator emails for some of them but not for others! I never knew which ones were working and which ones weren't until Page-Zone moved my account to a server that still had SpamAssassin installed instead of MailScanner.

- Tim

[cjnoyes]

Originally Posted by Serra

Mailscanner uses RBL, so no need to install more. Just install mail scanner. Mailscanner is a step up from just SA alone and does a better job. So far, it is the best I can find.

I have heard that Mailscanner uses a lot of server resources vs Spam Assassin. You had made the argument that catching it earlier means that the spam doesn't get processed by Exim and imap etc. What has been your experience about Mailscanner's effect on server load?

[cjnoyes]

Originally Posted by tcolling

I would hate to see that happen. I moved here from another hosting service because of continual mistakes and dumb moves that they made (the service was Page-Zone).

One of the BIG mistakes they made was switching to MailScanner. Either they did not do it correctly (that's ALWAYS a possibility) or in fact MailScanner was a true disaster. After Page-Zone flaunched and flailed around for a month or two, they gave up on MailScanner and returned to SpamAssassin.

I can report one serious problem that they (and I) had with MailScanner: I own and moderate quite a few YahooGroups accounts, and MailScanner would block moderator emails for some of them but not for others! I never knew which ones were working and which ones weren't until Page-Zone moved my account to a server that still had SpamAssassin installed instead of MailScanner.

- Tim

Serra and other Dedicated people have reported good luck with it, I suspect theirs was setup right.

[tcolling]

Originally Posted by cjnoyes

Serra and other Dedicated people have reported good luck with it, I suspect theirs was setup right.

That's a good point. Based upon my experience with that other hosting company, they may very well have implemented MailScanner incorrectly. I can accept that as a distinct possibility.

- Tim

[Serra]

Originally Posted by cjnoyes

I have heard that Mailscanner uses a lot of server resources vs Spam Assassin. You had made the argument that catching it earlier means that the spam doesn't get processed by Exim and imap etc. What has been your experience about Mailscanner's effect on server load?

Yes, mail scanner uses a ton of resources and mailscanner still uses SA. IMO, the resource usage is well worth it. Using :fail: reduces processor load, not mail scanner. Also, not processing spam because MS has dropped is good, but overall, the whole process, because it stores information about every message recieved, does use process resources. The spam is not stored or download by users, so that reduces resources in that respect.

SO, overall... MS is a negative for processor usage. However, it is a huge plus when over 60% of the mail going to a customer is dropped before they ever see it. That is a huge selling point for a sevice.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by tcolling

That's a good point. Based upon my experience with that other hosting company, they may very well have implemented MailScanner incorrectly. I can accept that as a distinct possibility.

Getting it setup right is a big problem. The number of things that could go wrong are huge, so I'd suggest having an expert set it up.

[galinphilly]

I switched to Host Gator from Yahoo a couple of months ago. Although I find customer service at HG to be head and shoulders better than Yahoo, Yahoo definitely had better spam filtering. It seems like I am getting more and more spam every day. Rather frustrating.

[cshep]

I know this is probably common sense to many of you out there, but it's worth mentioning. As a web developer, I almost never put plain text email addresses on websites unless the client absolutely insists. I generally use a contact form that "hides" the email address(es) in a config file which resides outside the www directory. Not having your email address, or your clients email address available on the web can cut down on SPAM dramatically. A simple contact form that works well is scform which can be found at: http://jimsun.linxnet.com/SCForm.html. Unfortunately, this is something that has to be done from the beginning, because once an email address gets on one list, it's only a matter of time before it's on hundreds.

I also try to educate my clients about not using their "real" email address when signing up for things on the web, signing guest books, registering or purchasing products...use a free email account (gmail, yahoo) for that stuff. I also remind them to use BCC instead of CC when forwarding or sending email to multiple people.

This all seems simple, but prevention really goes a long way when it comes to spam.

[49ersJT]

Howdy everyone,

One website I use is: http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html

At this website there is a form that "will allow you to encode your e-mail address through the use of Character Entities, transforming your ascii email address into its equivalent decimal entity." This way spam bots can't pick up your email address.

Originally Posted by cshep

I generally use a contact form that "hides" the email address(es) in a config file which resides outside the www directory.

I did this same thing until the spammers became good at filling out my form and spamming me through that. So I then added a image verification script to my forms and have not had a problem since.

Good suggestion!