Spam Prevention

[ltlagueu]

Something is definitely going on. Spam has increased dramatically in the last 2 weeks. The account I'm having the biggest problem with is a real estate web site url. Typically would get 5 - 10 spam emails a day, no big deal, and all marked by SpamAssasin. The amount has increased dramatically to over 100 a day in the last 3 days. Just on this one email address. It's an address used to advertise listings on real estate syndication sites and Craigslist.
Could the Craigslist advertising be the source of the problem? Do I need to stop placing ads on that site?
SpamAssasin is still marking them and Outlook is sorting most to the Spam folder. But when using a smartphone to check email - they get all this junk on the phone.

[EarlyOut]

Any time you place a real email address in a public place - craigslist, eBay, this forum - you're asking for spam, and the longer that address is in circulation, the more spam it's going to get. There are various ways of avoiding the problem, including posting an image of the email address, rather than clickable text, using the one-time, hidden addresses offered by places like craigslist, and using a contact form instead of posting an address.

One of the easiest things to do is to create your own "throwaway" address for each ad you place. Let's say the real address is sales@example.com. Post an ad with the address as sales053@example.com. Now head for the control panel, and create an email forwarder that forwards all messages for sales053@example.com to sales@example.com.

You don't actually have to create sales053 as a POP email account - in fact, it's better if you don't, because no copy of each message is retained if it's just a forwarder.

When that ad is taken down, kill the sales053 forwarder. For the next ad, use sales054@example.com. So, while you will probably get some spam on sales053, it never has a chance to build up - that address won't get spread around, gathering more and more spam as time goes by. Each time you delete a forwarder, you're cutting off the spam sent to that address.

[jeffj78]

Any repsonse from HG? Other providers we're using aren't getting hit nearly as bad.

[GatorNate]

Jeffj78,

We take spam very seriously here and have taken a number of steps to reduce the spam you receive. We are currently working on further improvements in our spam filtering capabilities. When you're dealing with the number of servers we are here at HG, it becomes a real challenge.

[digitaltoast]

Someone mentioned Facebook earlier - I've not go notifications emails from FB at my HG email for about 2 months now, despite having a valid address.
(no, it's not going into spam)

[GatorDavid]

@digitaltoast

Could you submit a ticket on that issue? If it's getting rbl'd (or just not coming in) we'd like to take a look at that.

[ppyne]

I've noticed no increase in particular... Maybe a slight decrease actually.

[ltlagueu]

'Any time you place a real email address in a public place - craigslist, eBay, this forum - you're asking for spam,'

EarlyOut - thank you so much. This is a huge help. It's not really practical to do real estate marketing without the web today. I do need to use those websites, like it or not This will keep the junk off my iPhone!

It also occurs to me that using the forwarder addresses is a great way to track what ad posting their responding to. We all need to know what ads are working.

[Chief Plasma]

Funny, I just logged a ticket because hostgators gateway is blacklisted.
Go here: http://www.linuxmagic.com/products/bms/lookup
Then put in IP of gateway: 67.18.68.6

Made me wonder if my spf records were setup correctly.

-cp

[weserver]

replying to thread #1, mobile phone get's ALL spam:

What you *could* do is create a filter for the mail adress here, moving all spam marked mails to a separate folder. That way, only inbox messages that are not marked spam will get to the phone (and the normal inbox). Of course, your client need to check the hostgator spam folder manually then, but if 99% spam marked mails ARE indeed spam, that should be no problem ? !

Just brainstorming here :-)

[davidabraham]

hi,

thanks for information.

[kevin_lee]

Thanks for details of spamming. Whenever I register in some sites. it give me activation link in smap folder. Why its happen?

[bengineer]

Hi, newbie here. We just started an account with HostGator. Our previous hosting did not have the best customer service, but nearly zero spam. With HostGator, our account is encountering 300 spams/day, with spam blocking set at level 5.

I reduced the spam blocking level to 2, but it is still quite heavy. What can we do about this? it's nearly crippling us, and we may need to switch back to the old hosting company.

I've had live chats with tech support who tell me I am doing all I can do at this point. Is that true?

Many thanks for your help.

[digitaltoast]

Originally Posted by bengineer

I've had live chats with tech support who tell me I am doing all I can do at this point. Is that true?

No. Push all your email via gmail. No spam.

[mp3]

Originally Posted by bengineer

Hi, newbie here. We just started an account with HostGator. Our previous hosting did not have the best customer service, but nearly zero spam. With HostGator, our account is encountering 300 spams/day, with spam blocking set at level 5.

I reduced the spam blocking level to 2, but it is still quite heavy. What can we do about this? it's nearly crippling us, and we may need to switch back to the old hosting company.

I've had live chats with tech support who tell me I am doing all I can do at this point. Is that true?

Many thanks for your help.

There are a lot of things you can do. You should probably start by not posting your email address all over the internet or all over your website.

You can try to train SpamAssassin to detect spam better and set up filtering.

[chaloupe]

Just to make sure bengineer, is your SpamAssassin enable in cPanel?

Go to cPanel > Mail > SpamAssassin™

SpamAssassin is currently enable / or disable?

Did you also ask SpamAssassin to auto-delete Spam? This is a button you can click under Filters ­> Scores.

