New Spam Filtering Beta Testing

[Marc]

Hello Clients,
I am pleased to announce that we are currently running a live production of our latest spam filtering technology. We now have a dedicated appliance placed in front of our mail servers to 'scrub' outgoing mail. This will greatly reduce the amount of spam complaints received at ISP's (aol.com, comcast.net etc) thus removing the blocks that arise from time to time of our network. Whats more, this will eventually reduce the spam coming into your email boxes. We have already realized huge gains in blocked spam since this was rolled out this afternoon.

Please note this is still being rolled out slowly so absolutely no valid email is blocked.

You can read more about the appliance we are using here: http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/...m_overview.php


-Marc
Vortech Support

[Uplink]

Which mail server has this been applied to? All of them? I'm still seeing over 800 connections per hour and double emails and bounces as of 15 minutes ago.

I hope this works or I'm going to loose more customers.

C. Remmen

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Uplink

Which mail server has this been applied to? All of them? I'm still seeing over 800 connections per hour and double emails and bounces as of 15 minutes ago.
I hope this works or I'm going to loose more customers.
C. Remmen

Please understand we are not scrubbing the email coming into our network. We are scrubbing email leaving our network. This is not going to solve the incoming spam problem. This is for the out going spam issues.

Right now we are only filtering our forwarding server. There is no ETA as to when all servers will be filtered.

[Silverbug]

I don't suppose there is any plan on scanning incoming?

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Silverbug

I don't suppose there is any plan on scanning incoming?

Eventually. We want to slowly roll these changes to our network out. E-mail is the life-blood of any online business, and we wish to make sure there is 0 effect on the good mail. We are taking steps in the right direction however.

[Brangwyn]

Baraccuda's work pretty well, I recall recommending them to Brad about 2 years ago when Vortech started having issues with SPAM and being blacklisted all over the place.

[Monzterdk]

hmm Maybe im stupid or is there something i dont understand ???

regarding to incomming mail isent there a spam assasin solution + SPF Checks and possibility of RBL checking then 98.9 % of all spam should be gone
i havent testet it yet since i have my own mail server elsewhere with smartermail on it it has these tools onboard and we see almost no spam at all all clients are extatic with it it also has spam tools on the outbound so that i can monitor all suspicius traffic with ease maybe thats the solution for vortech ??

By the way Baracuda is awsom i know about them from one of my bigger clients for whoom we host a footprint they have an barracuda appliance in their setup and are completely spam free !!

best regards Monzterdk

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Monzterdk

hmm Maybe im stupid or is there something i dont understand ???

regarding to incomming mail isent there a spam assasin solution + SPF Checks and possibility of RBL checking then 98.9 % of all spam should be gone
i havent testet it yet since i have my own mail server elsewhere with smartermail on it it has these tools onboard and we see almost no spam at all all clients are extatic with it it also has spam tools on the outbound so that i can monitor all suspicius traffic with ease maybe thats the solution for vortech ??

By the way Baracuda is awsom i know about them from one of my bigger clients for whoom we host a footprint they have an barracuda appliance in their setup and are completely spam free !!

best regards Monzterdk

Yes the RBL checking + upgrading all our mail servers to include Grey listing should eliminate all our spam! We are excited about our future plans and will definitely keep you updated as they come.

[oglee]

this sounds like a step in the right direction. thanks for the update marc!

[Brangwyn]

SPF Checks and possibility of RBL checking then 98.9 % of all spam should be gone

unfortunately no, that won't stop anywhere near 98.9% of spam, both of these methods are easily circumvented by spammers, return address forgery is where it's at most mailservers (stupidly) allow some form of NDA which is what they exploit mostly.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

unfortunately no, that won't stop anywhere near 98.9% of spam, both of these methods are easily circumvented by spammers, return address forgery is where it's at most mailservers (stupidly) allow some form of NDA which is what they exploit mostly.

Hello,

I would like to give you an idea of my credentials prior to Vortech; I was an independent list manager (e-mail marketer) for several years, as well as a senior administrator for an e-mail marketing company (legal spammer). I have a good grasp on what will and will not allow 'spam' to come into our servers. Please note not everything you classify as spam IS actually spam.

For completely illegal Viagra, and Penis Enlargement offers, Grey listing, RBL Checks will help greatly, (you can spoof the domain you are sending as, but you cannot spoof the headers they are originating from), Reverse DNS, and RFC Complaint checks WILL stop 98% of that spam.

See most spammers, spam from bot nets, proxy servers, hacked cgi/php forms, etc. When this method of mailing is used, SPF records do not match, Reverse DNS does not match or is non-existent, Grey listing comes into effect, because these methods do not preform retries once a message is 'grey listed'. These emails are also non-RFC complaint. THIS is the root of the issues.

Now for the Target Gift Card, and Ebay Success Kit offers, those are more tricky to deal with. As another poster above stated already, this is a step in the right direction.

[DigitalSkyline]

Rolled out slowly? No effect on legitimate email?

http://forum.vortechhosting.com/show...t-t_12461.html

Also why was this only announced in the forum not email? This is a big change and its obviously not working right yet. See above.

[opt2004]

Marc's creditals just went out the window...................

[Danl]

Originally Posted by opt2004

Marc's creditals just went out the window...................

How do you figure? He's a great asset to Vortech.

[Tina]

I'm not really clear on all this stuff... but I seem to be having more problems with mail in the past few months than anything else. I put in a ticket cos six of my email domains on different plans were not getting through to me.... shortly after five were fixed and then the last one was... even before i got a reply I'm currently having a windows mail corrupted disk so was not sure what was causing it .. of course I have to two different problems at the SAME time.... regarding spam.... before I didn't have to look in the spam folder much .. but now I have to check it very carefully ... one of my clients all his email to me is marked as spam and bad spam at that... I finally (unprofessionally sigh) told him to use my gmail account addy and that works nicely.... my three main email accounts where i get my design clients and sell ebooks through I really need to work. Half the time they have not been.

A lot my legit mail which is all marked to go to folders ends up in the spam folder ... that's why I don't trust spam filters on my incoming mail .. why I don't have them turned on ...I need to see what it's catching ... the only thing it's good for is sorting most of the legit spam (is there such a phrase?) into one folder ... and it's windows mail doing that (I think) .... I just want my email to work ...glad that vortech is doing something .... I don't know how to deal with those emails that spoof my addys and even send them to me so if you can stop that I'd be very grateful.... this spf thing.... keeps getting mentioned but i've not seen a step by step easy to understand (with no bits left out) tutorial anywhere let (BIG HINT)... more explainations for those of use who don't understand that first thing about this would really help...

and is all this related to why my sites go down for hours at a time? I actually put in a ticket last time and was told it was denial of service attack so I guess it's all related?

It's all very tiring

Tina