Preventing Spam (Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail)

Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (UCE), commonly called Spam, is a rapidly growing problem for people responsible for maintaining mail servers. Not only do spammers flood E-Mail accounts with numerous undesired messages, many spammers will try to use an unsecured server to send their E-Mail messages. Your Virtual Private Server is designed to keep spammers from using your server to send their messages, as well as providing you with numerous options to help keep spam from filling up your E-Mail accounts.

What Is Spam?

While the legal definition of UCE varries from one place to another, spam.abuse.net provides a general description on their What Is Spam? page. The following is an excerpt from that page:

Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.

Recent laws enacted by some states have extended or limited that definition. For specific information about spam laws, see www.spamlaws.com.

Our AUP specifically bans sending spam:

Subscribers violate our policy and the service agreement when they, their customers, affiliates, or subsidiaries engage in spamming. Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward us, but also because it can overload our network and disrupt service to our subscribers. Also, maintaining an open SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, we have the discretion to determine from all of the evidence whether the E-Mail recipients were from an "opt-in" E-Mail list.

Preventing Spam Relays

Spammers frequently try to use another person's E-Mail server to send their messages. Your Virtual Private Server is designed to prevent your server from being used as a relay. POP before SMTP authentication and SMTP-Auth prevent anyone who doesn't have a legitimate E-Mail account on your Virtual Private Server from sending E-Mail from your server. We also provide NMS Formmail, which prevents spammers from using your Web-based forms to send spam.

Blocking Incoming Spam

We provide a number of powerful and configurable tools to help you protect E-mail accounts on your Virtual Private Server from spam. For a more detailed discussion of how to block incoming spam, see Serious Spam-stoping Techniques.

• Spam Assassin - Advanced Spam Filtering
• Procmail - Mail Filtering Tool
• Blocking E-mail using the access utility
• Blocking E-mail using the spammers utility
• Wpoison - Prevent E-mail address harvesting

More Information

For more information about spam and resources that can be used to fight it, see the following Web sites:

• CAUCE - Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail
• SpamCop
• UXN Spam Combat
• The SPAM-L FAQ
• Responsible Anti-Spam Sites