Getting Started With pairOne

1. Who Are The Spammers?
2. A Daunting Challenge
3. The pairOne Spam Solution
4. Spam DNA
5. Closing Open Relays
6. Taking Advantage of Spammer’s Mistakes
7. Saying No To MIME
8. A Geographic Solution
9. Spelling Matters
10. Formatting Helps
11. Constantly Updated Databases
12. Weighted Tests
13. Preventing False Positives
14. pairOne Filtering Options
15. What Happens If I Get A Spam Email?
16. The pairOne Commitment To Stopping Spam

Who Are The Spammers?
Spammers are mass marketing agents who are looking to make money. The sad truth is that spam email does generate large sums of money for the people who send it. It is simply a numbers game. If you send out millions of emails to random people someone will eventually purchase your product or service.

Spammers can send an enormous numbers of emails at one time, if even one tenth of one percent of the recipients make a purchase it is possible for the spammers to make a considerable amount of money.

Spammers often use services or purchase applications that allow them to send out their emails to millions of customers by generating random email addresses. Even if some of the email addresses are not being used, often enough of the email addresses will be valid.

Other spammers purchase and trade the names and email addresses of people who have been known to make purchases online in response to unsolicited bulk commercial email.

This is the computer age’s version of direct mail mass marketers who used to cram our postal mailboxes with tons of “junk mail.”

The Internet community as a whole has been working hard to stop the spread of unsolicited commercial email and will continue to do so.

Unfortunately the amount of money involved in sending out spam has led some spammers into using unethical practices. Some even use applications that allow them to send spam from the computers of “innocent” users.

Other spammers have devised systems that allow them to hide the address that their messages are originating from. This has become more and more common as various states and countries enact laws to punish people who send out mass amounts of unsolicited commercial email.

Yet, spam is likely to be with us for a long time. The nature of the Internet means that when one country invokes an anti spam law it is not difficult for spammers to simply set up their servers in a country that does not criminalize their marketing efforts and start sending their emails from there.

Many people who send out spam know that they are breaking the law. Others have connections to various other criminal enterprises. Still some are simply trying to make money with the power of the Internet.

A Daunting Challenge
The amount of money involved and the huge variety in the types of people who send out unsolicited bulk commercial email is why combating spam has become a very difficult endeavor.

With every advance in spam blocking software and strategies spammers have been able to eventually find new ways to get their unsolicited commercial messages out. It is to their advantage to make sure that as many potential customers read their mail as possible.

That is why it is important to remain ever vigilant against the threat of spam and the people who generate mass email mailings. Spam blocking techniques that work today may not be nearly as effective tomorrow.

It is only by constantly searching for and find new anti spam strategies that we will be able to keep spam in check and keep your inbox as uncluttered as possible.

As part of our ongoing efforts to make your email hosting experience as safe and secure as possible, pairOne is committed to working with the experts in the anti spam community to constantly update our service with the most effective anti spam software and applications available anywhere.


The pairOne Spam Solution
pairOne is in constant communication with spam protection agencies and is continually developing intelligence about spam sources and methods. We keep track of known spam characteristics that help us block the vast majority of unwanted emails from ever reaching your desktop. Then we run each and every email through spam databases and perform DNS checks – a process which has allowed us to block more than 95 percent of spam emails that have been sent to our users.

Spam DNA
In the natural world genetic material, called DNA, can be used to identify an animal even if you only have a small organic sample to work with. With just a little bit of skin or hair you can figure out if you are looking at a sample from a house cat or from a human being.

Email itself often has its own form of DNA. By analyzing known existing spam emails we have been able to find many common characteristics in the vast majority of unsolicited bulk commercial email.

This allows us to scan your incoming email and find parts of the text that let us know if it is likely that a particular message was sent by a spammer.

Closing Open Relays
Most mail servers are set up to make sure that members of the spam community can not use them. Unfortunately there are other less ethical mail servers, called Open Relays, that will allow any paying customer to send as many messages as possible.

