"I tried sending a legitimate e-mail message, but got back a delivery failure message that said I was a suspected spammer!"

Post in this forum and I will get back to you. I am pretty much always refining the way our servers handle spam filtering and processing. Occasionally, the good guys get caught in the crossfire. I will do everything within reason to set it right for you. Do not post any information here which you would not want to be readable by the public (for example, if you post a real e-mail address, I promise you that spammers will get it with their address harvesting bots). Simply posting here that you got caught up in the server spam processing will suffice to get the communication ball rolling.

"I get spam crap from someuser@somedomain.com constantly! I am going to report you and have you added to an RBL (registered blacklist)!"

Please don't. In the event you actually did receive spam from one of the domains hosted here, just let me know. I will investigate, and if I discover that the domain holder is actually responsible, I will cancel the account. There are three very likely reasons that you receive spam from one of our hosted domains:

1. Someone with a legitimate mail account on that domain has a hacked/zombied home or office computer which is being used to send e-mail via their mail client (like Outlook). These issues can be tracked down by paying attention to mail traffic patterns, and can be resolved by working through it with the client.

SPAM is a hassle for everyone except spammers. It increases the load on mailservers, which directly increases the cost of running those servers by demanding more computing power and greater bandwidth. It requires a massive amount of administrative work to stay on top of current anti-SPAM trends and to keep the servers humming happily. Spam eats into your time and money as well. Your ISP and your web host increase their service fees in order to be able to cover the cost of combating spam. Likely every time you open your e-mail client you sort through some spam, no matter how good your filters are. If you have very strict spam filtering set up, it is also likely that you are missing some legitimate e-mail due to false positives. I could go on and on about the cost of dealing with spam. I think you get the picture. So I will go on to list a few resources which I have found very valuable in my own research and battle against spam on both a server administration and a client level.

For the e-mail end user:
The Spam Primer is a brilliant site written by Randy Cassingham, who has been a professional presence on the internet for over a decade. Randy's Primer is intended for client use, and is written such that just about everyone should be able to understand and follow his suggestions.

For the website administrator: