New Email Filtering Policy

[Joe]

In the past month, email incoming to our servers has nearly doubled. In January, we had just shy of 9 MILLION pieces of incoming email. Using industry standard averages, 70% was spam. During February 2005, over 18 MILLION pieces of incoming email. Again, probably 70% or more spam.

This is putting a HUGE load on the servers. Some accounts have actually had email deactivated. One in particular had 2 thousand per hour incoming - all junk, all going to catchall or being ignored. Another one got 60,000 in one day. Thats ridiculous. It's not their fault, but on the other hand I can't let one domain bring the entire server to it's knees.

So, effective today, on several servers, I've started blocking mail based on know, reputable blacklists. These blacklists include:

relays.ordb.org
sbl.spamhaus.org
bl.spamcop.net
opm.blitzed.org

99.99% of all email that is legitimate will NEVER get on those blacklists. These lists are updated regularly, and are industry standard blacklists, used by most reputable hosting companies.

Since turning on these filters, incoming mail has been cut dramatically on the 3 servers it's implemented on.

If the results at the end of the day continue to show positive results, I'll likely add these filters to ALL servers.

I know there are some that will not be happy with this situation - and for that I'm sorry. 99% of our customers WANT fewer emails, and the domains that have been affected by incoming dictionary attacks DEFINATELY want a solution. Using the above blackhole filters is responsible, and professional.

In order to bring you the best hosting experience possible, this policy is firm until further notice. This will help to insure quality uptime of your sites, and an overall positive experience.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Joe Mack
Owner
HostPC Internet Services

[starfighter]

Originally posted by Joe@Mar 1 2005, 06:06 PM
In the past month, email incoming to our servers has nearly doubled. In January, we had just shy of 9 MILLION pieces of incoming email. Using industry standard averages, 70% was spam. During February 2005, over 18 MILLION pieces of incoming email. Again, probably 70% or more spam.

This is putting a HUGE load on the servers. Some accounts have actually had email deactivated. One in particular had 2 thousand per hour incoming - all junk, all going to catchall or being ignored. Another one got 60,000 in one day. Thats ridiculous. It's not their fault, but on the other hand I can't let one domain bring the entire server to it's knees.

So, effective today, on several servers, I've started blocking mail based on know, reputable blacklists. These blacklists include:

relays.ordb.org
sbl.spamhaus.org
bl.spamcop.net
opm.blitzed.org

99.99% of all email that is legitimate will NEVER get on those blacklists. These lists are updated regularly, and are industry standard blacklists, used by most reputable hosting companies.

Since turning on these filters, incoming mail has been cut dramatically on the 3 servers it's implemented on.

If the results at the end of the day continue to show positive results, I'll likely add these filters to ALL servers.

I know there are some that will not be happy with this situation - and for that I'm sorry. 99% of our customers WANT fewer emails, and the domains that have been affected by incoming dictionary attacks DEFINATELY want a solution. Using the above blackhole filters is responsible, and professional.

In order to bring you the best hosting experience possible, this policy is firm until further notice. This will help to insure quality uptime of your sites, and an overall positive experience.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Joe Mack
Owner
HostPC Internet Services
Quoted post

Joe,
Please implement this across the board, I would love for this to decrease the masses of junk that i recieve. I recieve almost 100 spam a day and would love it if this decreased some of this.


Dan

[caddickj]

Let me just say: Thank you, sir.

While I have almost no email coming into my account here period, what little email I do have has been spam in the last few months. (And to my knowledge I haven't used my email here in any public locations, so I'm not sure how they got the address.)

I do plan to start using the email here more regularly, though, and I'm glad to know that I won't be starting at a deficit in the valid vs invalid email war.

[Joe]

The war on spam is worse than the war on terror lately - and quiet frankly, legitimate customers are losing :(

We're trying to do our part to cut down the junk that comes to your accounts. Thanks for your support!

Joe

[danw]

Thank you!

[ozee]

Wooohoooooooooooooooo!!!

Thanks, Joe!




Now - how much email is virus related? Could server-side AV help reduce some of that traffic?

[Dingo]

Originally posted by ozee@Mar 1 2005, 08:05 PM
Wooohoooooooooooooooo!!!

Thanks, Joe!




Now - how much email is virus related? Could server-side AV help reduce some of that traffic?
Quoted post



I imagine that would only increase the load of the mailservers.

But that is speculation.

Regardless - the filtering he is doing is a good thing. (I don't get a lot of SPAM - but this just makes sense - it will improve performance for everyone)

[Joe]

There has been extremely positive results from testing this, and it's been implemented now on _all_ servers.

Joe

[JustClem]

The downside is that, from what I have read, it is next to impossible to get off these blacklists even if you are mistakenly added. So, I expect some legitimate mail to be lost.

I would much rather filter on my end with SpamAssassin, given the option. I do understand why you implemented it, but ...

[Joe]

Legitimate mistakes, one time issues, there's no problem getting IP's removed. We've on occasion been listed and then delisted within 12-24 hours.

[Joe]

here's ONE server - can you tell what time we activated RBL filtering?

http://www.hostpc.com/images/www19.jpg

[Joe]

Typically overnight I come into about 200 new emails - 150+ of them Spam. Some nights more, some less. This morning, EIGHT!

