BananaSpama Email Virus and Spam Filter - Enterprise Spam Filter

  • Simple, Effective Spam Filter
  • Integrated Virus Filter
  • Simple Control Panel
  • Instant Online Signup
  • MX Record Based Solution
  • Receives Mail, Filters, Forwards
  • Use with ANY mail server
  • Use with ANY hosting account
  • 24x7 Email and Phone Support
  • No 3rd Party BlockLists
  • Advanced Proprietary Techniques
  • No software to install!

Frequently Asked Questions - MX based Spam Filter Service

How It Works

  1. How does MX based spam filtering work?
    Using a simple DNS change, you designate our spam filter server as the primary recipient of all your email. Our server will receive all of your email on your behalf, filter and then forward your cleaned email to your actual email server. We become your intermediary and filter all email before it ever reaches your real email server or your desktop.
  2. What about privacy, do you read our email?
    Your email is private and safe, all of our filtering systems are automatic and performed by our software. Our staff doesn't read or review your email, and we don't store it for any longer than is required for our automated filtering algorithms to run.
  3. What is an MX record and how does it affect my email delivery?
    In DNS terminology, an MX record designates one or more email servers that receive email on your behalf. Any time an email is sent to you, the sending server looks up the DNS record to determine where the email should be sent. Once you change your MX record to point to us, everyone (including the spammers) will send your email us.
  4. How does mail get to our real email server?
    When you sign up for our service, we'll automatically detect your real email server. Any email we receive on your behalf will be scanned, and if it appears clean, we'll then forward that email along to your original real email server.
  5. How do I change my DNS MX record?
    Usually your host or your system administrator can make this change in minutes. If you have a control panel such as Plesk, Ensim or DirectAdmin, you can make this change yourself using your control panel. If you need assistance changing your MX record, just call our 24x7 FREE support hotline and our technicians will help!
  6. Do I need to make any changes or install any software on my computer?
    NO! You don't need to install any software anywhere, and don't need to make any changes to your email program. You can continue to use Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail or any other email program without any setting changes. Our system is effectively transparent.
  7. Can we cancel at any time?
    Since YOU control your DNS MX record, you can quit using our service at any time. Remember the DNS change only took a few minutes to setup to begin using our service, and you can quit using our service just as fast. You're 100% in control and we don't require any long term contracts or commitments.
  8. What about DNS propagation, can our service really begin in 15 minutes?
    While it is true that DNS propagation can take up to 72 hours for your MX record change to take effect for every computer on the internet, practical experience shows that it usually takes much less time. The 72 hour rule of thumb only applies to servers that already have your DNS cached. Spammers who have not sent you email yet or haven't emailed you within the last day will usually see your DNS change immediately. In most cases we see the filter begin to take effect right away.
  9. There are other MX record spam filters out there, how is BananaSpama different?
    Great question! One of the biggest differences is that we built the BananaSpama mail filter because we needed it, and no other mail filters could solve our problem. See, one of our domains (www.cbstech.com) receives over 350k spams a day. Due to backscatter double-bounces, this means our email provider's mail server had to be able to keep up with 1 Million emails a day! So the first version of BananaSpam was written, almost 8 years ago.
  10. What is backscatter and how does BananaSpama help eliminate it?
    According to Wikipedia, Backscatter is incorrect automated bounce messages sent by mail servers, typically as a side effect of incoming spam. Spammers almost always us forged email headers, and the fake email address (possibly yours!) used in a "from" line of a spam will bounce to the forged "from" address. Backscatter can tripple the volume of spam - first the original spam is sent with a forged from line, if sent to an invalid email this message will bounce, and if the forged from address doesn't exist, the bounce bounces!
  11. How does BananaSpama help eliminate backscatter?
    We never bounce an email. Ever. We never discard an email. Ever. We filter and process all emails before accepting them for delivery - this is part of our secret recipe, so that's as deep as we'll go for now; but we "reject" bad emails instead of bouncing them. The POSITIVE side-effect of this strategy is that ligitimate senders are notified and can be aware their email didn't get delivered to you in the event of a false positive!
  12. How does BananaSpama deal with false positives?
    Any time we categorize an email as spam, we reject it and the actual sender of the email is notified of the rejection. This is very different from a bounce, since a bounce can cause backscatter, whereas a rejection notifies the sending mailer before that mailer considers the message delivered. So your friends and associates sending email will get a REJECT notice indicating the email was not delivered from THEIR TRUSTED MAIL SERVER, not ours. They are notified that their email did not reach you.

Initial Setup and Testing

  1. After signup, what do I need to do?
    Enabling your new spam filter takes a few small simple steps. After signup, our system should automatically detect your current real MX record. Look in your account, and make sure "Mailbox Route" settings matches the NAME of your MX record. Then add your valid recipient emails into our control panel, and change your MX record to be OURS (mx02.bananaspama.com).
  2. I use Plesk, Ensim or another control panel that supports SPF. Should I keep that on?
    It is recommended that you disable any other spam filters you may have on your mailbox server, since we're doing this for you. In particular, you should NEVER enable SPF rejections for inbound emails that don't match the SPF record. Since our mail filter server is an intermediary, let US check the SPF. If you also then check SPF on your server, it will fail since all your email will be routed through us instead of the SPF valid hosts.
  3. Do I have to add all my email accounts in my domain? Yes, we must know all valid email addresses (including aliasas and "lists") that receive mail in your domain. Email to ANY email address that we don't recognize will automatically be rejected to avoid unnecessarily spam testing emails that could never be delivered.
  4. How can I tell BananaSpama is working? First, your email spam volume will drop dramatically - that's the best anecdotal evidence you'll see - and you'll know it for sure. But if you want to be positive, log into an external webmail service provider such as gmail, Yahoo! Mail or any other account (but not the same domain or email address as you're trying to test), and send yourself an email. If you use the subject "SPAM_REGEX_TEST", our spam filter will reject your email immediately. This is a fake filter used for testing, with a 100% reject rate.
  5. What is Spam Reject Score and how do I use it? We employ a scoring system, similar to that of "Spam Assassin" - the higher the number (score) the more likely that an email is spam. We begin "tagging" emails at a score of 4. We begin rejecting emails at your "Spam Reject Score". For most new domains, we recommend a score of 5 to 7. The higher the number, the more spam you'll receive. But we'll still warn you about anything that scores higher than 4 by adding the word "SPAM:" in the subject of the email message. If you set your Reject score to lower than 4 (our tagging threshold), you won't get any tagged messages, and you'll probably have a slightly higher false positive rate.
  6. My emails seem to be running a little late, can you tell me why? We employ a 5 stage filter system, one of which employs greylisting. Greylisting temporarily rejects mail from unknown servers and a unknown "from" addresses. This is actually one of the MOST effective methods of spam filtering, since most spammers will not retry sending a spam email. Usually this only delays the first email a particular person will send you, as they are white-listed once their server retries the email, usually within just a few minutes. Greylisting is a server level temporarily block, emails are resent automatically by "good" mailers without senders ever knowing it occurs.