Happy Birthday Spam!

What is spam? Spam means the simultaneous massive sending of the same email generally for commercial purposes. Over the course of these 4 decades the concept has not changed at all but has grown exponentially over the years. Data in hand, it is estimated that in 2017, 56% of emails sent were considered spam (source: IT security company Kaspersky).

The birthday of spam coincided with another anniversary: World Password Day which occurs annually every first Thursday of May.

Spam prevention and management must be a priority for everyone, especially companies in our industry.

How do we at Host.it prevent spamming? The systems department in collaboration with customer service carries out proactive checks every day to avoid sending spam and placing servers on blacklists.

Spam email can be sent:

from one (or more) mailboxes;

from the website (unprotected registration or contact form);

Thanks to monitoring and alert systems, our technicians can intervene immediately and block the threat. The affected user is notified via email of the change in the mailbox password and notification of our communication is sent via SMS.

To avoid sending spam from your email account, we recommend creating a highly secure password. In a previous article on our blog there are some simple tips on how to create a secure password.

The sending of spam from the website is mainly caused by the unprotected contact or registration form, in this case we recommend installing a plugin for human verification such as "captcha".

As regards the sending of spam following hacking of the website, active monitoring of the servers allows us to anticipate and prevent the spread of infections and the consequent bad reputation of the server which can cause it to be included in the blacklists. Also in this case, the technical staff promptly notifies the user via email and communicates the methods for immediate resolution. The hacking analysis and subsequent remediation are our responsibility and included in the annual hosting investment.

The security of servers and hosted users is fundamental and for this very reason, in the commercial offer we have included innovative and indispensable tools to "sleep soundly", one of these tools is the: Security & Reputation Manager

Security & Reputation Manager: never without it again! The Security & Reputation Manager is a completely automated and free service that analyzes the reputation and security status of a website. The service is provided in collaboration with Sucuri, an international company specializing in web security, and is included in all our hosting profiles that manage a web application.

Here's how it works specifically:

Every day a check is carried out within the most famous public blacklists to verify that the domain is not present. Additionally, the application is scanned for malware, site errors or malfunctions, and outdated software versions.

This service is useful for immediately knowing a critical state of the website and allows you to work quickly to resolve any problems encountered and restore the correct functioning of the application.

The service's notification system allows you to be immediately aware of the health of the site and avoid any penalty on search engines in order to maintain a high reputation of the online brand.

The tool is available starting from the product called HOST 2.0 (on demand).

MORE DETAILS ON THE HOSTING PROFILES I remind you that our assistance can be reached 7 days a week from Monday to Friday from 7am to 7pm and Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 8am to 5pm via email (This email address is protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), toll-free number 800 943 944, online chat and social networks @hostdotit (Twitter) and host.it (Facebook)