Preventing Spam on your VPS v2
Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE), also known as Spam, is a growing problem for
companies and individual with an internet presence. While legitimate mailing lists of
interested customers are useful to a business, a constantly increasing volume of E-mail
messages, often advertising semi-legal or questionable products, are being delivered to
thousands of E-mail addresses.
While the legal definition of UCE varries from one place to another,
spam.abuse.net provides a general description on
their What Is Spam? page.
The following is an excerpt from that page:
Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an
attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.
Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes,
or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs
are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
In addition to consuming your Virtual Private Server resources, spam can create a load
on the network infrastructure that allows your VPS to be accessed by others. For these
and other reasons, the AlpineWeb
AUP specifically bans sending spam:
Subscribers violate AlpineWeb policy and the service agreement when they, their
customers, affiliates, or subsidiaries engage in ... spamming. Sending unsolicited bulk
and/or commercial messages over the Internet ... is not only harmful because of its
negative impact on consumer attitudes toward AlpineWeb, but also because it can overload
AlpineWeb's network and disrupt service to AlpineWeb subscribers. Also, maintaining an open
SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, AlpineWeb has the discretion to
determine from all of the evidence whether the e-mail recipients were from an "opt-in"
e-mail list.
Preventing Spam Relays
Because of the growing anti-spam sentiment among internet service providers, spammers
frequently try to use another person's E-mail server to send their messages. Your Virtual
Private Server is designed to prevent your server from being used as a relay. SMTP
authentication prevents anyone who doesn't have a legitimate E-mail account on your
Virtual Private Server from sending E-mail from your server. We also provide
NMS Formmail, which
prevents spammers from using your Web-based forms to send spam.
Blocking Incoming Spam
NOTE: Any spam-filtering techniques you may use could
also block legitimate E-mail messages. The spam blocking techniques described here are
effective, but are not guaranteed to work. Some spam may still get through, and some
legitimate E-mail may get blocked.
There are a number of different tools available to help keep unwanted spam out of your
Virtual Private Server E-mail accounts.
More Information
For more information about spam and resources that can be used to fight it, see the
following Web sites:
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