I have heard stories about spammers signing up for hosting services to send out spam before the hosting company notices. How do you watch for spammers, do you watch the new account manually or do you have some type of automation that flags the account?

Also, once you've been hit by a spammer, what action do you take against them?

Just curious here, and wondering how big a problem it is.

Thanks

Well, in a shared hosting environment, the host can limit the number of emails that a user can send in a given amount of time. This will effectively limit the amount of damage that a spammer can do, and also render his eforts virtually useless, since spam works when the targets are very numerous. So even if the host doesn't take notice of his attempts, he will most likely give up on his own.

Things may get a lot more complicated when it comes to VPSes and dedicated servers.

Since spam often goes hand in hand with fraud, verifying all orders should help fight spam as well.

I'm not a host though, so a host's opinion, based on real life direct experience, would be quite interesting to read for me as well.

I think that spamers cant breathe free with quality support teem. I hope that they prevent it in time.

As long as you pay attention to how many mail queries your mailserver is doing you should be fine. You can also track DNS queries to the forward lookup servers. Spammers usually do alot more than an average website.

I agree with the verifying orders statement - it's better to weed them out before they get in. If you have a firm account verification process (calling the person who placed the order, trying the email address they used to be sure it is real, or even asking them to answer a verification fax), it does help. They always find a way through, sadly, but at least you don't make it easy for them.

My question is always: Who keeps buying stuff from SPAM emails??? I assume if no one responded to their offers, it wouldn't be worth it to continue. So who are these consumers who don't know better than to buy things off SPAM mail?

Well one way spammers can take advantage of a server is through outdated scripts. Like php scripts for example. If they are outdated that most likely means they are unsecure which means if they are not updated on the server even in a shared hosting environment your server is at risk of being hacked by a hacker that just wants to do damage or by a spam hacker.

They will hack in to your account through the script and then place scripts of there own that attach them self to send mail and send spam and you think it is the account that is doing it. If your server has many unsecure or outdated scripts on it they can just move from account to account and make it really hard to track or stop.

spammers r the worse. if u run a host biz, u should take all efforts to make sure ur safe from them.

All I can say is actively monitor your servers and all new accounts.

I think that it is quite difficult to notice.

Na, they are normally easy to spot once they start spamming. Also, instant account activation is just asking for trouble.

Spamming is not a problem, but charge backs are... Seem like theres people out there that pre-pay, and at the end of the term they do a chargeback at there creditcard company.

If the technical support team of a particular hosting company is efficient it is an easy job for them to detect these spammers from their logs and prevent them from spamming the server. If a customer is spamming and overloading the server their account is suspended and in other case if the client is found to be a fraud the account is terminated from the service.

No kidding, eh?

I read somewhere that something like 11% of survey respondents admitted to buying something from spam email. With numbers like that it seems that spam does indeed pay.

You're right, though, until people stop buying stuff from spam emails it will continue.

Yes indeed. Don't count on PayPal to help you with such abuse...

Most payment gateways do not have any kind of protection for digital services like hosting when you read the find print most of them are good only for hard goods that get sold and shipped. People that use your services for a while then issue a chargeback with out any notice...

As far as spammers watching out for them, combination of routine manual and automated checks. The biggest way to prevent is look at the accounts that sign up.