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Q1 |
How come you can get emails delivered successfully when our
in-house server can't? |
A1 |
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We have the DNS records for our server setup
properly.
For our main SmartHost, which is called
mail1.arrowmail.co.uk, this means:- |
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It's often not possible to do this with the IP
address you get with a Broadband connection, even if
it's a static IP address. |
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We have extra DNS records setup to comply with
anti-spam initiatives such as SPF and DKIM.
Many
domain registrars don't yet permit these types of
DNS records. |
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Some ISPs block connections from any IP
address used for Broadband or
dial-up connections.
Some mail-server blacklisting services include in their
list, whole ranges of addresses in response to
complaints about just one address in the range.
The IP addresses we use are reserved for Internet servers.
If we find that any company is blocking emails from
our servers we contact them to request that we be whitelisted. |
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If we experience problems delivering emails to
certain email addresses we route them via partner SmartHost
partner services in different countries. |
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We keep trying to send emails that don't get through
straightaway in case the receiving mail-server is having
temporary problems.
We try every minute for the first
hour then send you back a warning - it often transpires
that you've made an error in the email address.
We continue to try and send the email, once an hour,
for the next 5 days before finally sending you a "we've given up" message. |
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Q2 |
Why is your Anti-Spam system better
than the one on your Exchange server or Outlook's Junk E-mail system? |
A2 |
I could say, and it would be true, that it's part of our
business to be good at blocking spam ,without losing genuine emails, so we
need to be good at this to stay in business.
We, therefore, use
the latest techniques and respond to "innovations" by spammers as they occur.
But a couple of, perhaps, less obvious reasons are:-
1 - |
If we are filtering spam on our servers
then it's not using up any of your server's
resources or your Internet connection's bandwidth. |
2 - |
You don't have an anti-spam system to purchase, setup and maintain. |
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Q3 |
What can I do if spam gets through from your server, to my users' mailboxes? |
A3 |
I'm sorry to say that this will continue to
happen until the various anti-spam initiatives, currently
proposed, are agreed upon and universally adopted.
Maybe
spam won't exist in 5 years, although, according to Bill Gates'
prediction of a few years ago, it shouldn't exist today:-
"Spam will be a thing of the past in 2 years' time." - January 24th 2004.
The evil geniuses behind spam are constantly changing course to evade anti-spam systems which are
therefore always having to play catch-up.
When a spam email makes it through our filters and arrives in the inbox of one of your users, they can:-
1 - |
Ignore It
Chances are
that our "spam trap" accounts will have also received the same item and so it's already been fed back into our
Spam Filter for analysis as to how it managed to get through in
the first place.
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2 - |
If the spam has an Unsubscribe
link decide if it can be trusted
If the
product being advertised is:-
a) |
Not a typical dodgy spam product
such as pornography, mortgages, phoney
qualifications, body part enhancement,
pharmaceutical drugs or stocks and shares advice |
b) |
It doesn't have a paragraph of
nonsense words designed to fool spam filters |
c) |
It's correctly addressed to you |
…then it may not be mainstream spam.
If the company behind it is based in
the UK (prices shown are in £s) then they have a legal
obligation to provide a way for you to be taken off their mailing list.
The law is called the
Privacy and Electronic Commerce Statutory Instrument
2003, No. 2426
I guess that 30% of what people
consider to be spam can be stopped by following the
unsubscribe process at the bottom of the email, so it's
worth trying this if the spam appears to have originated
in the UK.
My experience is that many companies do now
act on requests to unsubscribe from their mailing lists.
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3 - |
Forward the email to
us to feed to our Spam Learning system
Your users should do this
if the same spam has made it to their inboxes repeatedly over several days.
The email needs to be forwarded to us in a special way so that its original format is preserved.
Instructions on how to do this in Outlook and Outlook
Express are given here.
The spam emails that are forwarded to us don't go straight into
the spam learning system as our existing set of spam
definition rules are too precious for us to risk being polluted.
We review the spam you send us before
letting it through, so if you were to send us Tesco or
Amazon newsletters as spam we'd reject them as some
people do wish to receive these and we know that these
companies honour unsubscribe requests.
The address to forward your spam to is:-
isspam@arrowmail.co.uk |
Our spam classification system inserts it's report into the
headers of each email that it processes to show how the Spam Index it has assigned was arrived at.
You may gain some insight into what causes emails to be classified as spam by examining these headers.
To see these headers in Outlook 2003, open an email and click on View - Options
This option is not available with Outlook 2007.
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Q4 |
What can I do when I find a Genuine Email in the Spam Folder? |
A4 |
We feel bad when this happens but hopefully it's
a rare occurrence.
Forward the email to us for feeding back to
our Spam Learning system so that it can workout where it went wrong.
You need to forward the email to us in a special way so that its original format is preserved.
Instructions on how to do this in Outlook and Outlook Express are here.
The address to forward your false positives to is:-
notspam@arrowmail.co.uk
To stop your outgoing emails being classified as Spam by other, heavy-handed
anti-spam systems you should educate your users to write emails in a non-spammy way.
Of course, some of the spammers use these techniques themselves but generally they still help:-
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Don't write words in all capitals or use
excessive multiple exclamation or question marks. |
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Send your emails as plain text instead of HTML formatted emails. |
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Don't send emails with blank Subject lines.
Try to
use at least 4 words to describe the subject of your email. |
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When you send an attachment, make sure you still put
a few word in the body of the email.
Send a pictures or graphics as JPGs and never GIFs. |
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