MIDITECH WEB HOSTING AND DESIGN ACCOUNT SERVICES SUPPORT

In the last few years email spam activities have increased dramatically globally.

Some customers have been asking what we have done that caused this sudden increase in spam in their email boxes. The answer is, we have not done anything but fight it to the best of our abilities. Our network admins have been very proactive in this fight and we want our customers to know what is going on behind the scenes regarding this issue.

This problem is not only related to the services of MIDITECH. This is a global problem affecting every email account provider and ISP. Miditech has taken a very proactive approach to lessen the spam you receive. In fact, even with the large amount of spam you may still be getting, we already block thousands of spam emails every hour of the day that you never see, 7 days per week!

This document was prepared to help our customers in the fight against Unsolicited Email (commonly referred to as "Email SPAM") and other effects of what the spammers do in sending such unsolicited email.

KNOW THIS: WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE!!!

Some customers say why not just block the spammers IPs. The answer is because that is not going work. Spammers either keep changing their mail server IPS or , like in most cases, they send out and infect millions of computers with a virus. A person having a computer without virus protection on their local computer can cause the computer to become infected and not even know it. Today with hi-speed internet access, many people leave their computers on. Once thousands of computers are infected, the spammer can flick a switch and all these infected computers start sending the spam. So hosts and ISPs focus efforts on filtering and reducing incoming spam to our customers mail boxes.

WHAT DOES MIDITECH DO TO HELP IN THE BATTLE AGAINST SPAM?

We have STRICT terms in our Terms Of Service Agreement regarding SPAMMING. We do NOT tolerate a spammer on our network. Such account holders will find their hosting account deleted without notice.
If our servers get blacklisted because a customer sent unsolicited emails from our servers , we work quickly to shut down the offending account holder and work diligently to get our server IPs off the black list.
Miditech provides FREE Email Anti-Spam Filter and Email Antivirus Service on the server side (before you download your email) to every customer. PLEASE NOTE: We provide you with these tools. However, YOU MUST TURN THESE FEATURES ON and SET THEM AS YOU NEED. Learn more about these tools and how to use them HERE.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP LESSON THE SPAM EMAIL THAT YOU RECEIVE?

There are many things you can do that most customers have not done. This is understandable. Who has the time to keep up on what spammers are doing right? This is one of the reasons that Miditech has created this document. Knowledge is power! We have done much of the work for you in determining what you can do to help lesson the amount of email spam you have to look at.

#1: TURN ON BOTH EMAIL ANTISPAM AND ANTIVIRUS IN YOUR CONTROL PANEL FOR EVERY EMAIL ACCOUNT YOU HAVE

These tools are server side and work to reduce viruses and spam before they reach your email inbox on our servers. (before you even download your emails)
Learn more

#2: DON'T JUST TURN THE ANTISPAM FILTER ON AND EXPECT THAT TO FILTER ALL YOUR SPAM.

You MUST learn how to use the settings of the Anti-spam feature and then implement them properly. This is NOT something Miditech can do for you in light of the fact that we could cause you to lose legitimate emails and we will not be responsible for this. Using the spam filtering needs to be monitored by you until you reach the appropriate setting that help lessen your spam while still receiving the real emails. This level will be different for every customer. There is a small learning curve to use the spam filter but it is well worth the effort!
Learn more

#3 TURN OFF THE EMAIL CATCHALL FEATURE ON ALL OF YOUR MAIL ACCOUNTS

This was once a great and convenient feature that allows anyname@yourdomain.com to still reach you. Originally it was a great way to have sales@, info@ etc all end up in one email box. And if someone misspells the email address but gets the domain name right, you would still receive the email.

Today, with spammers running rampant, using this feature is no longer good practice. The problem now is that spammers send to various random names and nonexistent names @yourdomain figuring that they will be sending to many people.

IT IS BETTER TO USE EMAIL ALIASES
THEN EMAIL FORWARDS

Also, a common practice of spammers is to set the REPLY TO email address of outgoing spam to an email address like hghdfts@yourdomain.com. They pick domain name randomly from scripts that search domain names. You see, a spammer sits at their computer and is ready to send out 2 million spam emails (or more!) across the globe. Now they know that of the emails they send, there will be thousands and thousands of bounce backs from servers telling them that the email address they sent too does not exist on the receiving server network. Spammers do not care about, nor do they want to see, all these bounce back messages. They also do not want recipients of their spam to know what domain name they sent from. So their scripts pick a random domain name (YOUR DOMAIN NAME!) and use a fake name such as jhygtdfr@yourdomain.com as the reply email address. All the bounce backs will not go to that fictitious email address. You can see what the problem is, if you have the catchall on... your email box will be full of spam in no time at all. If you get hit big... your email box could become useless and need to be deleted and recreated, losing your legit mail in the meantime.

