Spam Email

Introduction

What is spam email? Different types of spam email? How to take steps to resolve it?

Spam email is unsolicited and unwanted junk email sent out in bulk to an indiscriminate recipient list. Spam can be a result of a misconfigured mail server, compromised servers, or email accounts being compromised.

The main issue with spam email is that it can prevent your legitimate emails (transactional emails, etc.) from being delivered to customers and could damage the reputation of your company.

Apart from the general hygiene of servers—like ensuring security updates, having strong passwords for your email accounts, and following best practices of server security—we also recommend the following to ensure reliable delivery of your emails.

11 Ways on How Not to End Up in the Spam/Bulk Folder

You don’t need to actually spam these days to end up in the bulk or spam folder. It just takes a bit of patience to get out of there—there is no magic bullet or red pill to do the job quickly and painlessly. It can be incredibly frustrating to deal with large internet companies where the attitude is "our machines + algorithms are smarter than you."

1. Avoid spam-friendly hosting providers
   Don’t host your sites with spam-friendly hosting providers. If you're on a shared hosting service, don’t abuse the resources (and don’t host with a provider who lets other shared hosting customers abuse resources).

2. Check against known spam blacklists.

3. Request customers to add your "From" address to their address books
   Requesting your customers to add your newsletter "From" address to their address books can help, especially with some email providers.

4. Limit rate of emails
   Rate-limiting the number of emails sent per minute is a good idea. Otherwise, it’s considered a DoS-type abuse by email providers, and most will send you to a tarpit.

5. Provide communication channels
   Keep the lines of communication open at your postmaster@, abuse@ addresses, and list out a phone number for abuse complaints. Listen to bounces and customer feedback. Do not send email from unmonitored email addresses like donotreply@.

6. Maintain logs
   Logs are your friends—log all email send actions in your web application.

7. Use sender frameworks
   Guard your reputation against joe-job accusations by using sender identification/authentication frameworks like SPF and DKIM.

8. Maintain DNS reverse records
   Make sure you have DNS reverse records for your MTA.

9. Avoid DSL for bulk mailing
   Never use a bulk mailing software from your home DSL connection.

10. Don’t send emails to uninterested customers
    Most Indian companies (job sites, mutual funds, banks, online travel companies, etc.) don’t care if customers don’t want to receive their emails or SMSes. Don’t be like them. Differentiate yourself.

11. Add an unsubscribe option
    Add a one-click unsubscribe option, and allow the subscriber to delete their account from your web service. A non-tedious, one-click unsubscribe that doesn’t require login goes a long way in avoiding subscriber frustration and hitting the [This is Spam] button.

Important Tips

• Postmaster@ or abuse@ addresses of large email providers do respond to your requests to whitelist, provided:
  1. Your customers opted in to receive the emails you are sending them. It's not okay to send marketing emails to customers who signed up for alerts.
  2. Make it as easy to unsubscribe for customers as it is to hit the spam button (see point 11).
  3. Honest mistakes (such as your server getting cracked and sending out a million 'Viagra' emails) are forgiven more easily than willful spamming.
  4. Get expert help and contact us.

Please note that this document is provided for the benefit of our customers and the community at large. E2E Networks is not responsible for any inadvertent issues arising out of trying any of the advice or using any of the tools.

In case any of your servers at E2E Networks are compromised, please communicate with us immediately and take action to fix the issue. Failure to respond or resolve the issue may contravene the IT Act 2000 and could lead to the disabling of the public network.