Defeat SPAM on your Domain-Based Email for Free?

Still getting SPAM? MX Guarddog is the solution

Hi friends! This is my first non-travel-photography post. In addition to traveling, I’ve worked on the Web for over twenty years, in my own business doing web design, development, and hosting and as well as working for a university doing web project management. I have a nice travel photography post already picked out for next time.

If this sounds like a scam, it’s not

I’ve used MX Guarddog for over 2 years, am thrilled with the it, and wanted to share it will my fellow Steemians. I have no affiliation with MX Guarddog. It's a great service and a great deal.

A sample Quarantine Report email. A click will take you to Quarantine Release Options, online

Before you Continue

Terminology: In case “domain-based” means nothing to you, this service only works when you are using your own domain name for email. It does not work with GMail, Yahoo, or other free email services.

Technical Level: This tutorial requires a medium level of technical knowledge. If you are confident and can follow steps, you may want to give it a try. Read the entire article before you start. Making a mistake can cause you to lose emails.

Is it really free?

MX Guarddog charges one “token” per each protected email address per month. You can pay a quarter ($0.25 USD) per token or earn tokens by sharing a text link to https://mxguarddog.com/, with a provided phrase like "stopping spam" on your website. If you elect to pay for your tokens, you can pay with Bitcoin, Litecoin or Etherium.

I used their tool to evaluate various of my pages, eventually finding an older blog post where the link equaled my 2 email addresses. I dislike the word “free” because it’s really a trade for link marketing. If you don’t like the link idea, it’s still totally worth the minimal fee. I’ve used the service for 27 months without parting with a single penny.

The following image of the Earn Tokens page shows my blog post form 2012 that earns me 2 tokens, keeping the service free. If you need lots of tokens you can earn 2X tokens by linking to a partner site.

The simple text link that makes my secure email “free” is below as a screen capture.

Stop Spam before it Reaches your Network

How does MX Guarddog work? Your email goes to their servers first where it’s scanned for spam, malware, viruses, and phishing attacks. All suspected spam and malicious mail is held in quarantine on their network. Good mail is automatically sent to your server for delivery.

Each user can receive a quarantine report (see image at top) displaying recently stopped messages, and/or view quarantined messages online. Each user can upload contact emails for a whitelist and quarantined messages can be released and addresses whitelisted on the fly.

Other Features

• Unlimited Messages
• Geographic Redundancy
• Catch-all Support
• Message Encryption
• Customizable Settings
• Country Blacklisting
• 168-hour Outage Protection

How to Set Up MX Guarddog

Set up is done from the Domain Center, pictured below and requires the following steps.

Set Up Steps

1. Disable your local spam protection. Disabling Apache SpamAssassin was one button click for me in cPanel.
2. Add Your email addresses (under blue on the screen shown above).
3. Enter your mail server information - under green - and test it.
4. Find your MX Guarddog email servers under yellow, above. That page also links to detailed guides for most hosting control panels. Find your host or use the General Guide.
5. Change your MX servers to the MX Guarddog servers.
6. Test your email.
7. See Troubleshooting Email Delivery if you have issues or contact support.
8. Protect against direct delivery attacks that bypass email security.

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I know of no other email security services that provide such value. Please comment if you give this a try!

Postscript

One day after posting, I tried placing an MX Guarddog link inside this post. It is the "stopping spam" link in the first paragraph under Is it really free? It is now earning 10 tokens per month.