Spam out of control!!!!!!!!!

[jdhowe]

Is anyone else getting bombarded with spam recently? The last 2 days the spam I receive has gotten really bad. I always get 10-15 a day (which is frustrating enough,) but the last 2 days I have been getting 30-40 a day. Spamassassin is not catching any of them.

I hope that hostpc is doing everything they can to combat spam, but I just cant figure out why no one can stop it. Is there no way to block emails being sent from servers in mass? I mean if a server is sending out millions of emails a day/hour, why can someone come up with a program to note that and then cut it off? I'm not all that technical, but surely someone can figure out how to stop spam.

[admin]

If it's all coming from one server, of course we can block it. Open a helpdesk ticket with full headers.

Also, tweak your SpamAssassin settings in your control panel, that'll help a lot.

I've noticed a SIGNIFICANT decrease since my private sites move to Chicago

[anjanesh]

jdhowe- better still, rely on google's spam filter if you dont mind hosting email at Google.

Check this thread (http://hostpc.com/community/showthread.php?t=3253#6).

[skidawg]

I would have to agree with admin (Joe?). Since I have moved my sites to the Chicago datacenter, the amount of spam that I have gotten has been somewhat reduced for me on my personal domains. A couple of other domains that I have actaully called me asking if there was a problem, because they were not getting anywhere near their "normal" level of spam.

I am sure that this reduction is short lived, but I am enjoying it while its happening.

I have also gone into my control panel and told spamassassian to whitelist all the email addresses of my family and friends, then set the spam filter levels to be much lower. I also told spamassassian to automatically delete messages where the spam count was over 20. Doing those things, also helped to reduce the amount of spam that I was getting (from over 300/day to under 150 per day).

HTH,

[jdhowe]

jdhowe- better still, rely on google's spam filter if you dont mind hosting email at Google.

Check this thread (http://hostpc.com/community/showthread.php?t=3253#6).

thanks...i am trying this out with one of my domains. i hadnt thought of doing that.

[jdhowe]

I would have to agree with admin (Joe?). Since I have moved my sites to the Chicago datacenter, the amount of spam that I have gotten has been somewhat reduced for me on my personal domains. A couple of other domains that I have actaully called me asking if there was a problem, because they were not getting anywhere near their "normal" level of spam.

I am sure that this reduction is short lived, but I am enjoying it while its happening.

I have also gone into my control panel and told spamassassian to whitelist all the email addresses of my family and friends, then set the spam filter levels to be much lower. I also told spamassassian to automatically delete messages where the spam count was over 20. Doing those things, also helped to reduce the amount of spam that I was getting (from over 300/day to under 150 per day).

HTH,

thanks as well. my guess too is that the move to chicago and subsequent decrease in spam is shortlived. i will try those changes on spamassassin. thanks.

[dbmasters]

jdhowe- better still, rely on google's spam filter if you dont mind hosting email at Google.

Check this thread (http://hostpc.com/community/showthread.php?t=3253#6).
badabing, badaboom, that what I did too...Google spam filters rock.

[MoreFiles]

if you use google / eventually you'll have to turn off the catchall (at least I did yesterday) the flood continued (mostly spoofed domain return messages)

also this is a nice tidbit for your dns records on google:

on a few occassions I've had rejections from some servers on emails sent out, for those add:

TXT v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all

I also use zoneedit to do my dns management (just to totally diversify)

yaero / hostpc still get all my hosting :)

[dbmasters]

If one uses the catch all you better expect more spam...you are totally asking for it.

[ozee]

Ok, I suppose this is a stupid question...


Why would moving an existing domain to a new server in a different town reduce spam?

[dbmasters]

The Chicago datacenter itself probably has some sort of spam filtering to protect it's own interest...

[skidawg]

Why would moving an existing domain to a new server in a different town reduce spam?

In my case, I moved to a different server (my server was not migrated to Chicago). So along with what Dan said, I am wondering if the servers in Chicago are running a different version (maybe updated?) of DA and spamasaassian? Maybe the different versions do a better job detecting and/or blocking spam.

[admin]

Yes, there is a newer version of control filters being used in Chicago - but before we turned those up I had already noticed a decrease.

I'm looking at a couple other options for spam control, will post back on my findings.

[tonydi]

I have SA marking spam at a 5.0 level but I let everything come through so I can see it. I also keep track of how many I get a day and since moving to Chicago on 8/6 I haven't seen any decrease at all. In fact, a few days ago I began getting an avg of 50/day, up from my normal rate which had held steady at around 40/day for the last two months.

However, I do notice that the SA version on www301 has a lot more "parameters" listed in the headers than the version that was on www42 had. So for those of you who are having SA delete *****SPAM***** marked email, that may be why you're seeing fewer getting to your Inbox. It's just doing a better job of figuring out what is and isn't spam.

Joe...when you say "control filters", are you talking about something YOU implement or something the datacenter has "out front" of the HostPC servers? I know you're a big proponent of letting everything through and letting the end user decide what to filter out. We've spoken recently about DC's having their own filters and agreed that was a Bad Thing.

[admin]

I'm a proponent of datacenters filtering mail on only rare occasions.

There are times however when it is appropriate, for instance when IP blocks are from KNOWN spam sources, especially in the APNIC class. The more filtering a datacenter does before traffic gets TO the servers, the less load on the server itself, so that's a good thing.

Few datacenters filter arbitarily based on common blacklists - it's only after extensive attacks that they MAY filter. In the chicago datacenters, I specifically asked this question and they're only minimally pre-filtering, and sell added spam protection as an extra service, so they're not going to filter out more than they have to, except to protect their network.

[jdhowe]

i have tried sending my mail (3 addresses) through gmail. so far, it works great. their spam filter catches almost every bit of spam and it hasnt caught one it wasnt suppose to catch yet.

one downside is that gmail only checks for external email addresses when it wants to. you can manually check external email addresses whenever you want, but this is kind of a pain. one email addresses was checked once in 40 minutes. however, the norm seemed to be every 15-20 minutes on all my addresses.

its a decent tradeoff unless you need all your emails immediately.

[dbmasters]

its a decent tradeoff unless you need all your emails immediately.

Of course, everybody thinks they need their email right away, judging by how many people have their client pop in every 30 seconds, but almost nobody actually needs it that fast.

[Necrosaro420]

I used to get 0 spam. Now its 5+ a day starting about 2 weeks ago

[Sean]

I used to get 0 spam. Now its 5+ a day starting about 2 weeks ago

5? Wow...lucky you...I get like 200+ :/ Read the Happenings threads...there is a new option (albeit not free) that so far looks promising for eliminating spam. We've been trialing it on the hostpc.com accounts for a week now and spam is all but gone and no lost valid mail.

[dbmasters]

Yeah, I have a pretty hard time being sympathetic to anyone that complains about 5 spams a day...