My IP address has been blacklisted

Drro

Bronze
Mar 22, 2006
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Hi

I have Delancer/Comcast with an IP address in Miami. I have been blacklisted, not b/c of me but b/c this is a shared server and someone either had a virus or spammed, as far as I can tell.

Comcast has only one IP in the US (Miami) and one in the DR.

My questions are:

1) Does anyone know how to get me off the blacklist?
2) If I choose to go to the DR IP address, am I switching bad to worse?

Anyone have experience in this area please let me know either here or in PM.

Thanks so much.
 

GringoRubio

Bronze
Oct 15, 2015
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I'd switch to the DR IP and see how it goes. If you have problems, use a VPN service to have your network traffic sent to an address in the USA.

btw - I've been looking for a VPN service. Anybody have recommendations?
 

VJS

Bronze
Sep 19, 2010
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I'd switch to the DR IP and see how it goes. If you have problems, use a VPN service to have your network traffic sent to an address in the USA.

btw - I've been looking for a VPN service. Anybody have recommendations?



I use IPVanish, no complaints. Use COMEBACK (I think) as coupon code to get 50% off.
 

VJS

Bronze
Sep 19, 2010
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Those look like generic email spam-protection blacklists, are they even relevant in this day and age when 99% of people use web-based email and 3-4 large providers like Google/Yahoo/Hotmail which surely do not use those lists at all? My current IP (NYC) is listed on 3 blacklists apparently and I guess I couldn't care less...
 

Drro

Bronze
Mar 22, 2006
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Thanks for that. However, some of my emails aren't being received - not the bulk ones necessarily - and some incoming haven't been received either. I run a business so it concerns me.
 

cobraboy

Pro-Bono Demolition Hobbyist
Jul 24, 2004
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Thanks for that. However, some of my emails aren't being received - not the bulk ones necessarily - and some incoming haven't been received either. I run a business so it concerns me.
Many web hosts and ISP's prohibit mass emails.

There are mailhosts who specialize in mass emails. I use Sendblaster with the Turbo-SMTP add-on, and my mailing list is only 1200 opt-in addresses.

Additionally, a great way to have your email IP blacklisted is a bad mailing list. Many IP's won't accept yahoo & hotmail email addresses for mass emails. There are paid services which will cull your list to discard the bad ones. I culled over 500 email addresses because they were bad, and Turbo-AMTP was about to man me as a customer. I run the list through the service quarterly, for a fee.
 

Meemselle

Just A Few Words
Oct 27, 2014
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Thanks for that. However, some of my emails aren't being received - not the bulk ones necessarily - and some incoming haven't been received either. I run a business so it concerns me.

Ro---I'm glad you took this to DR-1. At our lunch, neither AG nor I could really help, and I think there are some serious tech geeks here, who can. Good luck! And happy Thanksgiving.
 

Drro

Bronze
Mar 22, 2006
1,407
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Appreciate all the advice/suggestions. Yes, it's a shared server so it's not as simple as cleaning up my side of the table. I know I don't have a virus or send out spam, even though my autoresponder sends out mailings periodically, at 250 at a time.

cbmitch - went to the site and seems it isn't appropriate for me, but a great idea and site nonetheless.

I think at this point I need a person who can take care of this for me - anyone interested, let me know what it entails and the cost, if anything.

Thanks again.
 

Cdn_Gringo

Gold
Apr 29, 2014
8,671
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Drro,

I read your OP a few times. I am assuming you are just a regular Delancer customer using a Delancer modem to connect to the Delancer DHCP server for your IP assignment. Correct so far?

The terms of service for most ISPs specifically prohibit the the use of their email infrastructure for the distribution of mailing lists and commercial endeavors unless you subscribe to some sort of commercial account with that ISP (if available, not available with Delancer). Even though Delancer just grabs your money and you never sign anything saying you understand all the terms and conditions, you are still subject to them. A commercial ISP will maintain "MX and SPF" records in your DNS listing which will significantly help in cutting down on your email getting flagged as spam.

Neither Delancer nor Comcast provide these services nor maintain the DNS records to permit anything but your average customer asking their Mom for money via email. Delancer assigns you a non-routeable IP address and the very fact that systems outside of the Delancer network cannot get a valid MX or SPF for your individual IP address causes problems. All it takes is for a few people to hit the "this is spam button" rather than taking the time to unsubscribe from your mailing list and voila, you start appearing on spam lists as the recipient's ISP begins to report your individual IP as the source of mail their customer(s) do not wish to receive. Backed up by the fact that your DNS does not identify you as an established safe email origin and because your IP address is unreachable to outside systems, your inclusion on the lists is all but guaranteed.