These open relays have long been tools of the spam community. They know that they can send out millions of messages through these relays without worrying about getting shut down.

The good news is that pairOne is aware of these open relay ports and the danger they pose to the email hosting community. We blacklist messages sent from these relay ports and make sure these spam messages never get to you.

We make the same effort to keep spam away from you by also blacklisting web forums that are known to be insecure and proxy forums as well.

By closing the doors on the open relays we make it much harder for spam to ever become a problem for you.

Taking Advantage of Spammer’s Mistakes
Like many criminals, spammers are often too smart for their own good. They make careless mistakes that ease our task of identifying their messages before they get to you.

For example, when spam filters first started appearing on the scene many spammers simply encoded their emails as invisible html code so that the filters could not read the content or perform an email DNA analysis. Unfortunately for the spammers the designers of spam filters understood that there is no legitimate reason for any email to contain invisible html code. Therefore all emails with such coding are blocked automatically.

Saying No To MIME
Other spammers use MIME to hide the content of their text from spam filters. Once again however the anti spam community was able to stay ahead of the curve and quickly created applications to decode the MIME segments and make sure that those unsolicited commercial emails were blocked as well.

A Geographic Solution
Geography is another way that we are able to identify unsolicited bulk commercial email sent by spammers. When an email is sent over the Internet it seeks out the shortest point from A to B.

Our system can track how the email has moved through the Internet. Therefore if an email has moved through various countries we are aware of it. For example, if a message claims to be sent by someone in California to someone in New Jersey, it is unlikely that it would have ever traveled through the Ukraine.

Spelling Matters
Spelling and punctuation also play a hand in identifying instances of unsolicited bulk commercial email. When spam filters were first introduced many of them were designed to flag all mails that contained certain keywords known to be used by spammers.

The spam community noticed this and started intentionally misspelling those keywords and sometimes introducing random punctuation into the emails to prevent them from being detected by spam filters.

Modern spam filters will not fall for this ruse. The technology used by pairOne not only looks for the common spam keywords but also searches for spelling variants and illogical punctuation.

Formatting Helps
Unlike regular email spam often contains various formatting anomalies that are designed to make it harder for people to track the unsolicited bulk commercial email back to the original sender.

While this may help the spammer hide from the long arm of the law it makes it easier for pairOne to identify emails that are more likely than not to be examples of spam.
First off we examine the email and compare it against known spam formatting techniques.

Second we compare the return address on the email and see if it has been formatted in ways often used by the spamming community.

Third we see if there are problems with the way that an email header has been formatted. Most normal users do not have the technical ability or desire to alter the format of their email header. If the header has been altered there is a high likelihood that the email was sent by someone trying to send unsolicited bulk commercial email.

Constantly Updated Databases
The anti spam community maintains a series of databases of information about known spammers and their techniques as well as blacklists of servers and services used to send spam.

These databases are constantly updated when new information about unsolicited bulk commercial email comes in. At pairOne we have access to these blacklists and use them to keep our anti spam efforts as current as possible.

Making Sure Senders Follow The Rules

RFCs have instituted a series of rules that define how email should be sent in order to keep senders responsible for their messages and make sure that they do not send unsolicited bulk commercial email.

Many spammers break these rules in order to try to hide who they are. At pairOne we are able to examine emails and make sure that they have followed the rules – because we know that the rule breakers are more likely than not to be sending spam to our users.

That is why we look to see if the mail server has falsely identified itself or is missing a reverse DNS record. We then examine the email to see if the domain it is coming from is using illegitimate values in its DNS records. Another red flag for our anti spam efforts is if the domain where the email was sent from refuses to accept delivery status notifications.

All of these problems help us analyze the mail sent to you and determine if it is more likely than not to be an example of spam.

Weighted Tests
While no one characteristic can identify an email as spam we perform weighted tests to make sure that legitimate email is always able to get through to your system. If a company attempted to use a single test there would be the risk of false positives that would block your legitimate mail.

