Emails - Page 2 - UK Web Hosting | Dedicated Server Windows and Linux VPS Forum

**jonl** · #21 (**permalink**) 09-01-2007, 12:42

Hi Eukhost

I am a prospective customer as of today, this sounds better and better, none of my previous providers gave me any kind of spam protection at all. The only thing I had previously heard of was from AOL and I believe that necessitated using their browser and their email software etc (ie no good for techie users but nice for other folks).

Are you in a position to elaborate on the nature of the protective scripts or is this a trade secret for obvious reasons?

Even if you cannot satisfy my curiosity, I am still very encouraged to encounter a provider who is active on this front.

Jon.

**jonl** · #22 (**permalink**) 09-01-2007, 12:55

Hello to SWFExpert and Eukhost

One problem I have with my existing set up in France ( I have yet to transfer to Eukhost - I am a prospective customer) is that spoofers use my domain name to send spam to other people.

I as far as I am concerned, I have one email address for that domain, lets call it
ABC@ ME.COM

I receive countless emails from other people's servers all over the world telling me that my email with sender's address

ANYRANDOMWORD@ ME.COM

Is being rejected as spam so the spoofers are managing to make me look like a spammer, that is bad for people who are not adequetely protected by their servers and for me this means that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge can guess my URL from the email address and visit my website hosting and decide that they definetly do not want to do business with me.

My business is a hotel and I do not want to get a bad reputation because of the actions of others.

Please add any additional knowledge into the subject of spoofing, it is useful and informative.

regards Jon

**eUKhost.com** · #23 (**permalink**) 09-01-2007, 14:04

I had a discussion with SWExpert about SPF records and we have spf support on all our servers. All that we need to do is add additional entry in your domains DNS configuration which will stop anyone from spoofing your domain name for spamming.

We setup spf records for customers as per their requests and all our servers have anti-spam configuration setup by our CRO. I've never asked him to provide a documentation on what exactly he has done to reduce the spams but I was happy with the results and not much bothered about what he did coz now I get less than 10 spams a day while it was above 300 spams per day till November 2006.

I will ask him to make a documentation on what he has done but I am not sure if he would do it happily.

**swexpert** · #24 (**permalink**) 09-01-2007, 14:51

Hi Jon,

There are numerous ways like we discussed in this thread one is using an SPF record. SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework (or Sender ID Framework because MS likes to use this name, or DomainKeys by Yahoo). Efficiency of SPF largely depends on anti-spam measures at the RECIPIENT's server. If your record is good and the recipients Mail Transport Agent (POP server) reads SPF records before accepting mail, then spoofed addresses are rejected by the recipients server.

In short, you mention which computers on the Internet are allowed to send mail on your domain's behalf on the DNS records. POP servers while accepting mail, read that information, if the sender does not belong to one of those authorized by you, rejects the mail (or sends to a "blackhole").

It has a downside that if you run a mailserver from a dynamic internet IP address for some reason, chances are your mail will be rejected too.

To use SPF feature properly, you need full control on your DNS records. eUKhost gives you full access to the DNS records of your domain

. Looking forward to assist you for a smooth transition from your current host.

Let us know your domain and we'll see if you have an SPF records or not.

Regds
IJ

**Chris** · #25 (**permalink**) 18-01-2007, 23:18

Mark, One of my clients is currently having problems with spoofed email on his domain - and is receiving hundreds of bounce messages. Are you saying you can help with this?

**eUKhost.com** · #26 (**permalink**) 19-01-2007, 10:57

Yep. I'll take care of that.

I am expert in email solutions as spamming, spoofing, dictionary attack are the basic reason resulting in downtime for servers and we have all our staff members well trained to tackle such issues.

Let me know the domain of your customer and I will get it sorted.

**Chris** · #27 (**permalink**) 19-01-2007, 17:19

Thanks, I'll raise a ticket.

Can I ask why such measures would not be applied to all accounts by default? e.g. Does it create other restrictions?

**eUKhost.com** · #28 (**permalink**) 19-01-2007, 19:46

We have all required automation in place to prevent spamming, spoofing and dictionary attack but any further tweaks to those settings will create problems for incoming and outgoing email service.

Some resellers add new customers without verification and some of their customers turn to be expert spammers who know how to run their scripts for mass mailing. We get instant notification when such scripts are executed and those resellers those resellers are notified by one of our management members.

Catchall is another major problem which results into dictionary attack but some customers want it to continue their hosting with us and we theirs no solution to stop dictionary attack on such accounts which have catchall setup.

I will have a word with our CRO to see if we can work out something to setup SPF records by default for any account at the time of its setup. If we get this implemented then we will need to keep a watch on reseller hosting servers only.

**eUKhost.com** · #29 (**permalink**) 19-01-2007, 21:13

LOL.

This was too simple. It took 2 mins for him to insert a rule in zone template to setup spf records by default for new accounts.

