SPAM handling

[nlstart]

Personally, I think having SpamAssassin pre-installed by HG is just fine. I think that HG's responsabilities stops right there. Being able to more fine-tune it as administrator myself would be better, however. I'm thinking Custom rule sets or applying SA Rules Emporium tools.

[nlstart]

Originally Posted by 49ersJT

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.

And which form with image verification script did you use? A link would be helpfull and highly appreciated!

[jkf]

my conversation with HostGator follows. I gave up on BoxTrapper (too much burden for senders) and SpamAssassin (only 5 blacklists allowed by account, no gray-listing). Went with Postini (Google) and it's working fine.

My problem is that I'm *still* getting a lot of spam in my HostGator box. Postini says (and I've confirmed this, via mail headers) that this spam is never getting sent through their servers, and that HostGator allows any mail on port 25 to go straight to my mailbox, ignoring MX records. This defeats the purpose of setting up a spam blocker in the first place, not to mention ignoring my MX records. Per support (so far), they're not able/willing to change this, unless I upgrade to a $40/month plan. Not too reassuring.

My conversation follows - will post replies if they come through for me.

Setting up gray-listing would solve my problems completely. How do we effectively lobby for this?
============================

On Jan 31, 2010, at 1:15 PM, "jess"(email redacted) wrote:
Looks like I'm not alone after all -- this is a pretty significant number of unsatisfied customers:

http://forums.hostgator.com/spam-han...3.html?t=10193

-jess
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*

On Jan 31, 2010, at 1:13 PM, "jess"(email redacted) wrote:
Boxtrapper requires each sender to re-send their message. Not only is this unworkable, it's pretty antiquated anti-spam technology.
SpamAssassin lets too much mail through, only allows a handful of blocked addresses, and does not allow gray-listing (basically what boxtrapper does, but without requiring action by the user).

- All my mail is flowing through Postini, except for the spam I'm getting.

- My MX records don't show any reference to HostGator servers, and Postini confirms that the spam coming through never goes through their servers.

- Based on the above criteria, all mail that I get via your servers (not via Postini) is unwanted and unsolicited. Whatever's going on is in violation of the MX records I've specified, and needs to be resolved.

There must be a way that I can stop mail to my domain, that doesn't follow MX records. I'd settle for gray-listing of mail, if that were an option through you. I simply cannot believe that all of your users tolerate this - we're getting bombed with Spam every day, and what I'm hearing from you is that there's nothing your company is willing to do about it, short of inconveniencing my users, and the individuals that send them mail.

-jess
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On Jan 31, 2010, at 1:00 PM, <tickets@hostgator.com> wrote:
Hello,

I apologize, but the phone tech was correct. The mail server serves on the servers main IP. If you had a VPS or dedicated Server, we could do this for you, but since you are on a shared environment, there is no way we can filter all of the mail to only allow those IP addresses. You may want to turn on Boxtrapper if you are concerned about additional spam on the server. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Regards,
Benjamin S.
Linux Systems Administrator
HostGator.com LLC
http://support.hostgator.com
Your feedback is important to us. Please take a moment to rate this response. Upon doing so, you will be entered to win a $25 credit towards your HostGator account.

http://tickets.hostgator.com/ratetic...5c07d13bc987f8

To reply to this ticket, please be sure to email 13010743@tickets.hostgator.com from the email address you created the ticket with.

[jkf]

update - my issue was resolved successfully by the HostGator techs. I previously changed my domain's MX records to Postini servers, with the help of HG support. At that point all mail to my domain flowed through Postini servers, then to the individual HG mailboxes for my domain.

Spam was getting caught by Postini, but other messages (all spam) were going straight to HG mailboxes, not through Postini.

The assigned tech offered this, which did the trick:
============================
Hello Jess,

Unfortunately, these messages are legitimate email messages destined to ******. Our mail server is setup to accept mail for ****** and this message was not spoofed in anyway. You may want to utilize the Account Level Filtering in your cpanel. I see that Postini is adding X-pstn headers. You create a filter that looks for Any Header does not contain X-pstn and discard the message. Then you can test the filter by pasting the headers in the message. Or instead of discarding the message, you can move it to a "gray list" folder. Otherwise, the only way we can place the restrictions that you're asking for is if you were on a VPS or Dedicated server so it didn't affect other users.

If you have any further questions or issues, please do not hesitate to contact us.


Sincerely,


Joseph E.
Linux Systems Administrator
HostGator.com LLC
============================
I'm testing that now, but I fully expect it to stop the excess spam. Thank you all for your help.

[alcarl88]

Originally Posted by jkf

Setting up gray-listing would solve my problems completely. How do we effectively lobby for this?

I agree. I used to have my hosting at PowWeb and there was little to no spam with greylisting turned on. When I switched over to HG the amount of spam that I'm receiving has increased dramatically, even with Spam Assassin turned on.

I had to chat with a tech support person today on a completely different topic and at the end brought up greylisting and her response was "I've never heard of that."

C'mon HG, can you at least look into it?

[movllc]

JKF
Did you get the Postini setup properly on the reseller account. I am looking at becoming a seller of Postini and need to make it work on a reseller account. Thanks for any and all help.

movllc

[Rockoids]

Let me tell you that I am using MailScanner on my dedicated box. The earlier reports here indicated it was a resource hog and maybe that was true — once. But I've not seen any particularly negative impact beyond what my server normally uses and we have fairly active mail accounts.

The standard stuff you get from HostGator is what's provided with the WHM / cPanel package. It's SpamAssassin with basic options and Exim mail server. It works decently, but you need more. I think cPanel should be thinking of enhancing what is probably the sole serious weakness of their otherwise excellent hosting apps.

[cwg]

I was with Network Solutions and recently moved to Host Gator and now I am getting about 20 to 35 spam most of which is how to improve your private parts. I', pretty sick of it and have wondered what in the heck is different. They may need some stronger filters. HUH?

[ericpepin]

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.

Using software is really good it is more effective and easy to use. I dont know how software decide which one of them is a spam and which is a real email so I prefer manually checking all emails and report them as spam so this will wont come up again.
Thanks.