iWeb Communities: Blog

This post is about making the world a better place for anyone on the Internet. How can we make it happen? Well, one of the first step is to get rid of spam. An old but albeit interesting study shows that spam costs $20 billion in lost productivity. That was in 2003; just imagine what the figure might be in 2009!

Of course, everyone thinks about 419 Nigerian scammers, about “health-enhancement” and get-quick-rich advertisements, which can be detected relatively easily by anti-spam filters.

The other categories we don’t usually think about is spam we generate ourselves. Marketing mail, customer notifications (think about the dozens of emails Facebook can send to you every day), newsletters sent to members or customers without any prior agreement, those are also spam. So, here are 5 simple guidelines on how not to create spam mail and make the world a better place:

1. Make sure your server is secure. You can read the first part of this guide written on the iWeb blog not so long ago. Make sure especially to disable ports and unused services: in fact, the majority of generated spam come from hijacked servers, operated by unaware and unsuspecting owners. Alternatively, you can ask us to do a security check on your server (if you have managed services).
2. Make sure you don’t have contact forms on your website. Hackers love to exploit contact forms and use them to send emails, on your behalf. Of course, you can use contact forms, but only if you can make sure that the form is secure, and that the person submitting the form is a real person. The next thing you know, your server will be banned and the server will be cut off by iWeb staff
3. If you have an application which sends email, make sure DNS MX entries are setup well, especially SPF records. SPF records are necessary to let email providers like hotmail or aol to accept outgoing generated email (see this guide to help you to setup your spf entries)
4. If you use mailing-lists, newsletter, or ANY form of mass mailing, make sure they are opt-in, which means that the user submitted his or her email voluntarily, and agreed explicitly to receive those emails. Do not for instance add the user automatially to a new promotional campaign or a different newsletter you’ve designed. They haven’t asked for it, and most of them will have the reflex to “Mark it as Spam” in their email client.
5. In the same spirit, if you send a mailing-list or newsletter, make sure there is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the newsletter. The link should unsubscribe directly, without them having to log in or submitting again their information. CampaignMonitor’s anti-spam page can help you to see what you are allowed to do and what you can’t