DEALING WITH SPAM

What Is Spam?:
Spam is unsolicited or "junk" email and is a major problem on the Internet today. Our mailservers receive millions of such messages every day. Here are some tips for our Members to help them deal with the problem of spam.

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Spam can be an annoyance to people using email. It can clog mailboxes, slow email retrieval and can often offend. Spam email appears to be very much on the increase.

WebHosts Manager understands that many members find dealing with spam a frustrating chore and is actively revising procedures and researching anti-spam solutions to help reduce the impact of spam on our customers.

Our Service Agreement forbids the use of service for sending spam and we can act quickly against those members found to be engaging in spamming.

However, most spam received by members comes from outside the WebHosts Manager Network. As such, it is difficult to take direct action against these spammers.

Unfortunately, there is no foolproof method of blocking spam. While there is a range of solutions marketed by various companies, they have varying degrees of effectiveness.

In addition, current anti-spam solutions may result in legitimate email being blocked. Because it is difficult to combat spam by simply blocking selected email addresses, most anti-spam products use key word filtering; that is, they block email containing the kinds of words used in spam messages (such as 'make money fast').

This can work, but it will not stop all spam as spammers can simply edit their messages to avoid the now-blocked key words. Sometimes, key word filtering can result in legitimate email messages being blocked, often without the intended recipient ever knowing they did not receive email sent to them.

There are some steps that members can take to combat spam.

If you use Microsoft Outlook Express as your email program, a simple first step would be to set up Message Rules (under the tools menu) for your email. Here you can tell Outlook Express to look for specific words in the address, subject line or the body of the message. The good news is that when filtering unwanted material, there are words used in those emails that are highly unlikely to be used in the normal language of emails.

Choose the filtering words carefully, however, as they can be used frequently in normal situations. Also, when you initially turn on the message rules, rather than telling the rule to delete the message, tell it to move the email to a separate folder. By looking in the folder you can check whether you are accidentally filtering normal emails. Once you are satisfied the rule is only picking out spam, change the rule to delete the spam.

Microsoft Outlook Express also has a 'block senders' function. Open the email and under the Message menu select Block Sender. You can easily undo this under the message rules area if you block a legitimate sender by mistake.

There is also a variety of anti-spam software and spam-busting tutorials available online. You can find out more about these below.
PLEASE NOTE: These software programs are not products officially supported by WebHosts Manager and, as such, our Customer Support Centre cannot assist with queries concerning them. Please refer to the vendor's Web site for support, product documentation etc.

URLs:

General
EmailCloaker - /tools/emailcloaker.shtml
SpamCop - http://spamcop.net/
Tracking Spam - http://www.claws-and-paws.com/spam-l/tracking.html

Windows
SpamEater - http://www.spameater.net/
Spam Killer - http://www.spamkiller.com/
Spam Buster - http://www.contactplus.com/products/spam/index.htm
MailTalkX - http://www.softbytelabs.com/

Macintosh
MailGoGoGo - http://www.makienterprise.com/
Magellan - http://www.makienterprise.com/

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You can also reduce spam messages by "limiting" your email addresses. In other words:

1. We can remove the "catchall" (anything.com) from your domain and limit the mail to just one or two email addresses (such as yourname.com) that you are currently using.
2. As above, but change the email address to something new (newname.com). This should block all of your current spam.

If you would like to set up either of the above changes, please contact us with your domain name and preferred email address(es) at that domain.

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We offer a Spam Filtering upgrade which blocks all emails with a "spam probability" rating of 5 or more. Spam blocking settings can be adjusted as you wish and you can "whitelist" any of your sender email addresses to make sure they are delivered. 

Please click here if you want to order this Upgrade for your account.

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