10/23/2020
New Security Features! We are happy to inform you that we have implemented some new security measures designed to protect you from malicious bots and spoofed emails. And since we have your attention (hopefully), we will also throw in some well-known security tips, as well as remind you about some great security-related features we already provide but which you may have forgotten about.
1. Blocking Malicious Web Requests
We have implemented a new security mechanism that blocks POST requests from malicious IP addresses. We are using the database of Stop Forum Spam (https://www.stopforumspam.com) to get a list of malicious/suspicious IPs. The list gets automatically updated every 6 hours.
If your website receives a POST request from an IP address that has been listed in the Stop Forum Spam database, it will be automatically blocked by our Web Application Firewall (WAF). In almost all cases these requests come from bots, so you won't even notice them. However, if the POST request turns out to be legitimate, there is an easy way to allow future requests from that particular IP address. Whenever the protection gets triggered, a "412 REQUEST BLOCKED" page will be shown, asking the website visitor to prove they are human by completing a simple test (CAPTCHA). If the test is completed successfully, the POST request can be repeated and will no longer be blocked by our WAF.
2. Stricter Spam Rules for Better Filtering of Spoofed Messages
We use Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to check which mail servers are allowed to send email for a particular domain. If our mail server receives a message from an SPF-protected domain from a mail server that is not listed as an allowed sender for that domain, the system assigns spam points to the message, making it easier for SpamAssassin to recognize it as spam and filter it.
We have now enhanced the SPF protection by improving the spam scoring system for domains that use SPF. From now on the system will assign more spam points to messages that break the SPF policy of the sending domain. There is also a new SpamAssassin plugin in place that protects against the so-called "display name spoofing", where spammers alter an email's display name to make it look like it comes from a trusted source.
It is important to note that SpamAssassin is a powerful spam filtering solution, but it does need your help to better understand and filter the emails you receive in each mailbox. So, to receive as few spam emails as possible, you need to make sure that SpamAssassin is enabled for your mailboxes, and that you train it to better recognize and classify your incoming messages. To do this, you should move any spam messages you receive in the Inbox folder to the Junk Mail folder, and vice versa - you should move any messages incorrectly marked as spam from the Junk Mail folder to the Inbox folder. This way, the Bayesian classifier of the SpamAssassin tool will be trained so that messages get classified more accurately in the future.
StopForumSpam - a database of known forum and blog spam, its sources and the email addresses reported
