Prevent Or Reduce Spam on your hosting account with Letshost

All Letshost shared hosting servers are currently running cPanel, which is no surprise being one of the most popular/advanced control panels available. Cpanel is very versatile with how it can be configured. We at Letshost offer many add-on applications like SpamAssassin and BoxTrapper to help filter spam. Cpanel itself is continually being updated to improve spam filtration. In this Post we will talk about some specific things customers can do to help reduce spam and some general tips for reducing your spam.

Why send SPAM?

The Internet still remains a free for all in many aspects with no one governing body that can regulate the worldwide web and in particular email. With most company’s still finding email the most effective way to communicate with there customers it is inevitable that Spammers will use this to their advantage. Some courts have enacted laws to outlaw the practice of Spamming. However there are a lot countries which do not adhere to these standards and refuse to recognise the problems spam is causing. These countries that do not implement the appropriate laws act as a safe haven for Spammers where they can continue to send masses of junk emails with little to no consequences.

Phishing emails have grown in popularity of late, gaining business collecting data on people all over the world along with using trickery to obtain peoples personal banking information among other things.

Studies have shown that over 85% of all emails being sent today are SPAM.

Below are some popular tips to help cut down on the amount of spam you are receiving:

• Try to avoid using the common email addresses. For example <a href="mailto:info@domain.com">info@domain.ie</a>These are almost web standards and as such will be bombarded with spam emails.
• Lock down any contact forms on your website. Many Spammers will use robots scripts to auto-populate your contact forms as a way of sending you Spam. Captchas are the first line of defense in preventing this.
• Avoid posting your email addresses on your website. I would recommend using a web form with a captcha enabled as alternative. Doing this will help stop Spammers from obtaining your email address and thus cut down on spam.
• Keep your anti-virus software up to date with the latest patches. Viruses will attempt to hi-jack your email client and then use this to spam others in your address book or others. This can be very damaging to your domains reputation with mail filters if it continues for an extended period.
• Update any content management systems that you are using for your website design. With many web designers using CMS systems like WordPress, Joomla and PHPBB it is extremely important to keep these up to date to prevent hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the code for the use of Spamming.
• If you continue to receive large amounts of spam mail and are beginning to see it affect your day to day business it may be time to invest in a dedicated anti-spam service. These advanced filtering systems can greatly reduce the amount of spam reaching your account. For more information on the advanced Spam filter Letshost provide please click here
• A last tip is to avoid using your catchall email account. The catch all account is designed to pick up any emails that are sent to accounts that do not exist. Naturally this account will get more Spam then if you were to set up an individual account with a unique name.

For cPanel users if you want to reduce SPAM here are some additional tips:

• Enable SpamAssassin. This free Spam filter tool is installed on all letshost hosting accounts and can be enabled via your cPanel. Within SpamAssassin you have the option to add individual email addresses to black list along with being able to parse out all emails from a particular domain using the ‘*domain.com’ line.
• Configure SPF records – This can be done from your cpanel provided you are using letshost nameservers. SPF records help prevent Spammers from spoofing your email address for the purpose of bypassing their already blacklisted email addresses.
• If you are looking for a more stringent Spam filter then SpamAssassin , you can also enable BoxTrapper. This tool asks user to confirm that they are legitimate source before allowing the initial email to deliver to the recipient.