Reducing spam

Unwanted email remains a significant problem across the Internet. Spam can include unsolicited advertising, fraudulent messages, phishing attempts and emails containing malicious links or attachments.

At Vision Internet, we use several layers of protection to identify and reject unwanted messages before they reach your mailbox. However, no filtering system can eliminate spam completely without risking the loss of legitimate emails.

There are also several steps you can take to reduce the amount of spam you receive.

Prevention

One of the best ways to reduce spam is to avoid unnecessarily exposing your email address.

1. Don't reply to spam messages or click links asking you to unsubscribe from unfamiliar mailing lists.
2. Be cautious about providing your email address to websites and online services.
3. Consider using a contact form on your website rather than publishing your email address.
4. Avoid forwarding chain emails or messages asking you to share them with others.
5. Don't open unexpected attachments or follow suspicious links, even if the message appears to come from someone you know.

Remember that legitimate organisations should never ask you to disclose your email password by email.

Spoofed Emails

Have you received bounced messages for emails you never sent?

This doesn't necessarily mean that someone has accessed your email account. Spammers frequently forge sender addresses to make messages appear to originate from legitimate domains. This is known as email spoofing.

Unfortunately, it is relatively easy to forge the sender information in an email. However, modern email authentication technologies help receiving mail servers recognise messages that haven't been sent through authorised systems.

These include:

1. SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Identifies which mail servers are authorised to send email for your domain.
2. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature that receiving servers can verify.
3. DMARC: Uses SPF and DKIM authentication results to help receiving servers decide how to handle messages that fail authentication.

If your domain uses our email hosting, you can check its SPF and DKIM configuration through the Email Deliverability section of cPanel®.

Please contact us if you need assistance with email authentication, particularly if you send email through external services such as Microsoft 365 or third-party mailing platforms.

Email Dictionary Attack

A dictionary attack occurs when an automated system sends messages to numerous possible addresses at a domain, hoping to find valid mailboxes. For example, a spammer might try info@, sales@, accounts@ and hundreds of other combinations. One way to reduce this problem is to ensure your domain isn't configured to accept messages addressed to every possible username.

In cPanel®, the Default Address feature controls what happens to messages sent to addresses that don't exist. We recommend selecting:
Discard the email while your server processes it by SMTP time with an error message.

This allows our mail servers to reject messages addressed to nonexistent mailboxes rather than accepting them into a catch-all account. You can still create individual mailboxes and forwarders for any addresses you genuinely need.

Spam Filtering

Our mail servers use several layers of protection to reduce unwanted email. These include checks against known sources of spam, email authentication checks and verification that sending servers comply with established email standards. Messages that pass these initial checks are also examined using Apache SpamAssassin, which analyses numerous characteristics of each message and assigns a spam score. Generally, the higher the score, the more likely the message is to be spam.

Spam filtering can be managed through the Spam Filters section of your cPanel® account. The default spam threshold is 5, which provides a reasonable balance between identifying unwanted messages and avoiding legitimate emails being incorrectly classified.

Messages identified as spam can be automatically moved into a separate Spam folder, rather than being delivered to your normal Inbox. This allows you to review suspected spam and recover any legitimate messages that may have been incorrectly identified. You can adjust the spam threshold through cPanel® if necessary, although reducing it may increase the risk of legitimate messages being classified as spam. An automatic deletion option is also available, but we generally discourage its use because incorrectly classified messages could be permanently lost.

Please remember that no spam filtering system is perfect. If you're expecting an important message that hasn't arrived, please contact us so we can investigate.

Avoid using autoresponders

We generally discourage the use of email autoresponders, particularly those configured to reply automatically to every incoming message.

Spammers frequently forge the sender addresses of their messages. If an autoresponder replies to one of these messages, its response may be delivered to an innocent third party who never contacted you. This is known as backscatter, and such automatic replies can themselves be classified as spam.

Autoresponders can also confirm that an email address is active, potentially encouraging further unwanted messages.

Large numbers of automatic replies may damage the reputation of your domain or mail server and increase the likelihood of legitimate emails being rejected or classified as spam.

If you need to use an autoresponder, such as an out-of-office notification, we recommend limiting its use and ensuring that it doesn't respond indiscriminately to spam, mailing lists or other automated messages.

Where possible, it's better to avoid automatic replies altogether unless there's a genuine business need.

Need Help?

If you're receiving excessive spam or believe legitimate emails are being incorrectly identified, please contact us with details of the problem. We can investigate the filtering results and advise on the most appropriate settings for your account.