Prevent Or Reduce Spam on Cpanel Web Hosting Servers

Most shared hosting companies nowadays have some version of Cpanel running on their server, being one of the most popular control panels available. This control panel software is very versatile with how it can be configured. Some hosts will set it up just as it is out of the box and others will install applications like SpamAssassin to help filter spam. Cpanel has also improved its spam filtration since it was created. In this article we will talk about some specific things Cpanel users can do to help reduce spam and some general rules for reducing your spam.

How does SPAM originate?

The Internet is still much like the Wild Wild West as there is no single governing body that can effectively regulate the worldwide use of the Internet and especially email. There are ways that spammers find to circumvent seemingly solid legal practices. Some jurisdictions have enacted laws to make these practices illegal. Unfortunately there are still many countries which have no such laws and/or do not even recognize the spam problem. This means that spammers outsource their practices to servers within these countries where they feel they have some protection from laws of other nations.

In addition to these spammers who use servers in other countries, spammers have joined up with the underground hacking/cracking/programming cultures. Tapping into these previously untapped resources they are able to join forces with people who can write even more sophisticated scripts, viruses, and malware. A practice that has become common is to create malware that unlike a virus is often very quiet about its business. By exploiting known holes in operating systems and applications running on computers and individuals who may not know better these pieces of software create a worldwide zombie network which carries out lascivious practices day and night with little to no direction from the spammer once it has been setup. Rarely do people actually notice these pieces of software unless their ISP contacts them or if the malware has left a backdoor open for other pieces of malware and viruses to be installed which then start causing problems.

Phishing has also become a large underground business collecting data on people all over the world from email addresses to personal information. Once completed profiles have been established they are sold in underground black markets for large sums of money.

Some researchers believe that more than 85% the email being sent at any given time worldwide is considered SPAM. Having maintained numerous mail servers with advanced spam detection and filtration software we have seen that 90% of all mail received by a server in a given day has been spam.

However there are things you can do to get some relief and help reduce spam in general.

1) Keep your virus scanner updated - ALWAYS. Viruses multiply at exponential rates and spread extremely quick. Sometimes viruses exist on a computer for months before becoming active or causing a problem. So making sure your virus protection is up to date is extremely important.

2) Don't list email addresses anywhere on your website. Use a contact form instead. Doing this will allow you to receive contact from visitors on your site without exposing your email address to the general public.

3) Don't list your email address in forums, social networking sites, or any other community oriented place. If you want or need to do this, setup a free email account somewhere like at HostBigger.com or Yahoo.com to use just for these sites. If you still don't want to do that and must list your address for all to see use the expanded email notation which basically writes out the whole email address. For instance user@domain.com would be "user at domain dot com". This helps keep the programs that search the net from harvesting your email address.

4) Don't unsubscribe from something you never subscribed to. If you ever get an email that is spam and you see the option to unsubscribe - don't. This is a verification to the spammer that there is a live person on the other side of that email. You are almost guaranteed to get more spam. It may diminish for a little while but will start coming back.

5) Use Validation on your website contact forms. Captcha is a good start to prevent spam from coming through your website contact forms. However there are mechanisms out there that can now read Captcha letters. A good solution is ReCaptcha.

6) If you still receive a large amount of spam you should make sure your webhost has an email filtration system in place for your email. Good filtration systems allow you to set the threshold of spam so that good email is not regularly affected (although a few false positives will occur). Some systems even allow you to set 2 or more thresholds - one for low scoring spam and the others for high scoring spam. This allows individuals who are concerned with losing legitimate email the ability to review any message tagged as a low level spam message while deleting blatant spam messages.

7) Check with your webhost to make sure your domain has a SPF DNS record setup.

8) Make sure that any web based application you have installed on your site is kept up to date. Spam that is generated from a hole in your coding is still your responsibility. In addition, many times spam from your domain will result in more spam being sent to your domain.

9) Don't use your hosting providers catchall email account. This account is usually the default email address on your hosting account and will catch any unrouted email which invariably means spam. If you only use your catchall - STOP! Setup your own email accounts on your domain and use those.

