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Reduce unwanted emails in your Inbox! Say “No!” to DSN and SPAM.

I recently received a cry for help from a hosting customer who has recently has a very full Inbox:

My computer downloaded 393 emails this morning since last evening when I signed off.  The good news is that I did not receive any “[SPAM]“, and instead I am now getting “Delivery Status Notification (failure)” X dozens.

Avoiding Delivery Status Notification (DSN) Messages

Delivery Status Notification deals with OUTBOUND emails. So why was this person getting dozens of incoming emails?

Usually, DSN means the recipient’s server bounced the email. DSN messages notify you that a sent email was unsuccessful. Your email bounced. There is a delivery problem which can signal a number of things.

Read each DSN message to understand the reason a message was not delivered. You can learn:

• Date and time your email bounced
• Name of the mail server that bounced it
• Why it bounced

You may have typed the wrong email address, or learn that their mailbox is full. (In this case, pick up the phone to inform them they need to empty out their email!)

You may be sending email to a bogus domain without knowing it. So what if you receive a message similar to this, and you don’t know the person?

<username@surch.ru>:
This address no longer accepts mail.

You probably have a virus or Trojan that is sending emails from your account. Such viruses do not access your system through your hosting. How do they get in?

• By simply being connected to the Internet
• Clicking on executable attachments in emails
• Visiting malicious websites
• Downloading unsafe programs

Maintain your anti-virus software and practice “safe” computing. You’ll reduce the size of your email Inbox.

Avoiding SPAM

SPAM deals with INBOUND emails. Ensure your domain is setup with a SPAM blocker.

Most hosting accounts have options to enable SpamAssassin or BoxTrapper, which is accessed via your control panel, or cPanel.

Here’s a quick overview on the basics of setting up SpamAssassin or BoxTrapper. I’ll review SpamAssassin first, because it’s easier and requires less time.

SpamAssassin

SpamAssassin is a email filtering system (set of rules) that attempts to identify SPAM based on the content of the email. It filters email headers and body content. You can set the “sensitivity” level of SpamAssassin for all accounts in your domain by entering the number of “hits” required before mail is considered spam.

• 5.0 is the default setting and is quite aggressive.
• If you are still receiving too much SPAM at a setting of 5, then try 4.

You can also configure SpamAssassin and enter known blacklist_from and whitelist_from email addresses.

• If you choose a more aggressive score of <5, manually enter the addresses of people you want on your white “safe” list. Also, do not enable SPAM auto-delete, so you can go through your SPAM items to see if some valid emails are not getting through.
• If you choose a more conservative score of >6, enter the addresses of known SPAM houses on your black “unsafe” list.

Once you have found your ideal SpamAssassin score, return to your control panel and enable SPAM auto-delete to keep your server’s inbox clean, too.

BoxTrapper

BoxTrapper protects your email Inbox from SPAM by requiring all people who are not on your “white list” to reply to a verification email before they can send mail to you. You have to manually setup that white list.

Warning: Each user will need to monitor their BoxTrapper queue to ensure wanted mail is not trapped.

BoxTrapper does take more time, but it is very effective. However, if you are a retail establishment, you may suffer “emai dropout” by people who don’t want to go through the verification process.

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This overview DSN and SPAM is geared to give you enough information so you understand some basics on how to reduce the size of your email Inbox and take control of your emails. There are a number of factors to consider, and your technical needs may exceed the scope of the basics presented.

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Tags: BoxTrapper, DSN, Email, iYogi, SPAM, SpamAssassin, Technical Support Help

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Tech Support. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.