Just like junk mail in your "snail mail" mailbox, spam is a sad fact of online life.
Over the last 10 years as spam has become an increasing problem many large email providers and ISPs have increased their efforts to fight it. They not only filter and stop spam, but also report the offending server's IP to a world-wide network of RBL (Real-time Blackhole Lists). Being added to this list is commonly known as being blacklisted. Sounds great, right?
The problem is that their spam filters weren't prepared to handle forwarded email. Web hosts who allowed their clients to forward their domain email to another provider (which was pretty much all of us) started getting IP blocks blacklisted and/or unable to send email to entire networks, because a user had his/her domain email forwarded to another provider, the email contained spam, and that provider in turn reported the "server in the middle" as a spammer.
It's important to note: it's always good and proper to delete, block, filter, spindle and mutilate spam. You just need to be aware of what you're doing when you REPORT it (by clicking a button that says "mark as spam") to an entity who will in turn report it to an RBL.
Hello World Web runs a tight ship. We utilize various stages of hand-configured spam filters, resulting in very low false positives and very little spam making it through to your inboxes. To give you an idea of just how much spam we filter...on average, 80-89% of incoming email is tagged as spam and/or blocked as a virus (did I mention we have great virus scanners too?). Hundreds of thousands of pieces of spam. Every. Day.
Unfortunately even the best system can't catch 100% of spam, and there's a certain segment of email that could be considered spam to one person, and a valuable opportunity to another. After all, if someone out there wasn't buying...they wouldn't be selling.
In 2007 we started disallowing and disabling email forwards, especially to AOL email addresses. I knew it wasn't just us, since starting in 2006 many web hosting companies began actively disabling email forwards to AOL email addresses. It simply wasn't worth the hassle of trying to undo a blacklisting.
We've recently had several requests to allow email forwarding, and have decided to allow it on a case-by-case basis and with the understanding that the user understands what's involved.
In a shared hosting environment, your actions effect not only yourself and your own company, but others on the same server. By using an email forward, you accept the responsibility that comes with it. If you're forwarding your domain email to any of the following providers:
- AOL
- Yahoo
- Gmail
- Hotmail / Windows Live
- Mac Mail
- or Your ISP
Simply don't click the "report as spam" button when the email comes from your domain (and our server). There are many ways to differentiate email coming from your domain:
- Contact form email should have a set subject line you'll recognize;
- You can read the email headers to see who the original recepient is;
- You can create a new email alias with your other provider, and use it just for forwarded email;
- Follow our guidelines for cutting down on overall spam.
If you have any questions about this or any other of our policies and guidelines, please feel free to contact us for more clarification. We don't like being The Email Police any better than you like lectures about it, but what your mom told you when you were a teenager still stands:
It's for your own good, and it hurts me more than it hurts you.
