Knowledgebase

This article is for cPanel Accounts. Determine where your account is with this guide.

An inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list, or USENET, or other networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it is not) by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn't ask for it.

The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit that featured the word spam repeated over and over. The term may also have come from someone's low opinion of the food product with the same name, which is generally perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources. (Spam is a registered trademark of Hormel Corporation, for its processed meat product.) E.g. Mary spammed 50 USENET groups by posting the same message to each.

Spamming is against our Terms of Service. Sometimes outdated software or other things are compromised and then abused to send spam from the shared servers. This can cause a lot of problems with the server's shared IP being listed on blacklists and negatively affecting others' emails. To best prevent this you can purchase a dedicated IP for your account from https://cp.westhost.com/ or some packages like our business package come with a dedicated IP.