Woo hoo! I reduced spam by 98%! (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

I've got my own domain name which I use for a little vanity website and for personalized email addresses. Over the past year my spam intake has skyrocketed. The past few months I was receiving more than 2000 junk emails a day! That's nearly 1.5 spam per minute!

I've been using MailWasher Pro, since server-side processing of the spam was necessary. This week I finally got around to tackling the bigger problem: where was it coming from? Turns out there was a very simple solution.

My domain has a "catch-all" email alias that forwarded all emails to unknown names (of my domain) to my primary email address. So I was receiving the full onslaught of domain-level spamming. I deleted that alias, and over 2000 spams are bounced back to the ether as my mail server fails to recognize all the fake recipient names.

My spam has plummeted to a more sane level of abour 40 / day. I know that's still a lot for many of you, but it's a huge improvement for me.

As a second, modest step, I've also stopped checking email at my ISP address, since I don't use it. That should drop me down to about 20 / day.

And MailWasher Pro, or any other system, will handle that easily.

Hurray!

 

[Rob Silver]

Looks like your web host's spam filter didn't do jack then. Demand money back.

I got a few domains, hosted w/ e-rice, but I've never used the email boxes. And now w/ a few gmails, there's more reasons I don't have to.

 

[DaveF]

I don't think my web-host does any automatic email filtering. Last time I looked, that wasn't listed as a feature for budget-minded hosting services. Maybe I'll look into that.

That said, for my primary address (an email I've used online for several years), I get only a little bit more than I get from my unpublished RoadRunner account, with all of its auto-filtering services.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

The web host shouldn't do any filtering except if asked to, IMHO. It should be a users own choice whether or not he/she has their mail filtered.

 

[DaveF]

A few days later, and I'm at a 95% success rate. I'm still receiving an excess amount of spam, but it's much much lower than before.

I've communicated with the owner of the hosting service about server-side filtering. He said it's under consideration, but there are several problems that have to be resolved first.

Kimmo - that's what I thought. I didn't expect a hosting service to auto-filter email, the way that AOL or RoadRunner does.