Nov 8, 2000 - Mail System Upgrade: Anti-spam Filters |
| Anti-spam filters were implemented this week to combat the increasing volume of unsolicited bulk email (SPAM). For the past several weeks, various attempts were made to deal with the growing problem. An attempt to manually block domains that were found to be the source of large amounts of SPAM failed to work. Some of these blocked domains were sites that clients were accustomed to receiving genuine mail from as well. The domain which caused the most problems for our clients was Egroups.com. With the spam measures that were put in place, all mail from the Egroups.com site stopped flowing into the mail servers. As part of the new anti-spam filters, the mail system has been configured so that it uses a number of lists of known spammers and "open relays" (mail servers which, through poor configuration, make it easier for spammers to deliver junk email). Hopefully with the use of these lists, the amount of unsolicited junk emails will be blocked from entering the mail system while at the same time allow more genuine mail come through. These measures will not stop all the spam that is coming into the mail servers, but a large percentage of them. There are still a couple of "holes" that still need to be filled, and they will be worked on next. If you have any questions on the above, please email John Aspden. |