Netspace Spam Guide

What is Spam?

Any message is spam if it is a ‘commercial electronic message’ (e.g. email) and:

  • It was sent to a recipient who did not consent under the Spam Act, or
  • It fails to clearly and accurately identify the person or organisation that authorised it, or
  • It fails to give accurate information on how to contact them, or
  • The contact information isn’t reasonably likely to remain valid for 30 days, or
  • It does not contain a clear and conspicuous ‘functional unsubscribe facility’ that works for at least the next 30 days.

In general spam is electronic messages you receive (Commonly by email) that you never requested (E.g. Advertising, Porn, Fake Bank Notices)

It is recommended that internet users are to never send personal information via email, because it is an unsecured medium. Personal, private and financial details should only be submitted via secure websites to a trusted and reputable company.

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How can Netspace help me reduce Spam?

Australian Spam Code of Practice

As of 16/07/06 a new Australian Spam Code of Practice came into effect.

Netspace and all Australian ISP’s and their customers are required to comply to the Australian Spam Code of Practice. The Spam Code sets strict guidelines which ISP’s and their customers are bound by to educate users and reduce Spam in Australia. Customers who do not comply to this practice may be suspended from utilising their service until appropriate action has been undertaken.

As part of your Netspace email service, we provide mandatory incoming (email sent to you) Spam email Filtering.

By default all incoming Netspace email is subjected to two Anti-Spam Black-lists and Greylisting:

  • SpamCop
  • CBL

These Anti-Spam black-lists contain large listings of known sources of spam which helps reduce incoming spam to our networks. However, some spammers still manage to get through these systems. These initial checks are performed at the Netspace Server Side, and before the email is delivered to your Netspace mailbox.

Recommended Anti-Spam Actions

To further help reduce Spam arriving in your Netspace Inbox, Netspace strongly recommend enabling additional Server Side Spam & Virus Filtering services on your email account. These services are offered as part of your Netspace email service and can be activated through, MyNetspace.

Additional Anti-Spam Actions

While the above actions should reduce Spam directed to your Netspace mailbox at the server-side you can also implement additional client-side scanning (Software used on your local PC).

There are many anti-spam products available which can assist you with dealing with spam emails. Generally these work by automatically moving spam to a defined mailbox folder, or deleting them automatically on arrival.

Some examples of this software are listed below. Please note: Netspace recommend these products on a trial/free basis. Any decision to buy the product is not supported by Netspace and therefore Netspace Technical Support is not provided for these products.

How MyNetspace Spam & Virus Filtering Works

The Netspace Spam filtering system uses a point scoring system based on: word pattern matching, source identification, header analysis, bonded sender membership, master blacklists, and more. Due to the complexity of the program, understanding exactly how the scoring system works maybe difficult to comprehend. A full list of the scoring system can be found at SpamAssassin

In order to help users correctly identify the discard level of protection needed for their SPAM filtering, Netspace has setup a scoring system which alters the headers of all incoming mail. SPAM Assassin will place a * character in each email header, with each * indicating a single point.

Netspace recommends that customers initially set their discard level at 50 (50 Being Less restrictive and 1 Being Very Restrictive) and monitor their email over a 7-14 day period. When you receive any email, simply view the “full header” of the email and it will show you the score that the email received from the filtering service. During this time, simply compile a list of what scores legitimate email receive and what the SPAM email receives and then reset the discard level accordingly.

For example: If your legitimate emails all receive scores of 7 or less, you would set the filtering level at 8. This would mean you would continue to receive legitimate email whilst removing all those emails which received scores of 8 or above. The header will contain lines similar to the ones below:

				X-Spam-Status: No,

				hits=2.1 tagged_above=-50.0 required=500.0 tests=BAYES_20,

				FREE_OFFER,

				FORGED_HOTMAIL_RCVD,

				INVEST_NOW,

				RCVD_FAKE_HELO_DOTCOM_2

				X-Spam-Level: **

To find out how to view email headers in Netspace supported email software visit our support area. If you are not using a supported email client you will need to contact the software vendor for further instructions.

What is Greylisting?

Greylisting is a new method of blocking significant amounts of spam at the mail server level.

How does Greylisting work?

Foreign IP addresses trying to send email to Netspace email accounts are greylisted (delayed) for a short amount of time by the Netspace mail server. You will not lose any emails because of this. The sender’s mail server, if configured correctly, will try to keep resending the email.

After the delay time, the Netspace mail server will accept the email and add the foreign IP address to a whitelist database. There will be no further delay or greylisting when sending emails from this foreign IP address.

Why use Greylisting?

The idea behind it is that 95% of spam is never resent after the initial attempt as spammers are using exploited computers to distribute the spam. A greylist implementation will stop a significant amount of spam from coming through.

Further information about greylisting can be found at projects.puremagic.com/greylisting

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How can I help in the fight against Spam?

Whilst turning on Spam and Virus filtering will reduce Spam arriving in your Inbox it does not stop Spammers from sending the spam in the first place. (knowingly or unknowingly).

