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Block Authentication by Country - Server Global
Problem reported by Hilton Cesar Feitosa Milanez - Yesterday at 5:54 PM
Submitted
H
Hello SmarterTools,

Add a new feature using Block Authentication by Country to create an IDS Block rule to allow or disallow receiving emails from specific countries. Advantages:

1. Reduced spam, which would be great.
2. Reduced DDoS attacks.
3. Reduced password brute-force attacks.
4. Reduced SMTP Sessions (Harvesting).
M
Mark Johnson Replied
Yesterday at 8:21 PM
what countries would you block?
H
Hello Mark Johnson,

Thank you for your attention and feedback, here it is:

Afghanistan
Pakistan
Turkmenistan
Tajikistan
Iran
Uzbekistan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Indonesia
Taiwan
Hong Kong
North Korea
Singapore
Russia
Kuwait
Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Belarus
Ukraine
Iraq
Armenia

The list is likely to be longer, but these would be the main ones.
M
Mark Johnson Replied
Yesterday at 9:52 PM
you can block auth attempts by country now .. do you have that setup?
we only allow logins from Australia, for customers travelling we add/remove countries by request
this has reduced alot of activity

how would you handle any complaints about legit emails to your users from any country you block? 
H
Hilton Cesar Feitosa Milanez Replied
Today at 5:46 AM
Hello Mark Johnson,

Block Authentication by Country is currently configured only for Brazil. I sent this suggestion to apply it as a rule to avoid receiving emails from certain countries, such as those I mentioned.

I don't want to receive any emails from the list I sent; in other words, I want to block the connection. Our clients don't do business with clients from these countries.

Applying Block Authentication by Country as a feature to avoid receiving emails from these countries would be great; it's just a suggested feature.
M
Mark Johnson Replied
Today at 3:12 PM
yep understand, our customer base is a bit more expanded so would be tricky .. 
other issue is that most of our latest phishing emails are coming via the USA!

info here:

its an ongoing challenge for anyone hosting email services, good luck to us all!
H
Hilton Cesar Feitosa Milanez Replied
Today at 3:50 PM
Hello Maek,

I found a way to drastically reduce the use of blacklists. I sampled about 200 spam emails received by looking up the IP address in MXTOOLBOX.

I studied how blacklists work, adjusted the configuration of all of them, and also found some that weren't filtering because I hadn't configured them properly.

I'm using 38 blacklists now; I still get some spam, but very little. I managed to reduce it by 95%.
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