What is a blacklist?
Unfortunately, in today's digital world, it is estimated that on a daily basis, anywhere from 80%-95% of all email transmitted on the Internet is spam. This means that it is nearly impossible for you to manually weed through all of your own email to delete spam is not the most efficient method for identifying and removing spam.
Because of this, there are public blacklists of mail servers that have been relaying spam. This allows other mail servers to check to see if an email is from a server's IP address that might have possibly been flagged for sending spam in the past. For instance you can this blacklist check tool to check if your server is currently listed on any public blacklists.
Why is my server on a blacklist?
Blocked IPs in spam blacklists are unfortunately a fact of life when it comes to shared hosting. It will happen from time to time and should be an expected hassle if you opt for any shared web hosting. Shoppe Pro provides only shared hosting services. This is the most economical form of hosting for you, the customer. What this means is that many domains and hosting accounts are stored on the same server, sharing the same IP address. (Shared Hosting). It's not uncommon for a shared mail IP address to end up on a public blacklist, especially on a shared server. It could be due to overall volume of mail coming from that server, or particular messages that seem to have characteristics of spam in them.
Another common cause for IPs to end up on a blacklist is email forwarders. If you have have used the cPanel email forwarding tool to forward you@yourdomain.com to you@yahoo.com, if you@yourdomain.com recieves spam, our mail server could forward that onto Yahoo. Yahoo servers might see our mail IP address as relaying the spam message to their server, even though it wasn't the originating server of the spam.
Working around blacklisting problems
We monitor email queues for signs of delivery issues and increased volume of spam or bounce messages. However, it can only take a matter of minutes for an outdated script to get compromised, or a weak email password to get hacked and start generated thousands of outgoing spam messages. Once those spam messages go out, the damage has already been done and there are time consuming steps that must be completed to clean up the mess. If you're having an issue emailing a certain provider and you need to get a message sent out urgently we would recommend using an alternate email service such as gMail to still get your message out in a timely manner. You can still use gmail to send out via your domain name using their Gmail Mail Fetcher tool here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/21289?hl=en
After that, you'd want to request to have the mail server's IP address de-listed from any blacklists that it's currently on. In order to do this you follow these steps.
De-listing an IP from a blacklist
When your mail server is currently listed in a blacklist, you should receive a bounce-back message stating why. Depending on the blacklist provider that has blacklisted your server's IP address, the de-listing process would be different. Included in your email bounce-back you'll typically also receive a link to the blacklist provider's website that explains how to request a de-listing.
Common blacklist removal pages
| bl.spamcop.net | www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml |
|---|---|
| cbl.abuseat.org | cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi |
| b.barracudacentral.org | barracudacentral.org/rbl/removal-request |
| Sorbs.net | www.au.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml |
| dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net | www.uceprotect.net/en/rblcheck.php |
| pbl.spamhaus.org | www.spamhaus.org/lookup/ |
| sbl.spamhaus.org | www.spamhaus.org/lookup/ |
| xbl.spamhaus.org | www.spamhaus.org/lookup/ |
| Comcast | postmaster.comcast.net/block-removal-request.html |
Keep in mind that we can only work with some blacklist organizations to remove IPs. If an organization adds our server to a blacklist, we start immediate action to have the blacklist removed and to prevent future spam messages being sent from the source that triggered the listing. This process varies from organization to organization. Some organizations allow you to simply submit a form, while some organizations that do not allow you to request a removal from. In situations like this, we have to do the best we can to clean up the account that sent the offending messages and simply wait for them to remove us on their own. There is no way to tell how long this process can take as it varies from case to case. No matter the organization, any delisting request can take time for the request to be approved and processed. There is no way to speed this process up.
Some Black List Organizations that do not allow de-listing:
- Senderbase
- Backscatterer
- ASPEWS
- APEWS
- ivmSIP
- UCEPROTECTL1
- BBQ
- DRBL
- gremlin.ru
- justpsam.org
- V4BL
- Chile DNSBL
- Lashback
