Stop Domain Spam Emails

[RicoShay]

I'm sure many of you are suffering from receiving spam emails with contents such as "hello sir, you own abc.com so I thought you'd benefit from buying a-b-xfght.com"... or Chinese / Oriental mail.

I thought I'd share my findings and hope others will do the same in regards to stopping these spam emails. Please post your tips / tricks if you have any.

The biggest offender for me over the past year or so have been the Chinese spam emails (related to domain names). I was getting between 15-20 daily per account and I have over 8-9 accounts that were targeted. That's a lot of hideous looking spam!

I did a search and the first result in Google provided some very detailed, useful information and tips on setting up better filters via cPanel. So here's what I tried:

- Log into cPanel where your email is hosted and go to “Email Filtering” options.

- Create a New Filter

- Give it a Name: Chinese_Spam (or something else)

- Rules (in the 3 boxes) should be:

Any header
matches regex
gb2312​

or

Any header
matches regex
gbk​

- Actions:
Discard Message (or whatever you deem fit).

I'm not sure how long it takes the filter to spring into action, I thought it would be immediate but it didn't seem to be. I still received 5-10 emails that same day. However, since then I've received a LOT less... maybe about 2 per day in some accounts and 0 in others. I've gone a week now and it seems to have helped.

However, this is just reduce the Chinese spam - what about all those other annoying domain related spam emails? Have you guys and gals had any luck stopping or reducing them without blocking potential buyer emails?

Please share your filters / tips if you can... and if you improve that filter I posted above, then please do share here.



By the way for those who are interested, the search I did in Google was for "stop chinese spam emails" and the URL I went to started with "Dr John..." --- I'm not posting the whole URL as I don't want to break any forum rules



%%-

 

[Trader]

...

 

[Pryda]

Thanks Rico.

Haven't gotten many spam mails lately, but there seems to be troll and spammer on NP whose posts are mostly empty and useless. you just need to look up a tiny bit to spot him.

 

[alien51]

I think it is impossible to stop domain spam emails, because automated email harvesters are available to almost anyone. I already gave up on filtering.

You filter the Chinese, then here comes Alex. Then comes Lisa Smith. Who transforms into David Something. Then comes a bunch of other guys.

One thing i have come to realize: About 99.5% of emails i get from my WHOIS email address come from DOMAIN SALESMEN trying to sell me their domains.

I mean, if you are a salesman yourself, the email you want to get are from BUYERS. NOT SELLERS!

So the technique i use to filter out the legit buyers, is to display my real contact email address in the webpage in IMAGE FORMAT. The theory is: If you are really a serious buyer, you will take the effort to read the image, and type the email address in your email message. Domain Salesmen do not have the time nor the patience to do the CAPTCHA stuffs.

As to legit emails from your registrar trying to contact you via your whois info, you could set up your filter to only allow addresses with "godaddy.com" in the sender address for example.

 

[iowadawg]

How about using your ISP?

My ISP stops like 98 to 99% of all spam so they never come into my inbox.
Any spam that does come to my inbox, I just pass on to my ISP.

 

[RicoShay]

Yes, I know what you mean alien51 - it's an impossible task to stop them all. As for using image instead of text, I do that on my site but unfortunately whois searches don't. I think only a number of them do.

I keep my personal email address separate from ones which I use for domaining so at least that helps.

@iowadawg
What do you mean by ISP stopping them? Are they able to stop the spam even on my hosted domains? By this I mean I have eg. [email protected] which is hosted say at hostgator via cpanel - would my ISP be able to help with those or only ones where they provide [email protected]?

 

[iowadawg]

Nope, only your ISP email address.

If only host companies could set up to stop spam in your domain email address.

 

[RicoShay]

Nope, only your ISP email address.

If only host companies could set up to stop spam in your domain email address.

Yes, thought so. If only!

Well for now, I'll have to try to get these filters in place to prevent as much as I can. The biggest fear with spam is losing out on a potential sale because it accidently gets picked up by a filter or I delete it thinking it's spam.

And its for this reason that I'll be trying to create more complex filters... just need some time and as always, feedback from others will also help.

 

[newbie191]

I am wondering how do these guys send such emails? Is this thing automated?
Suppose I own mybestdomain.com and the spammer owns mybestdomains.com how will he know that my domain is relevant? I have been getting such emails too and I think its a good marketing strategy and must work for most of the time.

 

[surprise]

Ironically isn't this what most domainers do all the time when they send emails to "potential endusers" to pitch their own domains ?!

 

[jideofor]

Ironically isn't this what most domainers do all the time when they send emails to "potential endusers" to pitch their own domains ?!

Spot on! I thought this was a forum for domain investors... why worry? If you dont want to buy, ignore the emails. It is that simple.

 

[RicoShay]

When it affects your sales, then you worry. Like I mentioned earlier, I have around 8-9 accounts. They are all routed to one inbox - receiving over 80-90 spam emails daily. That's a lot of junk to sift through. It also increases the chance of missing out on important communication from a real buyer or even from a registrar.

And no, its not really the same as domainers sending emails to potential endusers. Its pure absolute spam... if I could read the domain or it made the slightest bit of sense to receive the email then fine. But these are in foreign languages or titled "Dear [email protected]".

Just because other domainers may go around scraping and spamming emails, doesn't mean I have to put up with it. That's not how I do business. I've hardly ever - if at all - emailed a "potential enduser" without knowing their name, their business etc. If I could ignore it that easily, I wouldn't waste my energy on trying to find solutions on reducing it - and I certainly wouldn't bother posting about it on a forum.

And finally, yes this is a forum for domain investors - but you'll find most people are here to sell domains. The ones who are here to buy, do so by visiting the right places/sites (i.e. being here for start) - we don't want to be shoved useless names to our inbox. I'll subscribe to mailouts from reputable sources if thats what I wanted.

As "alien51" said before, these spammers are so stupid they don't realise they're scraping emails of other sellers. Stop using whois to scrape emails - go find actual buyers by doing some proper research.

 

[surprise]

solution = whois privacy + park at Sedo

 

[RicoShay]

solution = whois privacy + park at Sedo

Privacy cost of $5000+ and I don't park my domains.
It's a suggestion, not really a solution for me. Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll continue with setting up free filters.

 

[surprise]

Privacy cost of $5000+ and I don't park my domains.
It's a suggestion, not really a solution for me. Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll continue with setting up free filters.

yes ofcourse it is not a solution but i meant the only available solution , otherwise you have to live with filters pros and cons .

 

[Trader]

Eat them daily 5-10 emails, read them and erase them...

 

[RicoShay]

Eat them daily 5-10 emails, read them and erase them...

Never thought of that... I'll give it a go.

 

[alien51]

Spot on! I thought this was a forum for domain investors... why worry? If you dont want to buy, ignore the emails. It is that simple.

I wonder how many domainers actually want to buy domains from another domainer coming from solicitations.

I mean, if you are a domainer, then you should know what domains you want and how easy it is to find them and contact the owner. Why do you need to be sales-pitched?

And since the ratio of domain salesmen, versus domain buyers, is about 1-is-to-4 million, imagine the amount of garbage you will get while drowning out the one or two emails that really matter.

 

[iowadawg]

Domainers are taught from the start, email the endusers.
Find resellers.

So can you blame domains for the spam?

Here on namepros, it is the same:
You have to email, email, email.
To sell your domain.