Removed an A record, reduced spam considerably

[Mango45]

For some time I have been having an inbound spam problem. My web host uses Google's DNS, so some of the good RBLs don't work. For various reasons I don't want to change website hosts nor my email address.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me he had a mail server server with very accurate spam filtering, and offered to let me use it. So I changed my MX record accordingly. I was surprised to note all my legitimate email went to the new server, but the spam continued to arrive on the old server.

I removed the A record for my domain name, and the spam near-instantly stopped. For some reason, the spammer or spammers have been using the A record rather than MX record to determine my mail server.

My website is now located at www.example.com instead of example.com. The people who have old https links will be boned, but they'll hopefully figure it out.

The spam had the interesting characteristic of two identical spams arriving 1-5 minutes apart. Topics were always different. I'd receive up to 10 a day, and they always seemed to slip past the RBLs my web host does use.

Has anyone else noticed such a thing?

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

It's possible the spammers were using a script that determines the mail server IP address by checking the IP address associated with the domain name. Once that stopped responding, the script likely stopped sending the email. Ideally, you should consult with your web hosting provider to see if they can add additional measures to help stop the incoming SPAM on the server.

Thank you.