Enable Auto Delete Spam

If Auto Delete Spam is not enable, all the spam will be delivered to your inbox.

Hope it can give you a help.

[dysonvillison]

Its the marvelousness of service that surprises me, and its this service which HG constantly provides. EVERY host has its "quirks" and I'm sure as time goes by, some of HG's will become more apparent. However, I'd prefer to be in the hands of HostGator then any other host's should those quirks arrise.

[dysonvillison]

When these spam emails are being bounced, it is at SMTP time, correct? If it's after receipt and the bounce is returned to the apparent sender, then HG will likely be spamming folks who have had their sending addresses spoofed (it's commonly called back scatter) and not the real offenders.

[mp3]

Dear dysonvillison (spambot),

You know, you're a pretty impressive spambot. You may be the first I've seen of your kind. In fact, I wonder if you're even a bot - definitely a spammer though.

Originally Posted by dysonvillison

When these spam emails are being bounced, it is at SMTP time, correct? If it's after receipt and the bounce is returned to the apparent sender, then HG will likely be spamming folks who have had their sending addresses spoofed (it's commonly called back scatter) and not the real offenders.

Originally Posted by MikeC

HG,

When these spam emails are being bounced, it is at SMTP time, correct? If it's after receipt and the bounce is returned to the apparent sender, then HG will likely be spamming folks who have had their sending addresses spoofed (it's commonly called back scatter) and not the real offenders.

Mike

From another thread:

Originally Posted by dysonvillison

I'm curious if gator518 at 74.53.86.114 has issues with the cpanel update or if I just caught it at a bad time? I get: "Thank You for installing cPanel / M."WH

Originally Posted by tsac

I'm curious if gator518 at 74.53.86.114 has issues with the cpanel update or if I just caught it at a bad time? I get: "Thank You for installing cPanel / WHM."

Especially interesting is that you add extra spaces which won't show up as a difference when readers are viewing the message, but will serve to keep automated spam systems from matching hashes of your posts against the originals. (also switch letters and trim posts)

I suppose your posts could still be detected using context triggered piecewise hashing (see: Jesse Kornblum, ManTech SMA).

Overall though I find you very interesting. Please tell your owner I'm mildly impressed.

Thanks,

mp3

[leemary34]

Spamming is not good. I hope that you are always happy. We need to be co-creative in order to maintain our status.

[Fira]

Originally Posted by GatorJosh

We have been gathering email statistics from all of our shared/reseller servers for the past month. We are analyzing this data and coming up with new methods to help prevent spam on our servers. We have come up with a list of remote domains that are involved with spamming and are implementing a block of these domains. We are testing this on about 200 shared hosting servers. The list of blocked domains is rather small and only contains around a total of 80 domains. To make sure this list remains accurate, we are unable to disclose these domains. If an email is sent or recieved from a domain on this list, the sender of the email will receive a bounced email stating "Sorry you are sending to/from an address that has been blacklisted".

We will be testing this on the first 200 servers this week and then if there are no issues, the remainder of the shared servers the following week.

That is excellent news and good luck.

[Keith W]

I was just thinking to myself over the last few days that I was getting a lot of spam messages in my inbox

I then received the following email from Play.com which may explain the suden increase in spam emails - also this is the second security breach at Play.com since I have been using them, think I will shop elsewhere from now on.

Email from Play.com:

Originally Posted by Play.com

Dear Customer,

Email Security Message

We are emailing all our customers to let you know that a company that handles part of our marketing communications has had a security breach. Unfortunately this has meant that some customer names and email addresses may have been compromised.

We take privacy and security very seriously and ensure all sensitive customer data is protected. Please be assured this issue has occurred outside of Play.com and no other personal customer information has been involved.

Please be assured we have taken every step to ensure this doesn’t happen again and accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused some of you.

Customer Advice

Please do be vigilant with your email and personal information when using the internet. At Play.com we will never ask you for information such as passwords, bank account details or credit card numbers. If you receive anything suspicious in your email, please do not click on any links and forward the email on to privacy@play.com for us to investigate.

Thank you for continuing to shop at Play.com and we look forward to serving you in the future.

Play.com Customer Service Team

************************************************** **********************
Confidentiality: This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are
confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity
to whom they are addressed. If you have received this e-mail in error
please notify the sender immediately and delete this message from your
computer without further action. Any dissemination, distribution or
copying of this message or any files transmitted with it by an
unauthorised recipient is strictly prohibited.
Viruses: This message has been swept for viruses but we cannot guarantee
that this e-mail or its attachments are virus free nor accept
responsibility for any virus inadvertently transmitted herewith.
************************************************** **********************

[pmatra]

I have had to drop my score down to 3. Is that ok? I am receiving all of my legitimate emails and it let through approx. 30 a day. I dont feel comfortable dropping the score lower.

Any suggestions?

Pete

[MadDogMike]

Originally Posted by chaloupe

If Auto Delete Spam is not enable, all the spam will be delivered to your inbox.

Are you sure that's correct? I thought that if you had Auto Delete Spam disabled, but SpamBox enabled, then, "SpamBox will deliver any emails identified as spam by SpamAssassin into a separate mail folder named "spam"." That's the way mine is setup, and I see spam in a folder named "spam" on webmail, and that mail never reaches the inbox of my mail client.