7 ms·

So what's the advice for an avg Joe for getting a reply from ATT, Comcast, etc when they unjustly blacklist you and ignore all correspondence?

walrus01 5y ago
1. Host your mx somewhere that isn't on any blacklists. This means a small to medium sized isp, where you can directly contact the people who run the core network operations there, and who truly do care about kicking off abusive other customers very quickly. Ideally I would go with an ISP in your own region and home business area. Best chances of success if it's a hosting ISP where random customers cannot sign up online with just a name and a credit card, but it's more of a "contact us for a custom price quotation for your colocation needs" type of hosting operation. 2. Possibly run all your outbound smtp through a trusted third party service that you pay for such relay. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth but that's where we are at in 2022. 3. Be absolutely certain that your own smtp, spf, dkim, dmarc configuration is flawless and you've never been a source of spam.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  Host your mx somewhere that isn't on any blacklists. This means a small to medium sized isp, where you can directly contact the people who run the core network operations there, and who truly do care about kicking off abusive other customers very quickly. Ideally I would go with an ISP in your own region and home business area. That's a nice idea. In fact, it's what my businesses have done for years. I have personally met several of the senior staff at the service I use and I know that they are both technically excellent and very serious about preventing abuse on their network. We haven't been able to deliver mails to customers at certain mail services for years. 100% blackholed every time. And it's the same usual suspects that others have mentioned in this very discussion. The problem is that the hosting service we use has many customers. Occasionally one of those customers makes a mistake and one of their systems gets compromised for a short time, until they or the hosting service detects the unusual traffic and intervenes. And that's enough to get someone's IP block on a blacklist it will evidently never leave. This is of course absolutely no different to any hosting service like AWS or Azure, except that no-one is going to blanket block all servers from an organisation of that scale even though the exact same problems happen there too.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    The thing is, if you own a good IP in a mixed block with some bad ones, that's no reason for you to be blacklisted. It's pure laziness. It's usually wrong to assume that everything in a /24 is controlled by one botnet, and it's not that hard to check whether it was just one or two particular addresses that were compromised. But if you're an ISP and you want to take the nuclear option to every spam threat, at least be willing to listen to your own customers when they complain that they're expecting mail, and there's absolutely NO reason to assign "group punishment" to everyone using the same service provider. I think the thought was that that would make service providers more accountable, but it's totally unfair to use everyday customers as pawns in a war between ISPs.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      > The thing is, if you own a good IP in a mixed block with some bad ones, that's no reason for you to be blacklisted. It's pure laziness. It's not laziness; the intention of collateral blocklisting, as with UCEPROTECT L2 and L3, is punitive. It's to incentivize the sending MSP to remove their spammer (or move them to address-space where they can be blocked without causing collateral damage).
      - Silhouette 5y ago
        It's not laziness; the intention of collateral blocklisting, as with UCEPROTECT L2 and L3, is punitive. Unfortunately the people it punishes are the legitimate users of both systems who only wanted the system to do its job and let them communicate. The bad actors will just move on and abuse another system instead.
        denton-scratch 5y ago
        > who only wanted the system to do its job and let them communicate "The system" you are referring to consists of a bunch of private networks. Your opinion about what the job of those networks is may not coincide with the opinions of the operators of those networks. Email is not a public service, and there is no entitlement to send whatever "vital business communications" you like to anyone you want. It's not even reasonable to require a postmaster to state what their rejection policy is; that would just tell spammers what they have to do to evade your blocks. If email doesn't work for your business, then switch to another channel, such as huge billboards or whatever. Ranting about blocklists isn't going to help, people have been doing that for two decades. I take it you've never run a mailserver?

walrus01 5y ago

1. Host your mx somewhere that isn't on any blacklists. This means a small to medium sized isp, where you can directly contact the people who run the core network operations there, and who truly do care about kicking off abusive other customers very quickly. Ideally I would go with an ISP in your own region and home business area. Best chances of success if it's a hosting ISP where random customers cannot sign up online with just a name and a credit card, but it's more of a "contact us for a custom price quotation for your colocation needs" type of hosting operation. 2. Possibly run all your outbound smtp through a trusted third party service that you pay for such relay. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth but that's where we are at in 2022. 3. Be absolutely certain that your own smtp, spf, dkim, dmarc configuration is flawless and you've never been a source of spam.

Silhouette 5y ago
Host your mx somewhere that isn't on any blacklists. This means a small to medium sized isp, where you can directly contact the people who run the core network operations there, and who truly do care about kicking off abusive other customers very quickly. Ideally I would go with an ISP in your own region and home business area. That's a nice idea. In fact, it's what my businesses have done for years. I have personally met several of the senior staff at the service I use and I know that they are both technically excellent and very serious about preventing abuse on their network. We haven't been able to deliver mails to customers at certain mail services for years. 100% blackholed every time. And it's the same usual suspects that others have mentioned in this very discussion. The problem is that the hosting service we use has many customers. Occasionally one of those customers makes a mistake and one of their systems gets compromised for a short time, until they or the hosting service detects the unusual traffic and intervenes. And that's enough to get someone's IP block on a blacklist it will evidently never leave. This is of course absolutely no different to any hosting service like AWS or Azure, except that no-one is going to blanket block all servers from an organisation of that scale even though the exact same problems happen there too.
- noduerme 5y ago
  The thing is, if you own a good IP in a mixed block with some bad ones, that's no reason for you to be blacklisted. It's pure laziness. It's usually wrong to assume that everything in a /24 is controlled by one botnet, and it's not that hard to check whether it was just one or two particular addresses that were compromised. But if you're an ISP and you want to take the nuclear option to every spam threat, at least be willing to listen to your own customers when they complain that they're expecting mail, and there's absolutely NO reason to assign "group punishment" to everyone using the same service provider. I think the thought was that that would make service providers more accountable, but it's totally unfair to use everyday customers as pawns in a war between ISPs.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > The thing is, if you own a good IP in a mixed block with some bad ones, that's no reason for you to be blacklisted. It's pure laziness. It's not laziness; the intention of collateral blocklisting, as with UCEPROTECT L2 and L3, is punitive. It's to incentivize the sending MSP to remove their spammer (or move them to address-space where they can be blocked without causing collateral damage).
    - Silhouette 5y ago
      It's not laziness; the intention of collateral blocklisting, as with UCEPROTECT L2 and L3, is punitive. Unfortunately the people it punishes are the legitimate users of both systems who only wanted the system to do its job and let them communicate. The bad actors will just move on and abuse another system instead.
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        > who only wanted the system to do its job and let them communicate "The system" you are referring to consists of a bunch of private networks. Your opinion about what the job of those networks is may not coincide with the opinions of the operators of those networks. Email is not a public service, and there is no entitlement to send whatever "vital business communications" you like to anyone you want. It's not even reasonable to require a postmaster to state what their rejection policy is; that would just tell spammers what they have to do to evade your blocks. If email doesn't work for your business, then switch to another channel, such as huge billboards or whatever. Ranting about blocklists isn't going to help, people have been doing that for two decades. I take it you've never run a mailserver?