Simple Solution to reduce spam on the server
In my never ending quest to reduce the amount of spam I receive (I have an e-mail address that receives had been receiving 100-200 spam messages daily), I started doing some reading at SpamAssasin’s website. I found two things that so far have been working extremely well to stop spam completely (its only been 2 hours but I should have received 2-10 spam by now). They have been so effective I thought I’d pass them alone.
- I added “dummy” mail servers to my list of mail servers (Suggested Here)
In the DNS settings for you domain (e.g. dlogan.net) there are what are called “MX records” (Mail eXchange). These entries tell other mail servers where they should try to send a message when they have an e-mail address that ends in your domain (e.g. dlogan.net). Each MX record has a number associated with it. The MX record with the lowest number is what your standard mail server will try first. If it can’t connect to that mail server and deliver the e-mail it will then proceed to the MX record with the next lowest number until it is successful in sending the message.
Since the goal of the spammer is to get the most amount of spam out in the shortest amount of time they typically do not follow these standard rules. As a result they will typically only try to connect to one mail server once to send their message. If they are unsuccessful they do not act like a normal mail server and move on to the next MX record, they just forget about that message and move on to spamming other domains.
Unlike regular mail servers spammers do not always “follow the rules” in determining which