FSL Company Blog

A variety of mechanisms can generate email that appears to come from your site. These include:

• User generated mail
• Applications that send email
  • List Servers
  • MTA error messages
  • Email enabled applications

• Third Party Senders
• Forged Emails

You need to be aware of all the mechanisms your site uses to generate email so you can:

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Domain Name Services (DNS) and email delivery are closely linked services so unless DNS services are correctly configured for sending and receiving email servers, mail delivery will be broken. Please note that statement,”It takes two to tango,” absolutely and positively applies to email transfers. Seldom do customers realize that most of the time it’s not their email sever that broken, it’s the other guys server that’s the problem.

DNS services power the Internet. It was the Invention of DNS that enabled the Web, as we know it today.  I hate to admit it but I do remember when the entire world would exchange hosts files nightly. This scheme hit the wall in the early 1980s, when there were only about 10,000 hosts on the Internet. A good short history of DNS and how mail was delivered before DNS can be found at Domain Name System (DNS) History.

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By far the most common tech support call we get concerns a missing email.  And the most common solution is that it went missing because of a badly configured server that sent the email. In fact the sender's server and not a server that is using our BarricadeMX products cause most of the delivery problems we see. We get these support calls because tracking email delivery can be a confusing and complicated process.

Finding an email problem can be simplified if you follow some basic procedures and learn a few new skills. Unfortunately there is not much information available that presents how to track emails in a logical and detailed manner. To help fill in this gap, this first article will outline the process that should be followed to track an email delivery. Future blog articles will provide details of the steps that you will need use to find and understand the exact path the message followed and what eventually happened to the message.

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by Steve Swaney

After ten years in the anti-spam business, I’ve come to realize that what email users and administrators really want is not exactly what the typical anti-spam software provides or delivers.

E-mail users and administrators simply want using email to be exactly like it was in 1995, before spam and malicious emails became the problem they are today. In those days, you simply used email and didn’t need to spend hours cleaning out junk out of your inbox, or searching through spam quarantines looking for “trapped by mistake” messages or waste hours tracking down a message that never arrived.

Administrators didn’t waste time maintaining anti-spam systems, working with users to white and blacklist email senders or hours trying to find lost messages. Email worked correctly most of the time and if it didn’t, no one panicked, they just sent a fax. More users in 1995 were aware of the fact that email was not and never would be a “guaranteed” delivery methodology.

Best of all, email was a relatively inexpensive way to communicate.
Many Mail Transport programs were (and many still are) free. There were also free or relatively inexpensive programs for users to receive, send, store and read mail with. It was not necessary to spend $10 to $20 per year per mailbox just to keep them relatively free of spam, viruses and phishing schemes.

We recognized these facts years ago and since then we’ve tried to develop email scanning applications that are as invisible and unobtrusive as possible. For systems and email administrators we simplified the installation, configuration and maintenance of our anti-spam software lineup. All of our new products can be installed from the Internet in minutes and are ready to use with sensible defaults and minor configuration changes. We also supply administrators with the tools to track messages, solve delivery problems and also back them up with the best support in the business.

For the end users, we’ve created the most accurate anti-spam software available. This means that almost no white and black listing is necessary for most users. It also means that there will be less spam, fewer messages trapped by mistake and there is no need for quarantines.

Email quarantines are simply a headache for both users and administrators. They create an additional email directory to waste time checking and a place for good emails to be missed or lost. Our BarricadeMX software never quarantines a message. It either delivers the message, or returns the message to the sender with clear instructions on why the message was not delivered and what to do to solve the problem.

BarricadeMX can even be configured to allow legitimate senders to white list themselves with no help required from support at the receiving site.

And BarricadeMX is the most efficient cost effective email scanning software available period. There is never a per mailbox charge for using our products.

We’ve come a long way towards making our customers email experience more like that of 1995 than 2009, but not a single customer seems to be upset with this return to the “old” ways.

by Martin Hepworth

As if you didn't already suspect it, the BIG BOYS are now running a lot of cyber crime according to a recent article http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/Russian_mafia_is_largest_cyber_crime_syndicate/articleshow/3803018.cms in the India Times. To most people in the anti-spam and cyber crime industry this isn't a surprise. The economics are a lot better than peddling class A drugs (heroin etc) as you need a lot less response to get a profit, only 1 in 12.5 million emails needs a response as this BBC news item shows http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7719281.stm. So are the risks, there's less middle men involved and there a lot police involved in this type of crime.

So when you wonder about all this spam and where it's coming from, there a fair chance the people creating all these virus's and trojans that send out these emails are infact under the employ of large crime syndicate. http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=108084

What can we do about this? Well for start don't respond to the emails at all and of course don't purchase anything through them. I'm not just referring to the little blue pill adverts, but mortgages, watches or anything from an unknown source. As for the '419' style emails, you know the type large sum of money that needs moving from country to another and you can have 10% as a fee, well if it sounds too good to be true then is most likely is. What does all this add up to - education, education, education. If are informed about something you can make a better choice.
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=108084

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by Stephen Swaney

Spam, spam and more spam. When will it stop?

I've been working as an e-mail administrator since 1987 when my company, Summit Computers Inc., joined the Internet as summit.com. A trickle of e-mail then started flowing, mostly to and from our high tech partners Sun, DEC and Silicon Graphics. Most of the business world was still blissfully unaware of e-mail.

While unsolicited e-mail existed even then, most of the net abuse took place in USENET and other community spaces on the Internet.  A short but comprehensive history of Spam can be found at Brad Templeton's web site.  The site is definitely worth a visit if you're not familiar with the history and timeline of abuse on the Internet.

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The FSL team would like to welcome you to our new Company Blog.  We are eager and excited to tor provide you with up-to-date information regarding antispam, antivirus and email.

Our goal is to provide you with interesting and relevant information that you can use on a daily basis.

Our first posting will be coming shortly.  We will try our best to post information on a bi-weekly basis.  As always, your thoughts and deas are appreciated. If you have a specific idea which you would like to know more, please feel free to send them to info@fsl.com

Stay tuned for new postings.