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Hints for Reducing Spam (and other Spam Problems) |
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Getting tons of Spam?
There is a recent hug spike in email spam due to new spam-bots and
techniques being used to camouflage spam as being legitimate email.
This is an industry wide problem that has escalated dramatically
starting in 2006.
We apologize for the lengthy web
page, but there lots of information is here. Please take time to
understand our recommendations and reply to ask us if you don’t
understand some items or if you have questions.
First of all, DON’T BLOCK US.
Your email program will allow you to identify who you ALWAYS want to
receive email from. You should list “SturdyLink.com”, and
“SturdyLinkHosting.com” to not block email. There have been many
occasions where customers say they don’t get billing notices, system
notices, or answers to their questions. We later determine they were
blocking our domain by accident.
The amount of spam you receive will be almost eliminated if you follow these steps.
If you are getting lots of spam, then you have made one or more of
these mistakes below and should correct them. Note that our
system spam filters remove more than 85% of the spam that comes into
the server, but no filters can eliminate all spam without the risk
of removing legitimate email as well:
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Don't put your email address on any web page
shown in text or as a link.
You will immediately start
receiving spam and it will grow from there. Novice web
designers make this mistake. Use our Email Address Encoding
technique for any
email addresses posted on a web page. This prevents spiders
from "harvesting" your address.
If you
already made this mistake, then you should change the address
AND encrypt the new one that you put on your site.
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Don't use common email addresses such as "Webmaster", "Marketing", "Sales",
"info", "admin",
etc. Spammers know that most every domain has these addresses
and they will randomly send email to these addresses. Instead, use
unusual
names. Think about the email name you are using and whether
or not it is a common generic name.
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NEVER respond to spam that has "unsubscribe here" links if you are in
doubt. Those are traps to get you to respond and receive more spam.
Most spam is either not sent directly to your email address or the spammer
is
uncertain of your email address. You will confirm your email address when you click the link
to "unsubscribe". Your name will be sold to other spammers. Yes, there are many
legitimate companies that use this method. You know the companies you deal
with on a regular basis. Those are ok to click.
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Don't use your email address in ANY on-line chat rooms.
Many of them are monitored by "spiders" from other web sites. As soon as you type your email
address to someone in a public window, the spider has it. Use a separate
email box or create a Yahoo or Hotmail account.
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If asked to give an email address ANYWHERE online, we suggest you create an
address with that site's name in it, such as:
Amazon@YourDomain.com
and forward it to your regular email account.
If you start getting spam from one of those accounts, you can identify who has been distributing or
selling (without your permission) your email information. Then you can contact them directly
with your complaint and close down that email box.
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Even after implementing the above suggestions, you are going to continue getting
spam unless you change your email address Read below to see
how to stop spam once you start getting it.
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How Do I Get Out of a SPAM Gutter?
The best way is to change your email address and start
using techniques we define above. Many of you don't want to
change your address because friends and colleagues have it.
Yes, we have heard that a business can't change email addresses
because there is no way to get the new addresses to everyone that
needs them. Not true. There really is a way to stop spam and
still have your customers get to you. You won't need to
contact them. Here is the way to handle it:
- Create a new email address in your Sturdy Link web control panel
"Mail Manager" (or ask your mail administrator to do it if
you don't have access). Choose a new address that no one yet knows.
Setup and test the email account on your personal computer by sending yourself an email.
After confirmation that it works, you can send the new address
to people in your email program if you want. Don't worry yet
about the people who need it that aren't in your email program.
- If you have a web site where your email address is listed,
change it to the new address, however, be sure to use our
special encoder technique that we mentioned above. This prevents spammers from harvesting your
email addresses.
- Remove the old email address from
the email program (Outlook, Outlook Express, etc) on your computer.
DON'T REMOVE it from the Sturdy Link web control panel. We
are going to use it for another purpose defined below.
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Go to your Sturdy Link web control panel "Mail Manager" (or ask your mail administrator).
Click on the name of the old email address to change it to
"auto-respond" with a message. Anyone sending email to the
old email address will receive a bounce back email to tell them
your email address has changed. We suggest saying something like this: "To reduce SPAM, I have changed my email address. Please contact me by
phone or mail for the new address."
If you have a business, alternately
you can also list your new email address on this
autoresponder to make it easier for your customers. Mention
something like... "To reduce spam, I changed my email address to MyNewName@MyDomain.com.
