Tips & Hints > Reducing Spam (Unsolicited email)

Spam has grown into a huge and extremely annoying problem for many internet users (us included!), and we are constantly asked if we have anti spam measures in place.

Yes... we do have spam 'filters' & spam blocking systems running on our servers.

SPAM BLOCKING
Our system will block spammers by either filtering their email addresses through a database of 'known' spammers or SMTP IP addresses, but in recent times the spammers have become highly adept at masking their identities and SMTP IP addresses.
Spammers will often change their email address daily, if not 2-3 times a day, so a block that we add to to our list for a particular email address can be out of date within hours, or even minutes!

We actively add around 20 new email addresses, and about 5 SMTP IP addresses daily to our 'blocked' list.

Our anti-spam system automatically blocks IP addresses of SMTP relays when/if our servers detect that the sending server attempts to deliver 'x' amount of email in 'x' period to our users. This mechanism is fairly reliable, but on rare occasions can block inbound email from  'legitimate' senders.  If you are experiencing email getting 'bounced' from the UK Trading mail system, you can check to see if your host or IP is on our 'blacklist'.
Click here to open our host/IP test facility

You can help to reduce spam by being sensible and taking a few simple steps and precautions.
You will reduce the amount of spam you receive in your email by 90%

You can help to fight spam by reporting it to Spam Cop

Get rid of the 'wildcard' email alias on your account

By default, when our system sets up a domain, it is given a 'wildcard' alias.

The 'wildcard' looks like @www.yourdomain.xx and means "accept email for any alias @ my domain"

So, your account will accept email for anythingyoulike@yourdomain.xx 

Replace it with 'fixed' names... like john, sales, info etc (each alias name typed on separate lines)

This will restrict email collection for your domain to the names that you type in, and reject everything else.
If you find that you are getting a lot of spam email to a particular alias name, then delete that name from the list, and the spam will stop.

NEVER use your true   email address when filling out online forms & search engine submissions unless you trust the recipient won't pass your details on to another organisation.

Tip: If your hosting account allows adding users (all accounts above UKT 'Lite') then set up a 'dummy' user on your domain to receive information or results of making online applications.

Example:   

  1. Add a new user (in any name) to your account. This will add a new POP3 email account
  2. Type a 'dummy' email address in the aliases. e.g. 'marketing'
  3. Set up forwarding for that user to have email sent to your normal email account.

All email addressed to marketing@yourdomain will be collected by this POP3 and then forward it to your main email address for collection.

If in the future you start to get blitzed with spam email to the user marketing@yourdomain then delete the alias 'marketing' and type a new alias of... say 'marketing2 ' 

Email destined for marketing   will then get returned to the sender, and email for marketing2 will be accepted by the server and forwarded to your main account.

If your account doesn't allow adding users (UKT Lite), then use the 'fixed' aliases instead.

NEVER use the standard '<a href="mailto:' link on any web page on your website!  

The standard email link <a href= "mailto:me@mydomain.com" > me@mydomain.com </a> is too easily found and extracted by email 'harvesting' applications.
Once it has been found and extracted, it will get added to a spammers database.

Once it has got onto a database somewhere, you'll get spam email from every spamming organisation on the net, especially as these databases are regularly shared or sold openly.

If you do want to show your email address as a standard 'mailto:' link on a web page then use our email 'obfuscator'. 
 

Email 'Obfuscator'

enter the email address to obfuscate

This obfuscator will return some javascript code that should be pasted into your web page where you want your email address to show.