I Think I Received Spam from a Domain Name Hosted by Gandi

If you have been a victim of spam (unsolicited commercial email), you will find our position below in addition to some ways in which you can confront spam-related problems.

Correctly Identify the Spam’s Origin

The following sections explain how different indications that a spam email is coming from Gandi are often misleading.

The sender or the recipient of the spam has an address ending with @gandi.net.

Spam is often sent using a spoofed email address. Gandi does not send spam, does not maintain a list of its users for spammers, and does not sell such lists to third parties. The addresses in the “To” and “From” fields are easily faked, and do not mean that Gandi created or sent the spam. To find the real sender, you need to look at all the email’s headers and examine this information using the available tools on the Stopspam website.

You see names such as redir-mail-telehouse1.gandi.net in the “Received” field of the spam, and think that Gandi has open relays.

Gandi does not have open relays. We are checking for this constantly. If the Spam was relayed by one of our servers, this means it was sent by an email address on one of our domains, using one of our free forwarding services. Email from this domain was therefore received by our servers and then relayed to the address specified by the domain’s owner.

By looking up the domain name displayed in the email, you see the domain is registered with Gandi.

As an accredited registrar for each extension, Gandi registers domain names on behalf of its users. The use of a domain name purchased from us is decided by the owner of the domain, visible in the Whois. In some cases we can take direct action against the domain name.

What You Can Do to Stop a Spammer

Spam is a difficult problem to manage, but there are a few actions you might be able to take against a spammer.

File a Complaint With the Web Host

You can file a complaint with the Internet service provider or web host used by the spammer, in the hope that they might deactivate their email account or website. We cannot take any action in this regard, but if you have difficulties in identifying the internet access provider or web host of the spammer, please feel free to contact us and we will do our best to help you identify them.

Protect Your Email Address

If you have your own domain name, your contact information can be found in the whois database. This includes your email address. It is a good idea to protect this address by enabling anti-spam protection.

File a Complaint With the Registry that Manages the Extension

You can try to get the registrar to suspend the domain, particularly if the Whois information of the domain is incorrect.

What Gandi Can Do

Gandi is only a technical intermediary in the registration of domain names. However, this does not mean that Gandi encourages or condones spam. It is quite the opposite, but we are limited in the steps we can take. We can only modify, suspend, or delete a domain if:

The spam was sent through our forwarding service.

Such a practice hinders the smooth operation of our technical and general services by taxing our IT system and/or by generating many complaints by third parties, and is grounds for the suspension or termination of forwarding services, or even the deletion of the domain name (Sections 14 and 19 of Gandi’s General Terms and Conditions of Domain Name Registration).

Personal contact information in the Whois is invalid.

As with any ICANN-accredited registrar, Gandi must assure that the information present in the Whois is valid. If you think the information provided in the Whois is incorrect for a domain name tied to spam you have received, please contact us through our free Complaint for Inaccurate Whois page. If the information on the offending website is not updated within 15 days, the domain will be put on hold. If the contact information is clearly false, the domain will then be put on hold immediately (See sections 16 and 19 of Gandi’s General Terms and Conditions of Domain Name Registration).

Gandi protects your email address.

If you believe your spammed email address was found in Gandi’s whois, you can enable an anti-spam system in your account. It’s free, harmless and can be reversed: you will still receive some spam, but the encryption system used will nevertheless reduce it significantly.