Please update your address book and send email to me at the new address. This address is no
longer being checked."
Here is what happens after you make the changes... When someone sends email to you at the old address, they
get a
"bounce" message so they know you have changed the address and know
how to contact you. Spammer
programs don't pick up the new address from the automated reply. In fact 99%
of all spam reply addresses are faked and don't even have a way to
reply. The replies don't go back to the spammer. Your
friends and colleagues will see the new address.
After 6-8 months, you can remove your old email from the
Sturdy Link control panel.
ONE FINAL REMINDER: People often overlook this. You
likely have many places where your email address is listed and isn't
going to be noticed by the bounce message. These could be
banks or other locations such as on-line
shopping where you have stored your email address. Don't
forget to access those sites and change your email address. We
recommend keeping a list of companies or web sites on your
computer where you have given your email address to them. You
will be surprised how handy this list will become in the future for
various reasons.
USING EMAIL FILTERS:
You can create your own customer filters in your web hosting control
panel. We provide this alternate technique to reduce spam.
To filter out emails
with specific content, go to your web hosting control panel,
click on the “Mail” icon, then click on the link for “E-mail
Filtering”. This allows you to create special filters that look
for specific information in an email and then discard it before
it reaches your email box. You have to be careful with filters
because they affect ALL email
accounts in your domain name. We provide this filter
program so each customer can create customized filters for their
domain. Here is an example of why you want to be careful with
filters. Let’s say you created a filter to look for the word “and”
in the body of emails. Obviously, you may never get another
email again because that word is in practically every email.
We are seeing new spam
techniques designed to bypass spam filtering programs.
A new trick is they
send spam with common phrases and words, but also include a
small "gif" file (graphic image) that contains the real
information the want you to see. Spammers know there is no easy
way to find spam words in graphics form. You can filter out
those spams that contain a “GIF” file. This cuts out a huge
amount of spam like that. Of course it means that if someone
sends us a file with a “GIF” graphics attachment, we will never
get it. But then again, no one sends us GIF files. If your
contacts need to send you gif files, have them embed the images
inside a “ZIP” file. Actually, files download faster that way
anyhow. Photos usually come as JPG files so it is probably not
a problem for personal accounts to have a GIF filter as well.
If you want to filter out such spam that contain GIFs, use this
filter… in the BODY of a message, look for “Content-Type:
image/gif” (don’t use quotes when you enter this
filter.) If you need help setting filters or would like us to
review filters you have added, just ask and we will be glad to
help you.
How do we know these techniques work? Because our
email addresses have not changed in 10 years and they are very
publicly known, yet we receive about 10 spams per day!
America Online and SPAM - Are you "Blacklisting" Yourself
or Suspending your own site?
(You receive an email reply that reads "Relaying Denied")
If you have a personal AOL email account, you may be causing your email to be blocked from
being received, or they can report you as a spammer and cause your
web site to be suspended by providers.
Here's what can go wrong:
| You may have used you web site control panel to forward
your email to a personal AOL email account for one of your
users. |
| If the email address of (AnyEmailName@YourDomain.com)
gets spam, then of course it is forwarded automatically to your AOL account. |
| You see the Spam in your AOL account and complain or you
click the "this is spam" box in your
AOL account. |
| AOL then traces the "from address" of the spam and blocks ALL email from the
sender. They also report the offender as being a spammer. In this case, the sender
(spammer) is YOU, and it is OUR server. AOL then thinks
you are a Spam relayer.
Thus, you just put yourself on a black list, and your site gets
a big "SUSPENDED" flag on it ! |
| The result is that you block your own email accounts inadvertently with the best
of intentions, and you cause email to stop getting to your account from our mail servers. |
Quite frankly, we greatly dislike this method of spam blocking
that AOL is using. They make it far too easy for AOL users to
hang themselves, and it pushes the solution somewhere else.
We all hate spam, and we are continually testing new anti-spam
measures. Please let us work on eliminating spam rather than contacting AOL - their solution is
to block your email and have your site suspended - "the cure is worse than the disease."
Things We Can't Do
No hosting company can eliminate spam if you abuse your email account. If you are widely
distributing your email address on numerous web sites, then lots of
spam will come directly to your email account disguised as legitimate email.
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