**Chris** · #30 (**permalink**) 23-01-2007, 20:10

well done!

I can confirm my client is very pleased with the immediate reduction in spurious 'failed' messages.

Thanks and regards.

**eUKhost.com** · #31 (**permalink**) 23-01-2007, 21:14

Thats good to hear.

If you have any other domains which need spf records then let me know and I can take care of that in free time.

**osluk** · #32 (**permalink**) 19-02-2007, 16:44

Can you let me know how i can tweak WHM to add the SPF records automatically to new domains. Also best way to add to the existing domains.

Support have been really great so far in fixing any DNSstuf.com errors I have seen.

Only tricky issues with the VPS Hosting are the following:

WARN Nameservers on separate class C's WARNING:
We cannot test to see if your nameservers are all on the same Class C (technically, /24) range, because the root servers are not sending glue. We plan to add such a test later, but today you will have to manually check to make sure that they are on separate Class C ranges. Your nameservers should be at geographically dispersed locations. You should not have all of your nameservers at the same location. RFC2182 3.1 goes into more detail about secondary nameserver location.

WARN Single Point of Failure WARNING: Although you have at least 2 NS records, they may both point to the same server (neither of our two tests is sure; it appears that there are one or more firewall(s) that intercept and alter DNS packets), which would result in a single point of failure. You are required to have at least 2 nameservers per RFC 1035 section 2.2.

If I had 2 VPS Hosting from you could these be on different class C's
Or will this always be an issue with the VPS Hosting product.

Top notch serice so far guys. (Can't remember saying that for a long time to a hosting outfit - keep up the graet work).

Cheers Chris

**eUKhost.com** · #33 (**permalink**) 19-02-2007, 19:58

Hello Chris,

open "edit zone templates" from DNS functions in your WHM and edit all 3 templates over there and add following line at the bottom :-

%domain%. IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ip4:87.117.234.234 ~all"

make sure that you replace "87.117.234.234" with IP of your VPS Hosting.

As far as your other question is concerned on Nameservers on different subnets, I would like to clarify that we cannot add IPs from different subnets on a single VPS Hosting. If you have 2 VPS Hosting with us then we can setup both on separate subnets. We own multiple subnets so you can will have many options related to subnets but you will need to communicate with our VPS Hosting support team to get this done.

**swexpert** · #34 (**permalink**) 19-02-2007, 20:42

You can ignore that part Chris. You can maintain DNS at different places in the world/IP ranges. But the records have to match. Considering your expertise at the time being, I'd suggest that you ignore that error. It is important but perhaps 90% of the servers worldwide are set in the same way as yours. Relax!

You don't have to sort out all problems that dnsstuff mentions.

Regds
IJ

**steppen** · #35 (**permalink**) 22-05-2007, 10:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by eukhost.com

open "edit zone templates" from DNS functions in your WHM and edit all 3 templates over there and add following line at the bottom :-

%domain%. IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ip4:87.117.234.234 ~all"

make sure that you replace "87.117.234.234" with IP of your VPS Hosting.

Can the manual change of IP be avoided by replacing "ip4:87.117.234.234" with "ip4:%ip%"?

I.e. like this:
%domain%. IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ip4:%ip% ~all"

**eUKhost.com** · #36 (**permalink**) 22-05-2007, 10:35

Yep.

You can do that as well.

**steppen** · #37 (**permalink**) 22-05-2007, 10:39

Nice. Thanks for the confirmation.

**benArrayx** · #38 (**permalink**) 20-07-2007, 18:38

guys, it's all well and good that you are trying to handle spam on our behalf, but your filters are massively overzealous and now for the 2nd time in 2 days I'm not receiving *any* email at all. I'm most unhappy - you shouldn't be releasing solutions you haven't tested properly. Things like this make me very nervous about reselling your services as the clients hold me responsible for this kind of thing.

for the record I have my own anti-spam solution which works very effectively, if anyone else wants to try it out give me your details at www.arrayx.co.uk/newSite/antiSpam

**flesso** · #39 (**permalink**) 20-07-2007, 18:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by benArrayx

guys, it's all well and good that you are trying to handle spam on our behalf, but your filters are massively overzealous and now for the 2nd time in 2 days I'm not receiving *any* email at all. I'm most unhappy - you shouldn't be releasing solutions you haven't tested properly. Things like this make me very nervous about reselling your services as the clients hold me responsible for this kind of thing.

for the record I have my own anti-spam solution which works very effectively, if anyone else wants to try it out give me your details at www.arrayx.co.uk/newSite/antiSpam

Part of you problem is that you've created duplicated MX records. You're probably not recieving any mail because it keeps getting looped round and round.

Results from: http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/dnsrep...n=arrayx.co.uk

**benArrayx** · #40 (**permalink**) 20-07-2007, 18:47

I haven't touched my MX records