How to Avoid Getting Your Email Account Blacklisted as a Spammer | iNet inSights - Internet Answers that Give you the Advantage

A Sure-fire Way to get your Email Account Blacklisted as a Source of Spam

29th March 2009

It’s surprisingly easy to get your email account blacklisted as a source of Spam which means the end of email for your business. Beware of the pitfalls and make sure you don’t fall into the trap that this company did.

This week I went to see a prospective client who was looking for someone to take over the management of their website, suggest ways of improving it and to undertake future development and maintenance work. This is right up our street so I was happy to meet up with them for an initial chat to see where we could help.

During our conversations we got on to the subject of e-mail marketing and how it can be used as a tool for keeping in contact with customers in an effective and low-cost way. Whilst regaling you with this story, it’s useful to note that the company runs its own internal Local Area Network (LAN) which is based around a single file server. Their email is handled through this server using its own SMTP gateway to the Internet on a static IP address. So in other words they handle all their incoming and outgoing email through their own network server without having to rely on their ISP. This is a common set-up in many medium to large sized companies that have a number of Users on a network. The strategy has a number of benefits but also some draw backs, one of which I am about to describe.

I learned that the client is already sending out regular emails to their customers of which several hundred were on their subscribers list. After digging a bit deeper it came to light that these emails were being sent out from one of the PCs on their network using Microsoft Outlook, with all the subscribers being placed into the BCC field of the email before the “Send” button was pressed.

“How is that working for you?” I asked, whereupon I learned that not only many of their emails failed to reach their recipients, they were also having difficulties sending out their normal day-to-day business emails which, like their e-shots; were not reaching their recipients. This as you can imagine, was causing them big problems in the running of their business.

What had happened is that their method of sending out e-shots had managed to get their network’s IP address, the unique number that identifies their mail-server on the Internet, “blacklisted” as a source of Spam. In this case the most probable cause was the sending of large volumes of emails with the recipients email addresses listed in the BCC field of the email. A classic identifying feature of Spam emails.

Other e-mail servers on the web routinely use Spam blacklists as a first line of defence against the relentless onslaught of spam that plagues the Internet. Blacklists work by keeping track of the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers of servers that have sent Spam. Once an e-mail server’s IP address is on a list, any spam filter using that list as a means of reference will automatically block messages sent from the server. That’s what had happened in this company’s situation.

If this has happened to you, what can you do about it?

The first thing to do is to check to see which blacklist your server is listed on. The easiest way to do this is use some of the available online tools:

MXToolbox checks your IP address against 147 blacklists, and offers the option of sending a ping e-mail to its server — a super-easy way to lean whether you’re on a blacklist or not.
Blacklistedip not only lets people know when they’re blacklisted, but helps track the issue that caused the blacklisting and assists with getting off the blacklist.
Repcheck constantly monitors some 200 blacklists and alerts you if you get blacklisted.

So, what do you do if you find out you’re already on one or more blacklists? It’s not an easy problem to solve as each blacklist has a different procedure for requesting removal, so you’ll have to follow a different set of instructions for each list you’re on. A labourious task.

In addition you need to make sure you identify and solve the problem that causes you to be blacklisted in the first place before you ask to be taken off any list. In the case of the above company’s example; ceasing to use Outlook for sending out bulk email from their on mail server, will solve the issue.

Need to get off the blacklists?

Here are three of the most popular lists, but there are plenty of others:

MAPS, now part of Trend Micro, offers both information on whether you’re blacklisted, and also threat analysis.
SpamCop provides anti-spam software as well as its blacklist of spamming server IP addresses.
The Spamhaus Project is an international, non-profit effort to combat spam.

If you want to benefit from e-mail marketing for your own business, then talk to us about using a dedicated, web based application like our SendMail product. It’ll keep you off the Spam lists and offers excellent subscriber management, tracking and reporting features.