That's how you get on the lists. Getting off the lists requires time and effort and probably will not work, again because your IP presented to the outside world beyond Delancer and Comcast, is not reachable and not identifiable. Each list, and there are a bunch of them, all have their own policies and mechanisms for individuals to remove themselves from the list. Good luck with that.

Individuals that maintain mailing lists should really source a better delivery mechanism than their own ISP unless they have a commercial account. It is only a matter of time before your personal subscriber IP address gets blacklisted. Eg. If I email my Mom and ask her to send money and instead of her just deleting the message after telling me, "No", she hits the "this is junk" button enough times, I'll get reported. Luckily for personal correspondence, most recipients just delete the one-off emails they receive from people they know. For mailing lists and other bulk emails, most recipients do not take the time to actively classify the emails as "not junk" to export the the email from their spam folder, they just delete them. Or to get a repetitious email out of their already cluttered inbox, they just hit the "this is spam" button and poof that email and all subsequent emails from the same entity never show up in the inbox again. Easy peasy as they say.

So going forward what do you do?:

1) Get a Claro account that is a routeable IP address and run your own email server on your own domain address so you can provide a MX and SPF DNS entry to make most other mail servers happy again. Still probably a violation of the terms of service for a noncommercial Claro account but who cares.

2) Subscribe to a bulk mailing system where you login, upload your email and it gets sent to the list of recipients you configure. The service takes the hit when your messages get flagged as spam and because they can maintain their DNS entry with the appropriate entries individual recipients won't be able to flag their system as a spammer unlike what can happen to a private individual with no control over their DNS record.

3) Visit all the lists that you find yourself on and file a request to have your IP address removed.

Expect no help at all from Delancer or Comcast. If you continue to send out large volumes of email at regular intervals from a standard user account, even if you change IP addresses, this will become a reoccurring issue. The ISPs don't want you and others choking their email servers, so most do not care if you get blacklisted or not.
 
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cobraboy

Pro-Bono Demolition Hobbyist
Jul 24, 2004
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1) Buy a mass email app. SendBlaster is one of the best, but there are others.

2) Contract with a mass email server company. I think I pay roughly $150 a year. It's arranged through the SendBlaster folks.

3) Contract with a service that cleans bad email addresses. These are the bane of "regular" ISP's, and even contract email distributors. Clean your list often.

4) It's virtually impossible to get "off" being blacklisted once listed. The most important thing is never to get blacklisted in the first place. Consider your experience as tuition for Mass Email University.

Cdn_Gringo also offers solid advice.
 

Drro

Bronze
Mar 22, 2006
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Thanks so much for taking the time to educate/inform me if what and how, etc.

I do have ARPReach for which I pay an annual fee that sends my email blasts, all of which are to people who have entered their name and email and subscribed to one of my lists. Some are in an autoresponder (with ARPReach) that gets weekly newsletters, again opted in for.

I have been in business for many years, working 6 months here in the DR and never had this issue before (to my knowledge that is), using Delancer/Comcast.

For now my emails seem to be coming to me - so if I read you corrected, do nothing, suffer the consequences, if any, even with Claro I could have the same issue, etc. etc.

This is why in the US I have my own server, not shared!

Thanks again.
 

windeguy

Platinum
Jul 10, 2004
42,211
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At least the above issue could explain why I have to fill in bot checks for some sites. I am also on a cable modem system that probably shares a common IP address in Florida with everyone on the Cable Del Norte system. CLARO is not an option in my location.
 

cobraboy

Pro-Bono Demolition Hobbyist
Jul 24, 2004
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This is why in the US I have my own server, not shared!

Thanks again.
You may own the server, but not the ISP. The ISP doesn't care what server is used, they prohibit spam through their connection.
 

Cdn_Gringo

Gold
Apr 29, 2014
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This is why in the US I have my own server, not shared!

Thanks again.

Your welcome. Careful using the word "server" as in this case I do not believe it applies the way you intend in this scenario.

At home, your ISP assigns you a routeable IP address and assigns a unique identifier to your account. Because email systems can query your IP address and get that unique identifier, the chances of being automatically blacklisted is much lower than with the current Delancer/Comcast setup. When a mail system attempts to identify you via your Delancer internal IP address, they get nothing but Comcast's generic details, the email server gives up and assumes you're more of a problem than you may in fact be.*

With Claro, if that is an option for you here in the DR, you will be on par with they way it works at home and at least 50% closer to not getting blacklisted in the first place assuming everything else is equal.*