The filters are working folks!

One client, so far, has had 16,000 emails blocked from delivery - and thus blocked from being processed on the server - freeing up server CPU time. It's a wonderful thing :)

[tnas]

Ditto.... Ozee...DanW...caddickj...

My junk this AM went from approx. 140 to 33!

:lol:

[Joe]

Yeah, I'm definately a happy camper.

Over three servers checked, 93,473 emails were blocked - not including the ones that the IP filters took out at the firewall from known spamhouses

[QuickGold]

I guess no more informational emails about how to make millions of dollars or how to buy ******. Darn :P

[Joe]

Oh Eugene.... stop by when you get a free couple of minutes :)

[Ortwin]

<sniff> <sniff> I miss my extra (spam) mail. No one loves me any more! ;-)

[rmcb5]

All I have to say is:


T
H
A
N
K

Y
O
U
!


While I share the same sentiment about missing my spam in a way, this fres up a lot of time. While I'm sure some folks numbers far exceed mine, on my domain gietl.net I received about 200 - 300 e-mails a day. Of that number maybe 10 tops were legit.

This morning I awoke, booted my computer and launched Thunderbird. With my eyes fuzzy I awaitied the typical 115 - 140 messages and to my suprise...only 15...wait what! Only 15 new messages TOTAL!

I just couldn't believe it. Thanks again for keeping us happy!

[billeasley]

Great job Joe! Keep up the good work, we appreciate it! B)

[thevillageinn]

looking at my inbox, I could immediately tell that the filtering had been turned on...since I had 2 spam of a typical 20+ for the day.

I can dig it.

[Slumpack]

Originally posted by QuickGold@Mar 2 2005, 09:57 AM
I guess no more informational emails about how to make millions of dollars or how to buy ******. Darn :P
Quoted post

Give me your email address and i can copy paste my previous junk mail to you everyday ( just tell me when ) :)

My spam went from around 35 a day to 2 !!


Great, i use outlook and filter from microsoft works like a charm, it sort all spam into junk folder ! so i can just delete all in one click.

[Joe]

Interesting stats for the first 24 hours.

Total garbage email blocked by the filters: 592,212
total IP's blocked by the filters: 826

Absolutely incredible :)

[eugene]

Originally posted by Joe@Mar 2 2005, 10:40 AM
Oh Eugene.... stop by when you get a free couple of minutes :)
Quoted post

Did my code help stem the tide?

[Fabio]

I still got 8 spam messages today. When will this anti-spam thing be perfected?? ;)

[eugene]

Originally posted by Fabio@Mar 8 2005, 08:11 PM
I still got 8 spam messages today. When will this anti-spam thing be perfected?? ;)
Quoted post

Hmm . . . good question. I guess when we stop email.

[Rich]

Joe,

Thanks for doing this!

But on the other side of the equasion, I've been having more and more of my email bounce back to me because of 'SPF policies'.

Is there a simple way to fix this also?

edit......

I spoke too soon!!

After seeing this message: http://www.hostpc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1608

I applied this 'fix' and a lot of my SPF issues went away, imagine that! :D

[jdhowe]

I have been a happy customer of hostpc for several months now. For the first couple of months I havent had any spam whatsoever. Then, all of a sudden I am starting to get close to 10 a day in each of my email accounts. I dont use any of my hostpc email addresses out on the web (i.e. i use a yahoo account for that) so I am not sure why I am starting to get bombarded with spam. Its very frustrating.

After reading the above posts, I guess I am lucky to be just getting around 10 a day. However, I dont know how someone got my email addresses in the first place.

JDH

[NightStorm]

On what servers is this filtering now in effect ... all?

[flyer]

> Legitimate mistakes, one time issues, there's no problem getting IP's removed. We've on occasion been listed and then delisted within 12-24 hours.

How would a person know he's on one of these lists? Do the list keepers notify you? I had the idea they just add senders to their blacklists, with little or no evidence, and no due process. Many of them are anti-business, as well, based on what they write.

It's so easy for someone to file a false spam complaint, or accidentally click the "spam" button some email services like Yahoo have, that a lot of innocent people get on these lists. I don't know if the latter situation causes Yahoo to report the message to any outsiders, or just keep track of it internally.

Just curious- is this filtering imposed on dedicated servers, too?

[Joe]

On dedicated servers, you choose what to implement.

As for the question of "what if someone reports it vindictively"... all reputable blacklists have a policy of removing within X hours if there's no further complaints. If they dont get removed, typically an email to the maintainer of the list, with a VALID explanation will resolve the issue.

I dont know how someone got my email addresses in the first place.

If your domain registration details are public, your email address WILL be harvested. You WILL be bombarded with emails. Once they have that domain, they'll try ANY email address starting with

A
AA
AAA
AAAA
AAAAA
B
BB
...etc

until they find valid ones that get delivered. Keep in mind, it costs them NOTHING to send email, except maybe a loss of their account, but 9 outta 10 times their forged accounts, or coming through proxies all over the world (typically asia APNIC).

Bottom line is, if you have a domain name, it will be spammed at some point or another.