How do you know you are spamming emails?
- Returned (bounced) emails flooding to your inbox
- Your Hosting provider will be shutting down your site
Common Causes: allowing a Spammer to use your outgoing mail server:
- Compromised Passwords (using weak passwords)
- Compromised Programs on your server space (normally through email sending programs)
Scripts that are commonly compromised:
- Tell a Friend
- Newsletter Mailouts
- Bulk Email Programs
Why your Hosting Provider will shut you down:
To offer competitive pricing on hosting, a shared server is used. The Hosting Server runs off one IP address. Spam emanating from an account on this server is identified by its IP address.
DNS Blacklist servers have lists of IP addresses of known spammers. If your Hosting Server gets its IP blacklisted because of spamming, it effects all of the accounts on that server. The result is legitimate emails will be bounced because of the poor reputation of that IP. A server Administrator has no option but to shut the offending account down until the spamming problem is rectified.
BULK EMAIL : is allowed is 100 per hour or 1,000 per day
DEFAULT EMAIL ADDRESSES – cPanel – Default email account is normally used for spamming
Catch All default email addresses are wonderful collectors of spam. This is because they let any email through with the address (anything)@yourdomain.com.
An easy and effective way to cut down spam is to specify forwarders or mailboxes.
This means that an email that is correctly addressed, specifically for you, is either forwarded to you ISP email address or held in your Mail Box on your server space.
All other emails that are incorrectly addressed to your domain can be then discarded.
The directions below apply to those servers that operate cPanel.
www.(yourdomain).com.au/cpanel
Login :
UserName: yourusername
PassWord: youruserpassword
Click on Mail
In Mail Manager Main Menu,
Ensure that you have a mail forwarder for each of your exact email addresses.
or
set up a POP3 Mailbox for each of your exact email addresses.
Click on Set default address
Enter ‘:Fail: no such address here’ to discard all mail that is not correctly addressed
This means that all incorrectly addresses emails (they constitute the bulk of spam) will be deleted whilst the correctly addressed emails will get through to you.
PREVENTATIVE
Change to email addresses that are not on the internet.
Do not use a common prefix like admin, support, info etc.
New websites should not have plain text email addresses displayed either on the page or in the coding of the page. There are various java scripts and php scripts available to encode your email address.
If you have a spambot filling in your forms, you may need an image verification to prove that a human is trying to send information to you.