Euro Fast Host

Since installing our SpamBlock server we have access to detailed statistics about the number of spam emails being delivered to some of our customers, and the figures are truly amazing.

Of 2.2m messages delivered to the system, 1.8m were spam. That’s 82% spam… 82%!

Of these, 201000 are ones delivered to random names at a domain (ie csdwewr@whatever.com) which is one of the reasons we don’t recommend “catch-all” mailboxes where anything@whatever.com is delivered to a default mailbox. It just makes the spammers job easier.

Just over 1m messages were blocked by RBL (realtime block lists) available freely on the internet. When used carefully, these lists are fantastic resources in the fight against spam.

So it seems the solutions are out there to reduce spam to practically zero, but they need constant hardwork to keep them effective - as usual its a constant technological battle between the spammers and the wider internet community.

SMS messaging is big business, and we have recently had the opportunity to work with a customer to setup an SMS competition to win 50cc Scooters. Working with another of our customers as the SMS provider, entrants can text the answer to a question to an SMS short code to try to win the scooter. The 3000th entrant wins the 50cc scooter, tax, registration and delivery!

The cost of the text can be set by the operator, and in this case was chosen to be £1.50 and then there is a revenue share agreement on income generated. The twist with the competition though is that when a contestant enters, they are texted back with their postion (if they give the correct answer). So, it’s made clear on the web site that the 3000th entrant wins, and once each contestant has answered correctly, they are texted back and told where their answer was… so if they are correct entrant number 2654 they will receive a text telling them so, and they can re-enter if they like!

It is a new area for us, so will be an interesting exercise, and it may be something that we offer as a service on a wider basis - there are all sort of possibilities. What about domain name registration by SMS for when you have that great idea for a web site in the pub? Service status messages by SMS? E-mail alerts for sales from your site? Affiliate sales notifications? The possibilites are endless.

With all the recent publicity over “dodgy” competitions, we have been careful to make the contest as fair as possible, and make the terms and conditions clear. And unlike many premium rate SMS competitions, entrants will not be sent multiple text messages at £1.50 a time. The idea is that it is fun, you have a realistic chance of winning (much better than the National Lottery), and it increases sales for the site owner.

If any of you have a great idea (or even a boring one!) for how you could use SMS within your businesses, let me know (duncan@eurofasthost.com) and we’ll see if we can help.

And, for anyone who wants a go at winning a 50cc Scooter, the competition can be found at ScooterSpot.co.uk (and no, the guys from our office can’t enter!)

We will shortly be launching an online backup service that you can use to backup your local laptops, PCs and servers to our network. It’s all done automatically over the internet and provides excellent security for your valuable data.

We are trialing a service at the moment with a number of customers and will post more details about the full service as soon as possible.

Duncan

Just a reminder that we are now taking daily backups of all web hosting accounts, including e-mail, databases (SQL Server and MySQL), and web directories.

If you accidentally delete some files, we will usually be able to recover them for you (please note that this is not guaranteed however) and a quick email to support should get you back up and running.

Thanks,

Duncan

Following on from a previous post about delays on the SpamBlock server, we have moved it to a new faster server to improve performance further.

We will monitor spam filtering performance on Monday morning as traffic starts to build but we feel that the upgrade should improve performance considerably.

Thanks,

Duncan

At last, we have launched our new web site along with new logo and branding. We hope you like the new look, and as always, comments are welcome!

We have also launched a new range of shared web hosting, VPS hosting (virtual private server) and dedicated servers. Over the coming weeks we will be promoting the new products extensively and refining the product range in response to customer feedback.

We are particularly excited about the virtual server offrerings - this is a new product for us, and one we’ve been asked about a lot. A handful of customers have been trialing it, and we are now looking forward to rolling it out on a wider basis.

There will be a number of other refinements occurring over the next few weeks, and we will be posting more information as they happen.

As always, thanks for your continued support!

Duncan

We have noticed that at peak times our spam blocking service is causing mail delivery delays. No mail is being lost, but there are some delays with the delivery of the mail to end-users. There appears to be a number of causes of this, and we have made some configuration changes which we think will help.

One of the problems is that take-up of the spam blocking service has been high, and the server is now handling approcximately 100,000 messages per day, of which a very large percentage is spam.

We have enabled recipient verification which will ease the load since a lot of messages can be rejected instantly (since they are not to a valid recipient), but this does mean that all domains using the service can no longer have a “catch-all” email account.

We will monitor delivery times on Monday as the mail load increases again, and if we still have delays then we will commission a new server to spread the load.

Sorry for the inconvenience with the occasional delays - we will get them sorted out. Overall though feedback has been fantastic - the service really does remove the vast majority of spam, with incredibly few false positives.

Duncan