The
history of your IP address can land you on a blacklist and
it won't be your fault but there may be nothing you can do
about
it.
Back
to Web Hosting Articles
SPAM:
Blacklists & Whitelists
The second method to determine if you are on a Blacklist is to
contact the people running the Blacklists and find out. If
your IP is listed they will tell you. This is simple enough
to do in theory but contacting all of these Blacklists can
be time consuming. Fortunately, there is a faster method. There
is a web site, a very useful one at that, which allows you
to enter in an IP address and search the current Blacklists
for that IP address. If the IP is listed on a Blacklist it
will tell you. Now if you don't know your IP this site can
still search because this site will translate your domain name
into an IP address and then search for it. This wonder site
is www.dnsstuff.com. To search for Blacklists you simply go
to www.dnsstuff.com and at the top of the page there is a box
titled "Spam Database Lookup." Just enter you IP
address or your domain name into the box and press "Lookup" and
it will query the major Blacklists and provide you with the
results. If your IP has sent spam you will be able to find
out who is blacklisting you.
Now before you even press the button you should realize that
on this list there are several obscene Blacklists here. There
is a very good chance that your IP is listed with them. Let me
give you a concrete example. The IP we have been using in this
article, 64.191.62.74, is listed on two of these Blacklists.
Even before it was used by www.e3servers.com it was listed on
these two Blacklists. In fact even before the IP was owned by
the management of e3 Servers it was listed. In fact, six months
before it was owned by e3 Servers it was blacklisted. What happened
is that the person running the Blacklist determined that the
IP, 64.191.62.74, was owned by someone who, in their mind, was
soft on spammers. Therefore rather than taking the chance of
receiving spam from this IP address they blacklisted the IP and
keep it on the Blacklist. So even though the IP is no longer
used by the person who was soft on spammers, and is now used
by a completely different company they are still blacklisting
the IP. Why? Because they run the Blacklist and can do anything
they want with it. Now are e-mails being refused by the hundreds?
By the thousands? No. In fact since taking ownership of this
IP not a single e-mail has been refused. Why? Because very few,
if very many at all, are using this obscene Blacklist. Realistically,
why would you want to use a Blacklist which never removed IP
addresses from the Blacklist even after they have new ownership?
Why would you Blacklist an IP which never spammed? It is partly
ridiculous to do so and most companies and individuals realize
this. These are not the Blacklists you need to worry about. You
need to worry about the most used ones: SpamCop, SpamHaus, etc.
If you are listed on one of these chances are your e-mails will
be coming back to you.
Now if you do find your IP address listed on one or several
big Blacklists you need to do something about it now. You should
contact your web host immediately or your server provider. If
you do nothing chances are you will stay on some of these Blacklists.
To get off a Blacklist you have do very specific things to satisfy
the owners of the Blacklists. And if you have mail being refused
on a daily basis you need to do something about it now rather
than later.
Continued
Page Four :: SPAM: Blacklists and Whitelists >>
|
