Information Centre

No-one is safe from spam these days due to the lengths that spammers will go to in order to acquire email addresses.

One of the most common ways spammers harvest email addresses is through special software programs called 'robots' (or just 'bots') designed to 'crawl' web pages. These work a little like search engine robots that index the web.

These spam robots scour forums and other online content searching for strings of text with an @ symbol; indicating an email address. The bots retrieve these details and add them to a database. If you've published an email address anywhere online that is accessible to the general public; at some stage a spam-bot is likely to find it.

Spammers also use common strings to 'guess' email addresses. All they need to start with is a domain name; then they'll simply tack on common usernames such as admin@, sales@ or info@. Sometimes they'll go as far as generating 'dictionary' type attacks; trying thousands of different words and names.

If your domain name has been registered previously, you will also pick up the spam 'karma' that comes with it.

Yet another source of spam is from virus activity. If a friend, colleague or client's machine becomes infected with a virus, that virus may be designed (among other things) to search for email address on the victim's computer; sending those details back to a main server. 

Once on a single spammer's list, chances are your email address will end up on others as often spammers will sell their lists as well as use them.

Why am I receiving viruses? 

The methods spammers use can also be used to find targets to send viruses to.

Using our anti-spam and anti-virus features 

While entirely avoiding spam is well near impossible for an online business, it can be reduced by using the spam and virus filtering features we offer. To activate these features:

• Log into your account control panel
• Click on additional services
• Activate and adjust your settings under the appropriate links:
  
  SPAM GUARDIAN (SPAM FILTER) 
  CLEAN SERVER (ANTI VIRUS) 

Please refer to the help section within your control panel for detailed explanations for each.

IMPORTANT: Experiment with the settings for these features. If you have them set too low; you still may experience high levels of spam. If set too high, the filters may also interfere with legitimate email. Domain Registration Services is not responsible for email lost through using this feature.