For a while I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of spam making it into my inbox. Sometimes it even evaded all of the spam filters built in by Gsuite and Offic3365. I began researching and found that my website was an increasing source of spam getting to me. How is this possible? it turns out that there are tons of automated systems looking for contact forms on websites. They scan your site looking first for email addresses directly on your website. If it finds one that information is sold to spammers for direct spams runs to your inbox. If they do not find an email address they then search for contact forms. Many older contact forms are very easy with no anti-bot protections. These then get filled out by the bot and then activated. This sends the spam from your website directly to your inbox. Because it is from your website it evades many filters most folks have in place. For the newer forms that have strong anti-bot protections the spammers actually hire individuals to go to random sites. They find your contact form and fill it out with the spam information. This once again goes around many filters. Malware actors have also begun using this technique to push malware links through website contact forms.
ETC Maryland has been testing an outbound service designed for modern website to be able to send the various alerts and notifications modern websites require to keep the administrators informed of various events in regards to the site. Just from trials of a few sites currently hosted on the ETC Maryland platform, even modern, “secured” contact forms can still generate quite a bit of spam. Over the past 30 days, more than 85% of all mail being generated by contact forms is spam..None of these messages ever made it past the spam filters so they never reached the website owner. This means less spam makes to your mailbox. If you are not getting spammed by your own website it is much easier for you to get the legitimate mail that you can use to monetize your site.
ETC Maryland is proud to announce we will be offering a website e-mail relay service that makes sure that mail sent from your website is cleaned of spam and also checked for malware. The following pricing is as follows:
No setup fee.
$35 per year. This account is limited to 200 email per month. This is suitable for most basic sites.
$75 per year. This tier is limited to 500 emails per month.
$125 per year. This tier is limited to 1,500 emails per month.
$250 per year. This tier is limited to 3000 emails per month.
This service will become available to all hosting customers Jan1. This cost is in addition to the pricing on the hosting page. This service is only for ETC Maryland hosting customers with an active hosting account. This pricing will be posted on etc-md.com on January 1st, 2022. If you have any questions please contact us.