If you receive spam in your Inbox that has bypassed the above mentioned prevention measures you can report this spam to the network from where it originated.

How to Identify where the Spam originated

There are a few options available to help identify/report spam.

For the non-tech savvy the easiest way of reporting spam is by passing on the email headers to a major black-list provider, such as SpamCop. Because Netspace subscribe to the SpamCop blacklist this means any valid spam information that you submit will then be included in their blacklist and stopped from entering the Netspace network.

For information on how to retrieve the email headers which include this vital specific identifying information please see our support area for the supported email software, which includes information on how to retrieve email headers from these pieces of software. If you are not using a supported email client you will need to contact the Software Vendor for further instructions.

For the tech savvy you can find further information on identifying Spam Sources in email headers here.

Spam sourced from the Netspace network

If after reviewing the email headers you believe the spam email has been sourced from the Netspace network, you can submit this spam to the Netspace Abuse team via this form. The spam report form includes required fields for us to deal with the Spam Complaint/Report efficiently.

Spam sourced from other networks

If after reviewing the email headers you believe the spam email has been sourced from outside the Netspace network you have a few options to report this spam.

  • You can supply the spam email headers to SpamCop who will analyse these headers and if appropriate add the Spam source to their blacklist. As Netspace subscribe to this list they will effectively be blocked from entering the Netspace network in future once verified as SPAM.
  • You can directly report the spam to the Abuse team of the network affected. Generally this is done by sending to the 'abuse@' email address of the identified network. However not all networks have this address setup and you may have to investigate to find the Networks abuse email address on their website. An example of an abuse@ email address for the domain example.com would be: 
    abuse@example.com

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Common Questions

This all sounds great, but will I miss important emails?

As mentioned above in How MyNetspace Spam & Virus Filtering works all emails will be subjected to spam filtering. While the majority of emails will successfully reach you, there maybe the occasional email that is blocked incorrectly. Currently Netspace have implemented a beta white-listing system in MyNetspace SPAM and Virus Filtering section of our website, this allows you to whitelist specific email addresses. What this means is that the whitelisting option will ensure the whitelisted address is not checked by any SPAM and Virus filtering options enabled in MyNetspace (including our Global RBL’s and Greylisting). This means you will always receive email from these whitelisted addresses. After beta testing is completed (to ensure emails are correctly whitelisted etc.) we hope to implement this as a permanent option.

Why do I get spam that’s not even addressed to me?

Occasionally you may receive SPAM email, which doesn’t even look like it has been addressed to you. Current email protocols allow for “blind carbon copies” which includes your email address even though you can’t see it in the email headers.

Where do Spammers get my E-mail address?

There are several ways spammers can obtain your email address. One of the most common ways is via Newsgroups, Chat rooms and Web signups (for an electronic newsletter or site membership, for example). Netspace highly recommends having a second email address if you engage in these activities on the internet.

Many sites require users to “sign up” for an account before being able to access certain features. Be extremely careful when doing things such as this. Be sure to read the “Terms & Conditions” as some sites will pass your email on to third parties. Unless the company is reputable, it’s probably best to use your secondary email account.

Be extremely careful and vigilant to whom you give your main email address and where you publicly post it. Think of your email address as your residential address. You wouldn’t publish your home address in the newspaper or give it to people on the street and the same should apply when you are using the internet.

Why are people receiving emails from me that I haven’t sent?

Spam which comes from your own email address may seem confusing as you know you didn’t send junk mail.

The majority of simple mail transport protocol (SMTP or outgoing) mail servers do not require identification to send email. Unfortunately this means that anyone can send mail pretending to be you.

When you set up your mail program for the first time, you may recall you had to manually type in your email address. The same applies to a spammer all they need to do is type in any email address they want in this field and it will look like it has come from that person.

This explains why you may occasionally receive “fake” or “bogus” emails from addresses such as accounts@netspace.net.au or support@microsoft.com.

I wish to complain about these Spam practices!

As of 16/07/06 all Internet Service Providers are required to comply with the Code SPAM. If you wish to make a complaint regarding this Code of Practice you can contact the ACMA.

Additional Complaint Avenues

You may also be able to lodge additional complaints regarding these spam practices with the following organisations:

How does Netspace handle SPAM complaints?

All SPAM complaints:

  • Will be investigated by an officer of the Netspace code spam team within 7 Business days
  • Will be provided a final response by an officer of the Netspace code spam team within 10 Business days
  • Can be internally escalated to an officer of the Netspace code spam team to be investigated within 48 hours

What will happen when Netspace receive your SPAM complaint:

An automated response will be sent to your contact email which will include:

  • A ticket reference number to track your complaint
  • Information on how to escalate your complaint
  • A link to our About Spam page which details how we deal with code spam complaints, how to report code spam to other providers and how to complain to the ACMA

A Netspace code spam officer will investigate your complaint and provide a final response

How to escalate your complaint:

  • After submitting your complaint you will receive a ticket reference number
  • You can escalate this complaint by contacting Netspace Technical Support and providing the Reference #
  • A Netspace code spam officer will internally escalate this fault for investigation within 48 hours.

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Spam Guide