Turning off the catch-all (using your account control panel), and activating only the email names you wish to use, will eliminate some of the spam. It will also eliminate you receiving such bounce back email spam. Anything sent to a nonexistent email address will bounce back to the sender and you will not see the spam that you were going to see with the catchall feature on.

EMAIL DOMAIN BLOCKING

Some customers have contacted us stating that their email works but no one with a hotmail account or sympatico account or rogers etc can receive their emails. We now know why:

Many ISPs (such as hotmail, sympatico, comcast and many others) are also having to tighten their grip on the amount of spam they are receiving. If you have a catchall turned on and email forwarding to one of these ISPs email addresses you could find your domain name blocked on their mail servers! Why? Because email spam hits your catchall account and is forwarded to their servers, now they get hit with the same spam. Their spam filters see that it is coming from YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS (because it was forwarded from your email address account) and they blacklist your domain to lessen their spam. Spam costs in terms of bandwidth - all hosts and ISPS (Miditech too!) try to eliminate as much spam as possible because it costs us and hurts all of our customers.

AGAIN.. TURN OFF EMAIL CATCHALLS! USE EMAIl ALIASES INSTEAD OF EMAIL FORWARDING AS WELL.

#4. PURCHASE, INSTALL AND KEEP UP-TO-DATE ANTISPAM AND ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE!!!

Products such as Norton Internet Security can help you in the fight against spam. EVERY computer you have should have such software installed. And make sure that you keep the definition files up-to-date.

#5. USE YOUR EMAIL CLIENT "MESSAGE RULES" FEATURES.

Most email software applications have a feature called message rules. This allows you to add rules that help you eliminate some of the repeat spam that you may receive by scanning the message and subject of incoming emails. Also, Mozilla (makers of the popular Firefox browser) has a new email client called THUNDERBIRD that actually learns as you use the software and helps you to lessen spam as well. It is very useful and the software works much the same as Microsoft Outlook.

THE BIG FIX!!!!....

#6. DO NOT PLACE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSES ON YOUR WEBSITE OR ON ANY FORUM OR BLOG ONLINE. INSTEAD USE A SPAM PROTECTED WEB FORM OR A TROUBLE TICKET SYSTEM

98% of spammers get your email address from.. your website! If you are already receiving vast amounts of spam, change your email addresses and use a spam protected web form instead. Here is a great one that we highly recommend: http://www.ultimateformmail.com/ .

On the web form you can have a drop down box so customers can choose who should receive the email (either dept. or individual). THe backend of this will then distribute the email to the appropriate address.

How do you change email addresses to get rid of spam without losing customer emails? It's easy...

1. Make your current email address with an autoresponder stating that "In order to reduce spam we have changed this email address. Please use our web form and will will respond. We can also provide you with our direct email address at that time."

Leave the email account and although the customer gets the autoresponder, you do actually still get the email. You can leave things like this for a period of time if you like. You get no lost emails and you will be pleasantly surprised to see that all customers have also used the web form. When you feel more confident, ditch the old email account. You can also create a message rule in your email client software (such as outlook) and place all emails from the old address to a specific folder. That way you can always check it there from time to time but you will not see the spam in your main new email account.

Miditech recently did this in 2008 and within 24 hours we had eliminated 99% of incoming spam. It was an amazing relief and helped us be more productive in supporting our customers via email.

By the way, you can still post an email address on forums etc. - just do not use your main email account. For any forum you use create an email forward address that forwards to your main email account. That way if spam starts getting through that address... you simply change the email forward address. ;o)

Some Other Sites With Helpful Info:

HowToFightSpam.com

ZDnet - Fighting Spam

Other

MIDITECH does everything we can to help reduce the level of spam you receive. Following the above guideline will go far in helping you reduce the amount of spam that you receive. We cannot eliminate the spam that we all receive, but we can fight and greatly reduce the burden!

