Email followup, and new server deployed

Major update on the e-mail front:

• We have finished our forensic analysis of the attempted spam-blast this weekend.  We say attempted because over 56,000 messages were left in our "undelivered" queue, so we suspect that very few recipients were actually victims of this.
  
  We were able to deduce that this was simply a brute force flood, forging the sending AND recipient e-mail addresses, and we were also able to identify an entire network block that we have banned, as well as some IP addresses on the Verizon Wireless network.  The latter was a side-effect of ongoing investigations involving connections from mobile devices, especially Android.  We will white-list individual IP addresses based on customers' needs, especially when dealing with IMAP (receiving) and SMTP (sending) connections.  More information on this will be posted directly on our website.
  
  
• In addition to the hardening we made to our current mail server located in Kansas City, Missouri, we have deployed a second mail server in Dallas, Texas.  Although this still does not give us complete e-mail load balancing or actual redundancy on all accounts, we can and will place users directly on a server that is better equipped to handle the load.  We have duplicated the configuration from our original server to this new one, so they are basically in sync, settings wise.  In the coming year, we hope to deploy additional servers, in geographically-diverse locations, just as we do with our web and application hosting services.  We also will utilize the services of Spam Assassin and MXGuardDog as necessary.
  
  
• We continue to work with major e-mail providers such as AOL and Hotmail/MSN in order to keep our IP address "reputation" clean.  We have set up direct feedback loops with these providers when necessary, and will offer our customers and outside recipients a way to report what they believe to be fraudulent e-mail or SPAM.

Please watch our website home page for any additional news on this and other issues related to our services, and there WILL be methods to keep us informed.  You may also subscribe to this blog's RSS feed in order to be kept in the know.  

Thanks as always for your patronage and patience!