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Here are some answers to questions about e-mail anti-spam protection.
Spam protection
What is spam?
Spam is unsolicited e-mail on the Internet. From the sender's point-of-view, it's a form of bulk mail,
often to a list culled from subscribers to a Usenet discussion group or obtained by companies that specialize in creating
e-mail distribution lists. To the receiver, it usually seems like junk e-mail. In general, it's not nice to send spam. It's
generally equivalent to unsolicited phone marketing calls except that the user pays for part
of the message since everyone shares the cost of maintaining the Internet.
Why is an e-mail antispam solution important?
It protects you from unsolicited e-mail. You recover the time you would normally waste downloading, reading, and deleting spam.
What kind of anti-spam measures do you use?
We use a combination of available information, and our own database of collected junk mail.
A number of factors can cause an e-mail to be detained:
- the source of incoming mail is checked against various blacklists
- the mail structure is checked against a database of common spam formulas
- the body of the message is checked for common junk mail expressions
- the mail includes hyperlinks to, or images from, known spam sources
- the mail is categorized and blocked based on the recipient users' configuration options
This procedure is highly successful.
What happens if spam is sent to me?
Nebularis detects the message to be coming from an unsolicited mail source, and blocks the mail immediately. You never receive it.
We constantly update and add to our database of more than 500 antispam filtering rules, almost as a daily
ritual.
How much spam gets rejected?
Unfortunately, a large percentage of e-mail is spam. Every year, this number increases. We're at the point where spam outnumbers legitimate e-mail. To put in perspective, we have noticed that if a mail account receives 1000 e-mails in a day, up to 80% (800) of it is spam.
Since 2002, the majority of spam seems to come from Eastern countries that have poorly-configured mail servers which spammers have been taking advantage of.
Can legitimate e-mail get blocked?
It's rare, but it can happen. Fortunately, through our domain control panel, we provide an
interface to view all blocked e-mail destined for your domain(s). Blocked e-mail can be viewed, and with a single click, delivered to its intended recipient.
So, yes, valid e-mail can potentially be blocked, but it doesn't disappear into oblivion! You have a choice of accepting it or not.
I still got spam!
We block a lot of spam, but spam-trapping isn't perfect. Even if 99% of spam is trapped, there is still a percentage that can get through. Usually if spam is received from a mail server which has not yet been identified as a spam-source, it will find its way through. If you get spam, you can send it to our special support address to deal with it.
Where can I learn more about spam and why it is bad?
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