How We Block Spam

We utilise a variety of techniques to ensure that spam and viruses are filtered out and only legitimate email is delivered. Tests are carried out at SMTP connect time before we have received an email and also when we process the email as it reaches our servers.

Email Filtering - SMTP Connect Time

When an email is sent from a mail server, a connection is established between the sending mail server and the recipient (Your Clean Mail) mail server. As this connection is made, we test information gathered from the sending server according to specific rules. These tests include:

  • • Invalid sender information - ensuring the sending server follows correct protocols for sending email
  • • Non-authentic server information - checking that the sending server is who it claims to be
  • • Blacklists - checking sender IP address against known spam blacklists

Email Filtering - Content Analysis

Once we have accepted the email, further tests are carried out. It is at this stage that the body of the email can be analysed. Tests included at this point are:
  • • Content-matching rules - analysing email content for patterns of spam and phishing
  • • URL blacklists - checking URL's in emails against databases of known websites containing malicious applications
  • • Anti-virus scanning - our anti-virus signatures are updated every 15 mintes to ensure we are prepared for the latest virus outbreaks

When an email has been has been recognised as clean it is sent onto the customer's mail server.

Email Backup

'Your Clean Mail' uses dedicated mail servers in UK and continental Europe for maximum redundancy and bandwidth. Once a customer is setup on the service, email delivery can take place through any one of our servers in different data centres. This ensures that your email service will not be affected in the event of one of our servers or data centres going offline.

In the event of your mail server going down, we will queue your email for delivery until your server is back online. If you have redundancy built into your own network, we can ensure delivery to a secondary mail server in the event of your primary mail server going down.