Spam and Virus Protection At No Extra Charge

All mail that is delivered to any e-mail account hosted with us passes through four levels of protection before it is delivered to our clients:

Layer 1 - We Check If the Recipient Exists

We check to make sure the recipient exists on the machine, checking for e-mail accounts, mailing lists and aliases. If mail is sent to an address that does not exist on our machine, we reject the e-mail with a failure, telling the sender to not send the e-mail again. For this reason we advise clients NOT to have catch-all e-mail addresses that will accept any mail sent to any address under their domain, but to use their Web-based e-mail control panel to set their catchall to bounce mail that is not sent to an address configurd for their domain.

Without this layer, all incoming e-mail is accepted. Any of the e-mail which can't be delivered locally (no existing user accounts) is normally bounced back to the sender. The problem is, most spam sites do not accept the returned bounce message. This means the e-mail will stay in the queue for days (default 7 days) and our mail server will keep attempting delivery. This layer keeps all of this e-mail off the machine.

Layer 2 - We Check If the E-Mail Was Sent From or Through a Known Spammer

The IP address of the sender is checked against "remote black hole" lists. These real time lists keeps track of IP addresses that have been reported and confirmed to be sending spam. This includes e-mail servers sending spam and machines that have been exploited and are sending spam. So, if the sender is on one of these lists we reject the e-mail with a failure message that tells the sender to not attempt to send the e-mail again.

Layer 3 - We Check for Viruses

Next the e-mail is sent through an anti-virus scanning program. If the e-mail contains a virus, a failure message is forwarded to the sender. This keeps all viruses off the machine. Say good-bye to your virus warnings - Viruses never get delivered to you!

Layer 4 - We Check for Spam Content and Patterns

The last stage happens when mail is delivered into a users account. It is passed through an anti-spam server-side filter called Spamassassin which does content filtering checking for specific phrases, formatting or patterns common in spam. If the e-mail is identified as spam, the subject line is modified by placing [SPAM] at the beginning of the subject. Users can configure their e-mail clients to filter [SPAM] messages into the trash or a spam mailbox that they go through once in a while to check for false positives. If mail that is spam is not identified as such, we can customize this filter based on the spam coming through. Likewise if mail is coming in that if marked as spam and should not be, we can adjust the settings accordingly.

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