10) Don't use easy to assume email addresses unless you have to. For instance info@domain.com, support@domain.com, etc. Be more creative while staying user friendly when setting up your email addresses.

For Cpanel users if you want to reduce SPAM here are some additional tips.

1) Use SpamAssassin - SpamAssassin is a spam filtration product that is a open source software that can be installed with Cpanel. It is the foundation of many spam filtration services and products. If you are not sure whether SpamAssassin is installed on your hosts server, ask them. Once installed, in Cpanel you can specify how SpamAssassin identifies spam messages. You can configure SpamAssassin/Cpanel to append a word or phrase to all spam messages so that you can easily sort. We recommend using a series of Letters and Symbols that are not separated by space. You can then setup a filtration rule to delete any messages with this particular word or phrase in the subject. Keep in mind however, SpamAssassin can and does bog down the server if the level of spam the mailserver receives is very high.

2) Use RBL Checking - Cpanel has recently added the ability for hosts to configure their mail servers to check for the presence of an IP address in one of 2 common blacklists. This check happens when the initial mail connection happens. If the connecting IP is found in the blacklists they are blocked from further sending messages. This really seems to help reduce spam that is obviously sent maliciously since the IP has already been reported for spam activity.

3) Ensure MailHeaders are turned on - This particular tip is more towards the hosts, rather than the end user. This appends a users server username to the headers of an email as well as where the email was sent from (in the event of an email sent from an automated form) . This way if a particular message sent from the server is reported as SPAM a Cpanel Server Administrator can look in the Cpanel servers logs and determine if the user is sending spam or is running an application that is exploitable. Sending spam is often a cause for a server to receive even more spam. So if a spam issue arises it is best to resolve it ASAP.

4) Set SpamAssassin to AutoLearn - SpamAssassin has the ability to autolearn messages that are spam. This autolearning process requires user input however so it can build a database of what is considered spam and what is not. Therefore this function would have to be configured by your Cpanel Administrator.

We hope you find these tips useful and helps you reclaim your personal and professional productivity.

- Jason A. Taylor; is CTO of CWI Hosting, and has worked with thousands of email accounts and hundreds of mail servers. Having tested and deployed many anti-spam solutions, including on cpanel servers, you can find spam email solutions here.

Secure Your Online Presence With a Good Web Hosting Company

Website hosting services is used by every website present on the world wide web for their sustainability. One can find thousands of companies offering web hosting services online which have varied plans and schemes to select from.

For the first time users or companies looking for change of web host service provider have to keep in consideration some basic points. Select the web host after seeing the platform on which the web server would operate. The choice is generally between Windows and Linux.

Selection is largely dependent upon your website and the technology that has been used in its creation. Website that is created using open source technologies would run on Linux systems, whereas site that is created using Microsoft technologies would operate on Windows server.

After the platform for website hosting is decided the next step is to decide the features required by your site. It requires extensive research and studying of different shortlisted web hosting service providers and the features they have to offer. Many companies may seem to offer similar set of hosting features but go through them carefully and evaluate which one is suitable for you.

The cost of web hosting is very important factor that influences the decision for selection of the service provider. Usually for new websites, their budget is fixed however most of the hosts seem similar in their service offerings. Different companies offer different payment methods and schemes, some have schemes that require you to make yearly payments whereas some may even allow to pay on monthly basis. It depends on your budget and requirement as to which one suits you the most.

Select the web hosting company that provides quality customer support service to its clients. Many times people forget to check out this aspect leading to problems at later stages. After purchasing their services in case of problem those people are nowhere to find, leading to business losses. Seek the service provider that offer 24/7 customer services all year round so that it ensures smooth functioning of your website at any given point of time. Don't just go by the words of the hosting company, test their quality of customer service through different times via mails, phone or any other medium applicable.

See to it that the web host gets rebooted for software updates and security whenever required as any host cannot be practically online for all the time. As the hosts that does not gets updated stands the chances of getting hacked.