We want you to know that we are fighting!!

MIDITECH.COM SUPPORT




	JOIN MIDITECH IN FIGHTING SPAM In the last few years email spam activities have increased dramatically globally. Some customers have been asking what we have done that caused this sudden increase in spam in their email boxes. The answer is, we have not done anything but fight it to the best of our abilities. Our network admins have been very proactive in this fight and we want our customers to know what is going on behind the scenes regarding this issue. This problem is not only related to the services of MIDITECH. This is a global problem affecting every email account provider and ISP. Miditech has taken a very proactive approach to lessen the spam you receive. In fact, even with the large amount of spam you may still be getting, we already block thousands of spam emails every hour of the day that you never see, 7 days per week! This document was prepared to help our customers in the fight against Unsolicited Email (commonly referred to as "Email SPAM") and other effects of what the spammers do in sending such unsolicited email. KNOW THIS: WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE!!! Some customers say why not just block the spammers IPs. The answer is because that is not going work. Spammers either keep changing their mail server IPS or , like in most cases, they send out and infect millions of computers with a virus. A person having a computer without virus protection on their local computer can cause the computer to become infected and not even know it. Today with hi-speed internet access, many people leave their computers on. Once thousands of computers are infected, the spammer can flick a switch and all these infected computers start sending the spam. So hosts and ISPs focus efforts on filtering and reducing incoming spam to our customers mail boxes. WHAT DOES MIDITECH DO TO HELP IN THE BATTLE AGAINST SPAM? We have STRICT terms in our Terms Of Service Agreement regarding SPAMMING. We do NOT tolerate a spammer on our network. Such account holders will find their hosting account deleted without notice. If our servers get blacklisted because a customer sent unsolicited emails from our servers , we work quickly to shut down the offending account holder and work diligently to get our server IPs off the black list. Miditech provides FREE Email Anti-Spam Filter and Email Antivirus Service on the server side (before you download your email) to every customer. PLEASE NOTE: We provide you with these tools. However, YOU MUST TURN THESE FEATURES ON and SET THEM AS YOU NEED. Learn more about these tools and how to use them HERE. WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP LESSON THE SPAM EMAIL THAT YOU RECEIVE? There are many things you can do that most customers have not done. This is understandable. Who has the time to keep up on what spammers are doing right? This is one of the reasons that Miditech has created this document. Knowledge is power! We have done much of the work for you in determining what you can do to help lesson the amount of email spam you have to look at. #1: TURN ON BOTH EMAIL ANTISPAM AND ANTIVIRUS IN YOUR CONTROL PANEL FOR EVERY EMAIL ACCOUNT YOU HAVE These tools are server side and work to reduce viruses and spam before they reach your email inbox on our servers. (before you even download your emails) Learn more #2: DON'T JUST TURN THE ANTISPAM FILTER ON AND EXPECT THAT TO FILTER ALL YOUR SPAM. You MUST learn how to use the settings of the Anti-spam feature and then implement them properly. This is NOT something Miditech can do for you in light of the fact that we could cause you to lose legitimate emails and we will not be responsible for this. Using the spam filtering needs to be monitored by you until you reach the appropriate setting that help lessen your spam while still receiving the real emails. This level will be different for every customer. There is a small learning curve to use the spam filter but it is *well worth the effort!* Learn more #3 TURN OFF THE EMAIL CATCHALL FEATURE ON ALL OF YOUR MAIL ACCOUNTS This was once a great and convenient feature that allows anyname@yourdomain.com to still reach you. Originally it was a great way to have sales@, info@ etc all end up in one email box. And if someone misspells the email address but gets the domain name right, you would still receive the email. Today, with spammers running rampant, using this feature is no longer good practice. The problem now is that spammers send to various random names and nonexistent names @yourdomain figuring that they will be sending to many people. IT IS BETTER TO USE EMAIL ALIASES THEN EMAIL FORWARDS Also, a common practice of spammers is to set the REPLY TO email address of outgoing spam to an email address like hghdfts@yourdomain.com. They pick domain name randomly from scripts that search domain names. You see, a spammer sits at their computer and is ready to send out 2 million spam emails (or more!) across the globe. Now they know that of the emails they send, there will be thousands and thousands of bounce backs from servers telling them that the email address they sent too does not exist on the receiving server network. Spammers do not care about, nor do they want to see, all these bounce back messages. They also do not want recipients of their spam to know what