SPAM Control

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SPAM/Virus Control - Unsolicited Email

Here you will find a summary of items associated with controlling unsolicited email. A brief introduction of the terminology, followed by the specific measures we use to help you control unsolicited email. This page has info on:

We understand that for many of you all three terms just blend together! They are actually quite different:

1. SPAM - this is simply unsolicited email for products, porn, etc... It can sometimes be infected with a VIRUS.

2. VIRUS - this is usually an attachment to an email message you receive. It is a computer program that will "do something" when activated on your PC. Many times you will hear of a "worm" -- this is a virus which reads your Outlook Express address book, and sends itself to your friends (sometimes using subjects of real messages you have sent them). It then infects their systems... You can also pick up a virus from a web site on an infected web server and it can be downloaded to your PC.

If you wish to run a check of your anti-virus software, click here, and you will be taken to a page which allows you to test your system safely against a test virus.

3. FIREWALL - a firewall is software/hardware which limits Internet access to your PC. If you are on the Internet, and do not have a firewall, there is a VERY good chance a hacker can easily gain access to your private files.

We now offer FREE anti-virus protection on our mail servers. Our systems will scan your incoming email and reject messages containing virus. Please check the information on Canit for details.

Firewall Software - If you do not have anything, we HIGHLY recommend you download and install Zone Alarm http://www.zonealarm.com/ .It is FREE, EASY to use, and has gotten EXCELLENT reviews. It will protect your PC. It will also alert you when a hacker is attempting to scan your systems (you will be amazed at how often that happens!).

On our web servers your web sites are protected by a combination of software/hardware firewalls to limit access to just expected traffic. Adaptive intrusion detection attempts to block out IP addresses which appear to be launching attacks/probes against your sites.

We use a product called Canit to provide a FREE level of virus and SPAM protection for all subscribers. If any email is rejected, it will respond with the appropriate error message and notify the person they should reformat their message. Unfortunately, the FREE service does not allow you to tailor the settings for your domain. In addition, you can't see what messages have been rejected. This product has a lot of capability, but it does put a large workload on the server. We do charge a nominal additional fee to give you full access to it's features (see below).

With paid service we give you full access to all the features of Canit. It offers you a lot of configuration options. It will "hold" potential SPAMVirus message so that you can safely read the actual message contents from your web browser. Unlike many SPAM control systems, it allows you to know which message are being rejected and why. It also has capabilities allowing you to white list or blacklist specific email addresses or entire domains. The cost starts at $1/month per individual address of $5/month for an entire domain. Please click here for full details. The service includes a no-risk 30 day trial period.

However, as you can imagine, a SPAMMER could connect to our mail server and easily fake a FROM address of their message to be either our domain, or one of yours. Our mail server would accept and deliver the mail. (Some of you have had this happen).

In the past we had not worried about this since such mail is obviously fraudulent and it would be possible to prosecute the sender. There are new procedures to avoid this and we had hoped to avoid using them, but as a service provider we can also experience problems sending your mail if our machines are not compliant with current best practice.

POP before SMTP

The solution to the problem is to require a successful POP account login before allowing a connecting machine to send email. As a user it may appear to you that all your mail is sent and received as a single operation, but it is not. Your PC makes a separate connection to our mail server for each POP mailbox you have. It also make a separate connection when attempting to send mail (and this is where verification is now necessary).

The server remembers your machines address, so that when the SMTP connection occurs, it will know you are a valid user. That address will remain "good" for several hours.