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SPINX - professional web design company LA provides Orange County website design, Las Vegas website design, website design, Las Vegas graphic design & much more.

Web Hosting and How to Pick Properly

ere is a fair amount of misunderstanding about the question of how to decide on web hosting. The pleasant thing is that it does not need to be the way of things. In this article I'll briefly go through some of the crucial elements that you ought to take care with.

You have to remember that that the thing you really need is proper value. The lowest price will not necessarily give the best value. The thing you really need here from your web hosting firm is an excellent combination of distinct components that will ultimately, give you better value.

Confirming the reliability of the web hosting provider is a vitally significant issue to endeavor to factor in. Buying and selling on the Net is pretty uncomplicated. Nearly anybody can try it. As a result of this set of circumstances it is quite simple to imagine why there is a handful of devious operations on the Net. The absolute best proposal for checking up on the trust-worthiness of the hosting service supplier is to see exactly how many years they have been doing business for.

You should never focus too heavily on the headline numbers. Some of the adverts that you'll see for web hosts are going to display exciting headline numbers. What you really need is a realistic and well rounded hosting firm. These headline figures are obviously not going to give you a comprehensive picture of the whole deal. It is necessary for you to go a little bit deeper to get hold of the detailed background info that you will require before making any commitments.

As I mentioned previously, this is a quick summing up of some of the crucial aspects with regard to the topic of how to decide on web hosting. There are just a small collection of other really vital facets that you will have to fully grasp.

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Database Hosting Services

The many benefits of leveraging database hosting services, as opposed to hosting your own databases are listed below:

• You do not need to purchase any hardware on which to host your database. The third-party provider is responsible for maintaining the hardware.
• You do not need space in your own company's computer room or data center to host this database, since it is physically located in a secure data center.
• You need not concern yourself with performing nightly backups of your database. This is the responsibility of the hosting provider and is taken care of for you.
• You do not need to maintain the database software. It is already installed and configured for you. And any software patches, fixpacks, or upgrades will be performed by the hosting provider per their own schedule.
• You can save money on hiring database administrators, since their workload would be limited to development and not the actual maintenance of the database infrastructure itself. In fact, many hosting services even provide user-friendly web-based graphical interfaces that allow you to create and manage databases, tables, and queries, with only a rudimentary knowledge of how databases actually work. Nowadays, you don't even need to know SQL (structured query language - the standard language that is used to manage a database) since everything can be performed via the web.
• You can implement security controls on a remote database the same way you would on a locally managed system: through the use of access controls and data encryption.

Database hosting services have proven to be an extremely cost-effective solution for millions of businesses.

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Make Sure You Get the Right Email Hosting For Your Business

Email hosting is one of the most important aspects of online business because it is the point of contact for you to communicate with any satellite organisations and most importantly your consumers and clients. It is integral to the corporate connect culture that has invaded the internet and because of this, more and more providers are cropping up on the internet. With email and other forms of virtual communication, the Internet has made the market place truly borderless and nation less - you are able to stretch your business potential to the ends of the earth at a fraction of the cost.

At a recent survey done online, 90% of all business communication all over the world is now done through email. But here comes the dilemma; with so many to choose from, which ones do you go for and what are the aspects that you should look out for? Firstly, for those who are contemplating hosting email in house; it can be quite an expensive solution because the amount of equipment and customisation of the office space that you have to do is quite staggering. For one, you need to bring in additional equipment like servers, high memory capacity drives and an additional computer.

You would also need to change to a high speed modem and install expensive firewall and security software to that the internal office email network does not get attacked by viruses. These include anti adware software, spam blockers and corporate level anti virus software. If you are a large corporation, then the cost might be negligible, but if your operations range from the small to the medium, then you need to consider the alternative, which is to adopt an email hosting service from a provider who has already all the necessary equipments and software in place. Looking at the arena of email hosting on the web; there are several aspects you should look out for. For one, the provider should be able to furnish your business with an almost unlimited number of email names, email addresses that are 100% customisable.

