Misdirected SPAM

[KARL]

Spammers (at least some) send messages multiply to a series of randomly generated addresses at the same domain, others just to one address. We receive spam which is not addressed (at best bearing some similarity, such as say Amy rather than Anne) to us - why should this end up clogging our mail boxes. There is no way, it seems, to block mail not addressed to us, or (better still) sent to multiple addresses at the same domain). I have taken this up with our e-mail service providers (BT and Onetel) but all I get is "from-the-menu" selected standard replies saying they can't do anything about it. Those of our addresses held in address books in the US are by far the worst affected (US targetted adverts). Any suggestions on how to cut this nuisance short of discontinuing the addresses in question ?

[tomd]

This is for your own domain, right?
In the control panel for your domain, there should be an option that controls which email address any undeliverable mail is sent to - i use [email protected], which then i occasionly drudge though to see if anyone has sent anything by mistake.

[Hippy]

I think tomd assumes that you have your own mail server at your end as well as the BT one. This is a good idea as you just download everything addressed to your domain off the BT server, say once a minute, and then process it to your heart's content locally before dishing it out to the individual mailboxes. I would also advise to switch off the function that "bounces" unknown mail, as this just clogs up your precious bandwidth and serves no useful purpose. The occasional person who has mispelt the username "kraen@ ... .co.uk" instead of "karen@... .co.uk" will try again or contact you by other means. The majority of bounced spam gets bounced again many times before extinction.

Now as for what mail server software to use. That's a question you will need to research. Size of enterprise, cost benefit ratio, level of in-house IT support or expertise required or already present, and more are considerations. For a medium sized SME with, say, 25-50 users and a need for automatic spam trapping and virus detection, rejection and updating then you might like to look at Alt-N MDaemon with integrated Spam Assasin as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange. In my opinion, having used both in a number of environments, Mdaemon has my vote, even though it may have many more features than you might ever use, its openness and flexibility scores well as does its cost-benefit ratio for the smaller enterprise.