domain name they sent from. So their scripts pick a random domain name (YOUR DOMAIN NAME!) and use a fake name such as jhygtdfr@yourdomain.com as the reply email address. All the bounce backs will not go to that fictitious email address. You can see what the problem is, if you have the catchall on... your email box will be full of spam in no time at all. If you get hit big... your email box could become useless and need to be deleted and recreated, losing your legit mail in the meantime. Turning off the catch-all (using your account control panel), and activating only the email names you wish to use, will eliminate some of the spam. It will also eliminate you receiving such bounce back email spam. Anything sent to a nonexistent email address will bounce back to the sender and you will not see the spam that you were going to see with the catchall feature on. EMAIL DOMAIN BLOCKING Some customers have contacted us stating that their email works but no one with a hotmail account or sympatico account or rogers etc can receive their emails. We now know why: Many ISPs (such as hotmail, sympatico, comcast and many others) are also having to tighten their grip on the amount of spam they are receiving. If you have a catchall turned on and email forwarding to one of these ISPs email addresses you could find your domain name blocked on their mail servers! Why? Because email spam hits your catchall account and is forwarded to their servers, now they get hit with the same spam. Their spam filters see that it is coming from YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS (because it was forwarded from your email address account) and they blacklist your domain to lessen their spam. Spam costs in terms of bandwidth - all hosts and ISPS (Miditech too!) try to eliminate as much spam as possible because it costs us and hurts all of our customers. AGAIN.. TURN OFF EMAIL CATCHALLS! USE EMAIl ALIASES INSTEAD OF EMAIL FORWARDING AS WELL. #4. PURCHASE, INSTALL AND KEEP UP-TO-DATE ANTISPAM AND ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE!!! Products such as Norton Internet Security can help you in the fight against spam. EVERY computer you have should have such software installed. And make sure that you keep the definition files up-to-date. #5. USE YOUR EMAIL CLIENT "MESSAGE RULES" FEATURES. Most email software applications have a feature called message rules. This allows you to add rules that help you eliminate some of the repeat spam that you may receive by scanning the message and subject of incoming emails. Also, Mozilla (makers of the popular Firefox browser) has a new email client called THUNDERBIRD that actually learns as you use the software and helps you to lessen spam as well. It is very useful and the software works much the same as Microsoft Outlook. THE BIG FIX!!!!.... #6. DO NOT PLACE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSES ON YOUR WEBSITE OR ON ANY FORUM OR BLOG ONLINE. INSTEAD USE A SPAM PROTECTED WEB FORM OR A TROUBLE TICKET SYSTEM 98% of spammers get your email address from.. your website! If you are already receiving vast amounts of spam, change your email addresses and use a spam protected web form instead. Here is a great one that we highly recommend: http://www.ultimateformmail.com/ . On the web form you can have a drop down box so customers can choose who should receive the email (either dept. or individual). THe backend of this will then distribute the email to the appropriate address. How do you change email addresses to get rid of spam without losing customer emails? It's easy... 1. Make your current email address with an autoresponder stating that "In order to reduce spam we have changed this email address. Please use our web form and will will respond. We can also provide you with our direct email address at that time." Leave the email account and although the customer gets the autoresponder, you do actually still get the email. You can leave things like this for a period of time if you like. You get no lost emails and you will be pleasantly surprised to see that all customers have also used the web form. When you feel more confident, ditch the old email account. You can also create a message rule in your email client software (such as outlook) and place all emails from the old address to a specific folder. That way you can always check it there from time to time but you will not see the spam in your main new email account. Miditech recently did this in 2008 and within 24 hours we had eliminated 99% of incoming spam. It was an amazing relief and helped us be more productive in supporting our customers via email. By the way, you can still post an email address on forums etc. - just do not use your main email account. For any forum you use create an email forward address that forwards to your main email account. That way if spam starts getting through that address... you simply change the email forward address. ;o) Some Other Sites With Helpful Info: HowToFightSpam.com ZDnet - Fighting Spam Other MIDITECH does everything we can to help reduce the level of spam you receive. Following the above guideline will go far in helping you reduce the amount of spam that you receive. We cannot eliminate the spam that we all receive, but we can fight and greatly reduce the burden! We want you to know that we are fighting!! MIDITECH.COM SUPPORT