How UniSender Antispam Works



    As an email newsletter service, UniSender is at the forefront of the fight against spammers - those who want to take advantage of our opportunities for spamming appear regularly, and we also have to filter them out regularly - to strangle, we can say, in the bud, blocking spammer accounts and attempts of illegal mailings. This is, in fact, a lot of work. We will talk about how UniSender antispam works in this article.

    The main differences between an email marketer and a spammer


    To begin with, we will dot the “i” once again and define our own and alien's concepts. Spammers are distinguished by three signs:

    1. Buy the database instead of collecting it honestly and independently, offering customers to subscribe to what they are interested in, and not allowing them to choose the option “do not subscribe”.
    2. They send out what they did not ask for, then, when it is not expected, to those who did not ask.
    3. A negative reaction to their mailings follows: many unsubscribe and put it in its place - that is, in spam. And sometimes they complain directly to us .

    Moderation of databases of mailing addresses


    The first serious filter on the path of unsolicited mailings is the mandatory manual moderation of the mailing list. We have our own system that includes a set of certain tokens that identifies suspicious addresses that compromise the database. If the list of client addresses is not suspicious, then it is activated. This is done quickly enough, therefore, the speed of the “honest worker” is not affected.

    If you have any questions or suspicions, support contacts the client, asks questions about the sources of the downloaded addresses, asks for data confirming the legality of their receipt. A situation is possible when we remove addresses from “gray” sources from the database, but skip “white” ones.

    Even if the database of downloaded addresses did not arouse suspicion and was activated, this does not mean that the spammer can safely do his dirty work. For this case, UniSender has a second line of defense: moderation of mailings themselves. Most newsletters from trusted users go automatically. However, those mailings that seem suspicious get checked.

    First of all, we check mailings where there are new addresses, as well as mailings that are unexpectedly larger than this user is used to sending - in search of “mortgages”.

    We have two internal indicators that affect moderation - the conditional automatically calculated “karma” of the user, based on the ratio of successfully delivered, read letters, letters with transitions and the number of unsolicited / complaints about spam. And a manually set level of “trust” to the user, which our experts already set on the basis of informal analysis.

    In the event that we receive complaints from customers about unsolicited mailing, we “suspend” the account and expect explanations from the mailing agent - what caused customer dissatisfaction. In this case, it will be impossible to continue mailing until all reasons are clarified.

    Work with mail providers


    With large providers that have FBL, UniSender has automatic FBL processing (mail.ru, AOL, Yahoo, hotmail): we are the first to know when a user clicks “This is spam” and analyze this information. In this case, the newsletter can automatically stop before reaching the end. When analyzing the following newsletters, moderators will see that such facts were in the history of the sender, and this affects the “karma” of our client, as well as the decision of our moderators.

    It happens that unsolicited mailing from a completely respected client as a result of mistakesfrom the sender - for this it’s enough to break just a few rules of legal distribution. However, in this case, the pre-moderation of the newsletters will play a positive role: inaccurate newsletters can be intercepted even in the process - thus protecting the customer base of our users, because if the recipients started complaining and unsubscribing, then to continue such mailings means “killing” your database. In this case, our technical support will inform the marketer about the situation and help with advice.

    Spam will not work


    When our moderators identify spam, the first thing we do is suspend the account until the situation becomes clear. And if it still doesn’t clear up, we will block the database and ban the user. And this really happens quite often: we regularly ban spammer accounts .

    UniSender reserves the right to close a user’s account without compensation if the percentage of complaints (that is, recorded movements of mailing lists to the spam folder) from subscribers to receive junk mail exceeds 0.5% of the number of recipients in mailings (but not less than 20 people) within 15 days.

    A fine of 500 rubles will be imposed on the spammer for each official complaint received from client mailings from anti-spam organizations (SpamCop, SpamHaus and others) if we are not provided with convincing explanations of why this happened. The truth of this last, last resort, we have never yet practiced, since it is much simpler and more efficient to ban an account and expel an insolent person. But we leave this weapon in our arsenal: spammers will not pass!

    Too weak anti-counter measures can give spammers the opportunity to use our service with impunity, and too cruel ones can scare off honest, decent, and justly unaccustomed marketers. But we want to assure you: if you honestly collect your database, and care about your recipient, if your customers respond positively to your letters - you have nothing to fear. For you, the unspoken rule “clear - come in” applies. Come and enjoy all the advantages of the service, because for us you are a dear, important and beloved customer. It is for you that we create and improve our service. It is for you that we are fighting for the reputation of our service - including in this article. Online support works for you on the site., which you can contact with any question before the mailing: in case you do not have enough experience, just ask us a question.

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