Ultratron FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some frequently asked questions. This section is updated frequently, so feel free to check back often for helpful hints and tips. If you have a question which is not answered here, please let us know.
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The following definition for Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE, otherwise known by the slang term "SPAM") is quoted from the Mail Abuse Prevention System website located at http://www.mail-abuse.org/ :
An electronic message is "spam" IF: (1) the recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent; AND (3) the transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to give a disproportionate benefit to the sender.
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) maintains a page explaining the harm that UCE causes.
One good source is the Spam Abuse FAQ. Also have a look at these U.S. laws , see some cases and visit this law school.
At Ultratron, we feel that if you had wanted to receive advertising from various companies, you would have signed up for it yourself. Unsolicited Commercial Email (spam) tends to clog up not only our mailservers but user's mailboxes with junk they didn't ask for and didn't want. To help reduce the amount of spam you receive, we have taken the following measures which are detailed in questions/answers below:
- No mail is allowed from irresolvable domains
- No mail is allowed to be relayed off the server to spam someone else
- Several real-time database of known open relay mailservers are consulted before receiving mail and mail is not accepted from them (see below).
- A real-time database of known spammers is consulted before receiving mail and mail is rejected from these systems (see http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl/)
- A real-time database of dial-up users is consulted before receiving mail and mail is rejected from these systems (these are people who try to send mail directly without going through their ISP's mailservers) (see http://www.mail-abuse.org/dul/)
- In addition, we have blocked all mail which is destined for "Undisclosed.Recipients@scorpion.ultratron.net". This is dangerous since it's not impossible for this to be legitimate traffic that is now blocked, but hopefully it will do more help than harm.
An open mail relay occurs when a mail server processes a mail message where neither the sender nor the recipient is a local user. In this example, both the sender and the recipient are outside local domain. The mail server is an entirely unrelated third party to this transaction. The message really has no business passing through this server. Open relays represent a problem because the legitimate uses of mail relays are dwarfed by the number of mailer hijackings. A hijacking occurs when massive amounts of mail are relayed through a server. Most hijackings are done by junk emailers -- the so-called spammers -- trying to spew their unwanted messages all over the Internet.
At Ultratron, our mailservers are not run as open-relays. This keeps our mailservers from being abused by spammers who relay (bounce) mail off various Internet mailservers in order to hide their true identity.
Our mailservers are configured to check all incoming email against the Open Relay DataBase (ORDB), the Open Relay Blackhole Zones (ORBZ) List, and OsiruSoft's Open Relay Spam Stopper (which compares against the spamsites.org, spamhaus.org, and spews.org databases) before being allowed in. This causes mail to be blocked from entering our network if it arrives from a site which is actively engaged in relaying unwanted spam to internet users. The drawback to this approach is that sometimes these sites have users who are not spammers, who share an unpleasant and negative fate with spammers. While there is a chance that an occasional legitimate email will get blocked, we felt that this risk is justified to help stop unwanted spam. All sites are warned of their "problem" before being added to one of these "blackhole lists", and senders of mail which is rejected by this system will receive an email explaining what has happened to their mail.
Despite all these precautions, spammers continue to find new ways to get through all the filters and there are more and more spammers all the time. It's a real problem on the Internet, and it's a problem for system administrators who have to balance the possibility of rejecting legitimate mail accidentally vs. not filtering enough.
Any questions? Email support@ultratron.net.