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Spam? I cant stand it anymore.


danield

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Hey matt I can't stand this anymore. I keep on blocking, closing, deleting these tickets and they keep on sending them. Is there any other way to block these support tickets from coming in. I keep on getting some bullshit like:

 

Hortense Colaizzi

depending@bglad.com

 

Delete Support Ticket 05/03/2008 03:27

Heya,

 

Real men! Millionss of people accross the world have already tested THIS and ARE making their girlfriendds feel brand new sexual ssensations! YOU are the best in bed, aren't you ?

Girls! Deveelop your sexual reelationship and get even MORE pleasurre! Make your boyfriennd a gift!

 

Spend as if he were a second vaisravana. He has great was

thy joy. I ask, dost thou or dost thou hurled it at bhima.

beholding that mace, o king, with a verdant lawn before

it. At present la teuse floor. She was out of breath but

laughing when left the hall, just as a woman would have

done. Upon themselves. And it is very poor pasture! Being

such, he must save himself from wounds and the thriving

village of chicago in the north. Nothing, for science had

taught me to distrust as one of the southern leaders expressed

it, that nations in the world for only so much political

having learnt before the intentions of duryodhana, moche

felicitie. Concernyng the erroure, whiche schomburgk described.

upon the other hand, he.

 

Everytime they get sent with different emails, names. I keep on blocking sender and they keep on getting sent. If for example i dont delete the tickets for 1 week they dont come anymore. Instantly after i delete them they start coming again :(.

 

Thanks

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Hey matt I can't stand this anymore. I keep on blocking, closing, deleting these tickets and they keep on sending them. Is there any other way to block these support tickets from coming in. I keep on getting some bullshit like:

 

 

 

Everytime they get sent with different emails, names. I keep on blocking sender and they keep on getting sent. If for example i dont delete the tickets for 1 week they dont come anymore. Instantly after i delete them they start coming again :(.

 

Thanks

 

Do you have your system set up with tickets only able to be raised by existing clients?

 

Do you have captcha enabled for non-logged in clients when anyone submits anything through your site?

 

Do you have spamassassin on your server?

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Everytime they get sent with different emails, names. I keep on blocking sender and they keep on getting sent. If for example i dont delete the tickets for 1 week they dont come anymore. Instantly after i delete them they start coming again

Blocking senders is pointless these days; I can't recall more than 2 or 3 spams that came from the same sender address. As for getting more as soon as you delete them, does the desk send a notice when that's done, by any chance (I'm not using the WHMCS desk)? That's the only logical reason I could see for that happening.

 

As for spam, the only way to cut back on it is to do one or more of the following:

  • Use an address that's not typical, like help@, ticketing@ or accounting@
  • Use spam prefiltering such as Mailscanner (recommended). That can spot these, and prepend {Spam}, which can then be filtered on
  • Use Captcha for non clients
  • If WHMCS allows tickets to be opened by email, disable that and only allow the web interface...again with captcha if not logged in

 

If these spams are able to get through to your support desk, they are also getting through to your clients. I have clients thanking me all the time for installing and providing Mailscanner to slow the spam they receive. You'd be amazed how much junk it catches...

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something ive tried and have had somewhat good success with, is to space out the email addresses.

 

for example

s a l e s a n d s u p p o r t @ my site . com

 

usually works well, and sometimes i change it up too

 

example:

sa l es a n d su pp o r t @ m ys ite . c o m

 

then i just make a note above the lists to remove all the spaces and put it together. i could probably drop that because most people know this already, but it still helps when you get someone that doesnt understand that.

 

its helped reduce alot spam. with minimal work.

 

james

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something ive tried and have had somewhat good success with, is to space out the email addresses.

 

for example

s a l e s a n d s u p p o r t @ my site . com

 

usually works well, and sometimes i change it up too

 

example:

sa l es a n d su pp o r t @ m ys ite . c o m

 

then i just make a note above the lists to remove all the spaces and put it together. i could probably drop that because most people know this already, but it still helps when you get someone that doesnt understand that.

 

its helped reduce alot spam. with minimal work.

 

james

 

It might work, but it makes the site look chezzy...

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yes sometimes, but if you explain, like my one client did http://www.pbsplatattack.com/contact.html why you did that, alot of people understand. they hate spam just as much as we each do. if your client or perspective client doesnt accept the fact you are trying to combat spam, then.. ask yourself, is that really someone you want hosting with you? *shrugs* maybe im just grumpy about spam and hate spam in every kind, way, and format. i hand the junk mail i get from the post back to the mail courier and tell him to return it to sender.. he probably just tosses it, but if it did get sent back, it gets the point across.

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  • WHMCS CEO

Spam happens, that's just part of being on the internet, but to reduce it you can block keywords in emails inside WHMCS. You know the ones "Enlargement,Debt,Rolex,etc..." - just go to Configuration > Spam Control and add the keywords into the blocked subjects section. Then if a message is received to WHMCS with that word in the subject it won't open a ticket.

 

Matt

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  • 2 weeks later...

We use the POP3 client and not the piping on linux. We have a rule setup in our mail server that sends an autoresponder response back to sender if there is NOT a '[' in the subject line. The autoresponder simply says:

"Please open new support tickets by going to our website at http:/...."

 

This way if its a valid reply and it has a '[' in the subject it gets let through.

 

If your mailserver allows content filtering that works great. Stops just about all the spam.

 

If WHMCS had the ability to do this instead of having to do it in the mail server that would cut down on spam a lot.

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Going back to danield's problem with bots opening support tickets, I have only ever seen one method work 100% at stopping bots from successfully completing on-line forms, that is user configurable questions that need to be answered correctly to submit the form.

Every type of captcha image used has already been cracked by spammers.

Trying to filter out keywords is a losing battle as it can easily be circumvented by miss-spelling.

Trying to filter out ranges of IP addresses etc is also a losing battle

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  • 3 weeks later...
I had the guys over at ConfigServer install mailscanner and their cpanel plugin two weeks ago. It has cut my spam by at least 40% and gets better every day. Best $45 I've ever spent.

 

i agree, ive been using mailscanner for about 18 months and it works extremly well some days 70% of emails are filtered out as spam, thats 70% less spam sent to my clients.

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Do you have your system set up with tickets only able to be raised by existing clients?

 

Do you have captcha enabled for non-logged in clients when anyone submits anything through your site?

 

Do you have spamassassin on your server?

 

Excellent suggestions, you should definitely check these. Once I did I eliminated all spam. If you have any support email addresses which are open to all to submit, you may want to change that email address to something completely different and do not make any reference to it on your site (ie. all email links should just point to your contact form).

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