You may have been wondering what has been going on with e-mail sending this past couple of days, and we thought you deserved an explanation and an update on where we go from here and here we are, with this post.

First… some statistics

In the period, 06/05/2012 to 12/05/2012 we sent some:

36002 e-mail messages to;
34409 individual e-mail addresses!

from our Enterprise Hosting device malio alone!

So what is the problem?

Unfortunately, a small minority of our customers have been exposed to malicious takeovers of their websites (usually due to weak password security or via unsecured, out of date software) and in having been done, further using our equipment to send bulk e-mail communications to individual e-mail accounts. In doing so, our IP ranges have been listed in what are known as Remote Block List (RBL’s) and mail servers (rightly) following these, were refusing e-mail from our IP ranges. This in turn resulted in e-mail bouncing from these servers, and ultimately not being received until the listing was removed from the blacklist involved.

So what is your position?

SimplexWebs Limited have a zero tolerance attitude to bulk e-mail communications and monitor outbound communications for spam. Accounts deemed in breach will be suspended and further terminated, in accordance with our Terms of Service.

So where do we go from here?

In light of recent blacklisting of some IP addresses, we are proceeding with the following:

1) All e-mail sending outbound will be scanned for suspicious keywords and common spam messages. Messages matching these patterns will not be sent;
2) Staff will be monitoring e-mails sent from our servers for spam and adjusting filters as required;
3) We have implemented RBL scanning for our IP ranges and staff will be alerted much faster in future to all blocks imposed and corrective measures taken in a more immediate fashion;
4) We have also joined feedback loops for all major e-mail sending services, including AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and Google in order to allow us to resolve spam complaints;
5) We also have our brand new, spam resolution centre. If you receive a spam message sent from a SimplexWebs controlled server or client, please forward the message unmodified and including all headers to spam@simplexwebs.com and a member of the team will take immediate action;

In doing this, we hope to ensure that all e-mail sent by our customers is sent, quickly and reliably, 100% of the time, 24 / 7 / 365.25 days a year. We do apologise for the issues, lessons have been learnt for the better of your services. Thanks for choosing SimplexWebs!

~ Harry