Frequently Asked Question
Email Spam Filtering on our mail server
Last Updated 6 years ago
Inbound Mail
Our general policy is that we'd rather have 20 spam messages delivered than have one real message lost.
If you use our email server, you're sharing the same email server that we use for TechSurgeons.
We have a fair amount of filtering in place to keep spammers from flooding mailboxes. The most simple 'filter' we have is that we expect the sending email server to follow the rules of email, and mail from those who don't are rejected.
After that, there are a few other filtering tools we use.
1) Greylisting - email servers that are new to us are "greylisted" for 5 minutes to see that they're real, following the rules, and not just facsimile email servers set up by bozos just for sending spam
2) Blocklists - we use the SpamCop blacklist to block known bad email servers.
3) Rules based filtering - we use tools like SpamAssassin and Amavis to scan for specific keywords in the email to determine if a message is spam (This is where the spam score you occasionally see are set.)
We keep logs of all email activity for 30 days. If there's a message or send you think we blocked, open a ticket and provide the email address of the sender, along with the date/time of the message, and we can see if any such email was attempted, and the result.
Outbound Mail
For outbound mail we do everything we can to guarantee email is delivered properly within the constraints of us not being an email service. We ensure our outgoing mail servers are set up to follow all the rules of email sending, have a good reputation, and that we quickly crack down on any misbehavior from our clients - usually bozos who hack their sites and use the hacked site and our servers to send spam..
That said, since we're not an outgoing email service like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and the like (who charge an awful lot for sending mail), we can't guarantee that mail will be accepted and/or deemed non-spammy..
Our general policy is that we'd rather have 20 spam messages delivered than have one real message lost.
If you use our email server, you're sharing the same email server that we use for TechSurgeons.
We have a fair amount of filtering in place to keep spammers from flooding mailboxes. The most simple 'filter' we have is that we expect the sending email server to follow the rules of email, and mail from those who don't are rejected.
After that, there are a few other filtering tools we use.
1) Greylisting - email servers that are new to us are "greylisted" for 5 minutes to see that they're real, following the rules, and not just facsimile email servers set up by bozos just for sending spam
2) Blocklists - we use the SpamCop blacklist to block known bad email servers.
3) Rules based filtering - we use tools like SpamAssassin and Amavis to scan for specific keywords in the email to determine if a message is spam (This is where the spam score you occasionally see are set.)
We keep logs of all email activity for 30 days. If there's a message or send you think we blocked, open a ticket and provide the email address of the sender, along with the date/time of the message, and we can see if any such email was attempted, and the result.
Outbound Mail
For outbound mail we do everything we can to guarantee email is delivered properly within the constraints of us not being an email service. We ensure our outgoing mail servers are set up to follow all the rules of email sending, have a good reputation, and that we quickly crack down on any misbehavior from our clients - usually bozos who hack their sites and use the hacked site and our servers to send spam..
That said, since we're not an outgoing email service like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and the like (who charge an awful lot for sending mail), we can't guarantee that mail will be accepted and/or deemed non-spammy..