E-Mail - Understanding and Stopping Junk E-Mail from Your Domain Name

You may notice that some of the junk e-mail you receive appears to come from your own domain name, even from your own e-mail address. Please understand that the vast majority of the time, this type of junk e-mail does not represent any security threat and a spammer has not taken control of your domain name or e-mail address.

Unfortunately, people who send junk e-mail can forge e-mail addresses (also known as spoofing), and they often forge other people's e-mail addresses to obscure the origin of the junk e-mail and to trick junk e-mail filters (and people) into thinking that the actual domain name owner might have e-mailed themselves.

For a more detailed explanation of this spammer trick, please visit:

http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/email_spoofing.html

You can also assure yourself that your domain name hasn't been compromised by looking at your e-mail headers and discovering the origin of the e-mail. Please visit the page below to learn how to view headers in many different types of e-mail programs:

http://www.haltabuse.org/help/headers/index.shtml

If you are still having trouble, please contact support@pair.com for assistance.

The next section will discuss ways that you can reduce the amount of junk e-mail that you receive, including junk e-mail sent from your domain name to one of your e-mail addresses.

Ways to Limit Junk E-Mail

1) Creating Recipient Addresses and Forwarding Them to One Mailbox

Many customers set up one mailbox and allow anything at their domain name to be sent to that one mailbox. While convenient, this configuration can result in your receiving large amounts of junk e-mail sent to random e-mail addresses in your domain.

The better method to allow yourself to check just one mailbox while still using multiple e-mail addresses, and avoid unnecessary junk e-mail, is to create a single mailbox that you want to check (for example, me@example.com) and then create Forward recipes from e-mail addresses that you wish to use (for example, sales@example.com).

First, create the single mailbox that you wish to check:

1. Log into the Account Control Center (https://my.pair.com/)
2. Click "E-Mail Management"
3. Click "Create New Mailbox" (under Mailbox Usage header)
4. Fill in the information, and click "Add Mailbox"

Next, you'll create what's called a "Forward" recipe for each one of the e-mail addresses that you want to use (for example, sales@example.com or support@example.com). These Forward recipes will point to the one mailbox that you wish to check on a regular basis (for example, me@example.com).

To create a Forward recipe, follow these instructions:

1. Log into the Account Control Center (https://my.pair.com/)
2. Click "E-Mail Management"
3. Click "Create New Recipe" (under Mailbox Usage header)
4. Enter the name of the e-mail address (e.g. sales@example.com) that you want to point to the mailbox that you will regularly check (in the field to the right of "A single e-mail address"
5. Choose "Forward" (under Recipe Type), and click "Proceed"
6. Enter the mailbox where you want the e-mail forwarded to (me@example.com in our example)
7. Click "Create Forward"

Create additional Forward recipes for all of the new e-mail addresses that you want to use (e.g. support@example.com, billing@example.com, etc.). After doing so, you can then set your Global Delivery Settings to discard, which will help you reduce the junk e-mail that you receive.

2) Use Junk Filtering

Be sure to turn on junk e-mail filtering for all of your mailboxes. When you create a new a new mailbox, remember to select the "Enable Junk E-Mail Filtering" option.

3) Remove Existing "Accepted Addresses"

One way to reduce the amount of junk e-mail that you receive from your own domain name is by removing "accepted addresses," also known as "whitelists," if you have any set up. Accepted Addresses, or whitelists, make it very unlikely that our e-mail system will mark e-mail from a trusted e-mail address as junk.

You can modify the settings for these accepted addresses, or whitelists, in our Account Control Center from the E-Mail Management section under the "Junk E-Mail Filter Settings" section. Contact support@pair.com if you need assistance in doing so.

4) Set up Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Records

Finally, one more advanced method of combating junk e-mail from your domain name is by creating Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records. An SPF record is a DNS record that authorizes or disallows e-mails to be sent from specific domain names.

In effect, it can prevent spammers from sending junk e-mails from e-mail addresses on your domain. While it's not a foolproof method as it is not yet universally supported, it may help. Please contact support@pair.com if you'd like assistance on setting up SPF records for your domain names.