Well as you all know you live and learn Our hosting company contacted us about a site I host in the USA that a spam email had been sent from the site and that the ip address was now to be blocked and blacklisted  So now have to change hosting companies for the USA site what a pain - website down loosing money! Bloody spammers! tomsk
“Our hosting company contacted us about a site I host in the USA that a spam email had been sent from the site and that the ip address was now to be blocked and blacklisted ”Having worked for a data marketing company previously I know that pain only too well Tomsk!! Obviously the nature of the business meant we were prone to emails been classified as "spam" - even though everything was optin!  It only happens once [in the early days] but was a massive lesson. After this nothing was sent from the website IP apart from the odd auto responder/database driven email [these are very rarely marked as spam as they trickle through rather than a mass send] and the vast majority all emails went via email platforms with multiple IPs.
Spam is a problem for everybody these days. Mark Pitts
Following on from this, is it possible for the "message receiver" to tell the difference between an email which purportedly comes from your email address and one which really does? If it isn't, then don't a lot of us risk being blacklisted because of botnets and the like? Linda CareersPartnershipUK
Blimey what a pain So is it your site got hacked and used as a relay, or is it a shared host and you have some dodgy neighbours on the same server? “is it possible for the "message receiver" to tell the difference between an email which purportedly comes from your email address and one which really does?” The simplest check for the average user is the mail will claim to be from xyz bank, or your website and the visible email will look ok, this is called spoofing and is old as the hills. Unfortunately this spoofing, or phishing as it has now evolved into gets ever more sophisticated, but normally the link it tries to send you to will give the game away as you hover your mouse over it, or right click and select properties depending on your mail client. Looking at the message headers will also give you more info about the origins. If someone was trying to spoof your mail, then the first place to call is your ISP. Spoofing is a form of identity theft, so illegal, but is little threat for the average company until you become a recognised brand name. If you ever caught a competitor doing it, then go and talk to a solicitor 
Thanks, sjr4x4. Until asking my question, I'd rather assumed this was all part of the wonderful web world .... I only occasionally get a "return" - the daftest situation is when an email I haven't sent goes from one to another of my own email addresses. Equally occasionally, I get a "refused access on account of the message being probably spam" from a company I haven't contacted. I will now investigate. It might be the remnants of an old problem with the previously used server, I suppose - but I'd like to know!! Thanks again, Linda Linda CareersPartnershipUK |
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