That is why we perform a series of tests on each and every piece of email we receive. At the end of each test the email is given a score to note whether or not it is likely to be spam or more likely to be a legitimate email. In this way each email receives a weighted score identifying is a more or less likely to be an example of unwanted commercial email. We then match this score against the level of spam protection requested by the user.

The overall weighted score when compared to the spam sensitivity rating is the ultimate determination of whether or not the email will get through or if it will be flagged as spam. When you set you sensitivity level at the highest level you will receive the least amount of spam – but also increase your chance of having some legitimate mail blocked. When you set your sensitivity level at the lowest level you will ensure that all of your regular email gets through, but you may also receive a limited number of unwanted commercial emails.

Preventing False Positives
While pairOne is committed to doing everything possible to block all unwanted commercial messages we also know that all of your legitimate email communications need to get through.

That is why we work hard to make sure that legitimate email is not blocked because of a false positive spam reading. We employ technology that not only identifies the common characteristics of spam, but can also recognize legitimate emails.

In addition your system administrator can set the sensitivity level of your spam protection to whatever level your organization is most comfortable with. You can even identify a limited group of senders and chose only to accept email from those sources.

Certain commercial groups who do not believe in sending Spam have created a program where their emails are bonded and certified as secure before they are sent. These bonded commercial marketers have agreed to a voluntary list of professional guidelines to ensure that their emails are never unsolicited, unwanted or unsettling. pairOne allows you to only accept commercial email from these bonded marketers.

pairOne Filtering Options
We understand that everyone has a different tolerance level when it comes to dealing with unsolicited commercial email. Some people are willing to have an occasional false positive if it means that they will never have to deal with spam at all. Other people are willing to deal with a certain amount of spam if it means that all of their regular email will get through without having to worry about false positives.

That is why pairOne offers a variety of email filtering options to protect your company against spam.

Your administrator will have the ability to create a “safe list” of email addresses that he or she knows do not send spam. Therefore email from these approved senders will always be sent without having to go through the spam filter system and risk a false positive result.

On the other end of the spectrum, the administrator can choose to have all emails not sent by addresses on the safe list blocked as potential spam. With this option you will only receive email from people and organizations you already know and trust.

If you are looking for a middle ground we also offer individual user flexibility. From their own control panel each and ever member of your organization can select the level of spam protection they are most comfortable with.

What Happens If I Get A Spam Email?
From time to time a spam message or a message that looks like it may be spam may make it through our system. This is particularly true if you have set your sensitivity settings to a low level in order to minimize false positives as much as possible. While we believe that we can eliminate up to 98 percent of all spam, no system can keep you completely immune from unsolicited bulk commercial email.

Should an email reach your inbox you have several options.

If you don't recognize the sender of the email you could simply delete it right off the bat. The problem with that method is that you will have no way of knowing if the email may have been legitimate – but simply sent from a new email address for a longtime contact.

Another option is to move the message to your spam basket so you can look at it later after you have examined the rest of your email for the day. This allows you to read the mail before deleting it, but also keeps it from cluttering up your current inbox.

You can block the sender of the email from sending you any mail in the future. This option is recommended only if you have taken a good look at the email and are certain that it is spam and not simply an unexpected legitimate email. If you block the email address you will not be aware if the sender tries to contact you again.

You can notify us about the message. We recommend that you read the email first and do not notify us until you are sure that the email is in fact spam. We will then investigate the email and use the data we collect in our ongoing efforts to combat spam. Once you have notified us about the message you will still have the option to block the sender from sending you any more email in the future.

The pairOne Commitment To Stopping Spam
pairOne is committed to winning the fight against unsolicited bulk commercial email.

We will continue to keep our systems as up to date as possible in the fight against spam and make sure that we are constantly ahead of the curve. As spammers’ techniques evolve we will make sure that our systems keep up with the trend and keep their emails away from your inbox.

We will always work with the most reliable industry groups to keep our databases and blacklists up to date. We will always have the most advanced state of the art spam filters available. We will respond to all of you questions and concerns about spam.

At pairOne we take the security of your email hosting solution seriously and will keep your inbox as uncluttered as technologically possible.