Many contact us forms and comment forms are plagued by “web form spam.” Automated programs crawl the internet looking for web forms. When found, they start submitting spam advertisements through the forms hoping that some of the recipients of these form submissions will see the ads and act on them. Almost nobody does, but the spam still comes and gets worse and worse over time.
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It happens over and over — users trying to send legitimate email messages are blocked from sending because the IP address that they are getting from their Internet Service Provider (ISP) for their personal computer (or small office) is on some major blacklist, like SpamHaus. Comcast, for example, has been the focus of many of these issues. This message blocking often happens even if a user is sending outbound email through a legitimate email provider like LuxSci.
Users invariably ask:
Fortunately, there is a good reason why the blocks occur and an easy solution to them … anonymous SMTP service to hide your IP address.
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So, you’re minding your own business, going about your daily tasks, checking your email, and suddenly your INBOX is flooded with a series of non-delivery reports (aka NDRs or bounce messages). But wait just a minute, you didn’t send these. How did this happen? Did someone steal your email address? How is that possible?
What has most likely happened here is that you’ve fallen victim to “backscatter“, or as it’s commonly known, bounce-back spam. As spam-detection techniques have evolved and become more accurate, the spammers have been forced to devise increasingly complicated and devious methods of getting their messages delivered. For example: email forgery.
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You thought email was a simple concept, but you are at once confronted with a plethora of acronyms and jargon like POP, IMAP, WebMail, Aliases, Forwards, SMTP, IMAP, POP, Quota, SPAM, TLS, SSL, Archival, and more! This article describes the ins and outs of email, explains these terms, and helps you figure out what services and features you need from your personal or business email service provider.
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“GrayMail” sounds like either some shriveled up husk of an email message, or the undead ghost of messages coming back to haunt me. Both concepts are not far off the mark.
Spam is easy to define – mail that you do not want and have never asked to receive.
GrayMail is legitimate bulk mail that was requested by you in the past (even if you don’t remember doing so), but which you no longer want. Graymail is generally not considered spam, yet
it represents a significant nuisance and often the unsubscribe options provided fail to work (or you may not want to use “unsubscribe” as you are afraid of inviting more unwanted email).
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