Spam mail and blacklist

[Ehawkinson]

Hopefully I'm posting this in an appropriate part of the forum.

About a year ago I started receiving a very light amount of spam mail after a friends email got hacked (I'm assuming this is the reason I started receiving the spam mail). I have my own domain and email with this domain and have used it strictly for business for the past 5 or so years. Over the year the spam mail began to come in more often and eventually on a regular, daily basis - to the point where it just became too much of an annoyance. I just moved over to a new server, with a new domain extension, and a completely new email address. My question is - will this resolve my issue to stop the spam mail from coming in? I usually check my outgoing mail on a pretty regular basis and I've never seen any spam mail being sent, it's only received. Also, after a quick blacklist search I noticed that I was coming up on one or two blacklists. I'm not sure if this is from the domain address or the IP address. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[jeremysteele]

Hopefully I'm posting this in an appropriate part of the forum.

About a year ago I started receiving a very light amount of spam mail after a friends email got hacked (I'm assuming this is the reason I started receiving the spam mail). I have my own domain and email with this domain and have used it strictly for business for the past 5 or so years. Over the year the spam mail began to come in more often and eventually on a regular, daily basis - to the point where it just became too much of an annoyance. I just moved over to a new server, with a new domain extension, and a completely new email address. My question is - will this resolve my issue to stop the spam mail from coming in? I usually check my outgoing mail on a pretty regular basis and I've never seen any spam mail being sent, it's only received. Also, after a quick blacklist search I noticed that I was coming up on one or two blacklists. I'm not sure if this is from the domain address or the IP address. Any help would be appreciated.

Depends on the blacklist. Domain blacklists are unreliable and fairly easily fooled by header spoofing. IP blacklists are more accurate - but often the IPs will stay on the lists long after the spammer is done with them.

If you're on IP blacklists you can try getting removed - but honestly I usually just have my host assign me a new IP since some lists are a bitch.

If you look up a blacklist it should tell you if they use domains or IPs (or both). Often times they have forms you can use to remove yourself.

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As far as the spam issue - I've had a major issue with one of my domains for a similar reason. Switching domains/email addresses should fix it for you, at least until your address gets out again.

In my case - a domain I got for mine/my families personal email gets bombarded due to one (or more) of our relatives having infected machines. Darn spammers spoof the headers to make it look like we are sending the crap to one another, but I know we aren't.

I'm actually in the process of switching us all over to gmail or something and just doing email forwarding.... since their spam filters are quite a bit more accurate.

Some people have great luck with spamassassin (default on most servers) - but at the level I'm getting hit even a 95% catch rate isn't enough (getting 1 spam every 20 seconds... all day. About a 96% catch rate currently).

I also host several other sites on the same server without issue - so I know its a simple matter of our addresses got out due to a jackass relative not using antivirus.

 

[Ehawkinson]

Depends on the blacklist. Domain blacklists are unreliable and fairly easily fooled by header spoofing. IP blacklists are more accurate - but often the IPs will stay on the lists long after the spammer is done with them.

If you're on IP blacklists you can try getting removed - but honestly I usually just have my host assign me a new IP since some lists are a bitch.

If you look up a blacklist it should tell you if they use domains or IPs (or both). Often times they have forms you can use to remove yourself.

---------

As far as the spam issue - I've had a major issue with one of my domains for a similar reason. Switching domains/email addresses should fix it for you, at least until your address gets out again.

In my case - a domain I got for mine/my families personal email gets bombarded due to one (or more) of our relatives having infected machines. Darn spammers spoof the headers to make it look like we are sending the crap to one another, but I know we aren't.

I'm actually in the process of switching us all over to gmail or something and just doing email forwarding.... since their spam filters are quite a bit more accurate.

Some people have great luck with spamassassin (default on most servers) - but at the level I'm getting hit even a 95% catch rate isn't enough (getting 1 spam every 20 seconds... all day. About a 96% catch rate currently).

I also host several other sites on the same server without issue - so I know its a simple matter of our addresses got out due to a jackass relative not using antivirus.

Looking into requesting a new IP from my host. Thanks for that btw.

When you say that it should resolve the spam issue until the address gets out again - is it likely that spammers will be able to pick up the new email address from the previous?

Also, looking into my analytics, even after the switch to a new server, I am getting some pretty far off (not normal) traffic with some strange refer links, ie. kawaiigoods, semalt, mugibunny, etc. none of which have any relation to any of my sites. I've found some info on semalt through a search but nothing on the others. Do you think changing over to a new IP may resolve the issue of these bizarre (or spam) links? Would this be potential for a spammer to pick up the new email address?