The features that they should provide include security features like spam blocking software, a reliable firewall and a host of options for you to secure your precious corporate information. There should also be a 24 technical support division that can attend to your case, and the best thing would be to have a technician that can even come onsite if the problem is dire (Of course this only works when the email provider is in the same country as you are, and most likely, this will be the case). They should also be able to provide you with something called off site back ups, which is a web mail options which copies and archives all the emails running through the server, which means in the event of a global crash of all systems, there will be a backup storage for you to refer to. With these features, you can get the right email hosting for your business.

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Image Hosting Service - A Specialized Type of Web Hosting

If you wish to have a feature that allows you to load images to your Internet website, then you should use a special kind of web hosting service, which is known as Image Hosting Service. The mode of working of this service is easy to understand. When you upload the images to this service, the images get stored on to a server with the service provider. Once that happens, the images get displayed to the visitors of your website.

You may ask - It is the same way of working as content on the website. What is so special about this service then? The specialty here is the size of the images. Images, generally are bigger in size than text content. An Image Hosting Service must be able to provide excellent bandwidth and processing speed to ensure images are viewed successfully by visitors every time they visit your web page.

Unlike plain content, there are some special features provided to you by the image hosting service provider, which makes your life easier in managing the images. For starters, please know that you can make inline links to the hosted image, something you were not able to do with the content. These links can be made by you using HTML Codes, special BB Codes, or with the help of a thumbnail that can be clicked on the page.

And with that, the difference in image hosting services really comes to an end. Expect to find free as well as paid image hosting service providers, much the same way as how you would have found with traditional web hosting services. With the free image hosting services, advertisements on your website also gets to be a tied-in feature.

Importantly though, the tools provided in an image hosting service allow you to treat your images in a sophisticated manner. If you are imaginative, you can really do wonders to the images you are handling.

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When to Upgrade to a Dedicated Server From Cheap Web Hosting

While the thought of always paying as little as two figures per month for hosting is definitely appealing, you should expect to outgrow a certain hosting plan at one point or another. Every webmaster out there wants more traffic and the more traffic you receive, the more you'll have to pay for hosting.

But What If I Don't Upgrade?

There's only so much a cheap shared hosting plan can do for you and, once you start receiving a lot of traffic, you can count on at least one of these two things happening:

• your hosting provider will kick you out and, even if it may sound crazy, they're not doing absolutely anything illegal: read their Terms and Conditions carefully and you'll find out yourself that there are certain clauses which basically allow them to show you the door whenever they feel like it
• your server will run incredibly slow or will crash extremely often

The two consequences are anything but a dream come true. If your hosting provider kicks you out because you don't want to upgrade, your website will basically stay offline until you find another host. On the other hand, if your server ends up being very slow and crashes a lot, you can count on your website being offline quite often and, even when it will be available, the experience of your visitors won't exactly be very pleasant.

Let Your Host Help

Once you notice that you've outgrown your current hosting package, contact your hosting company directly and ask them for an opinion. They do want you to continue taking advantage of their services, so it's in their best interest to help you find a good solution.

A responsible hosting company will basically suggest a couple of packages which would work well and let you make the final choice. If you were taking advantage of a shared hosting package and didn't see a dramatic increase in traffic, a Virtual Private Server will probably do. But if you've noticed some explosive growth and have every reason to believe that things are only going to get better, going dedicated would be the smart thing to do.

How to Negotiate?

If you've been a customer for a long time, that puts you in a position to negotiate some good deals. Once you contact them, most hosting providers will not automatically throw their best offer at you. You have to be smart about it and negotiate: let them know that you are looking into a lot of other options as well and tell them that you're interested in finding out what their best offer is before making your final choice.

While you shouldn't expect a spectacular discount, the offer you will receive will probably help you save quite a bit down the road. Assuming that a company you've worked great with in the past offers you a nice discount when upgrading, it should be obvious that sticking with the company in question is the best thing to do.

Read more articles about cheap web hosting and find an affordable dedicated server based on user feedback.