Blacklist verification of your mail server - blocklist or DNSbl howto check if you are listed on a spam block list

While many site owners may be correctly listed on spam block lists, many site owners and even more importantly dedicated server owners invest time, efforts and money to create value services and communicate in a highly legitimate way with its customers or site visitors.

If however you are hosted on a regular virtual host, then your server is shared with up to many hundred other site owners, all on the same IP as you are. If one single of the other sites on your server IP abuses his site for spam or spam considered mass-mail and mail campaigns, then you and all other hundreds of site owners on the same server may all together become victim of one single abuser.

While you can report to your host - there are hosts who care little about abuse. In past 2 years I have seen repeatedly particular hosts, such as The Planet and its sister companies, 1and1 and its European 1und1 / Schlund owned servers being the origin of spam or worst hacker activities as well as copyright infringements by hosted sites. In some of the reported cases nothing at all happened - meaning that that host cares nothing at all about illegal activities.

A serious minded host however may ban, disable or delete accounts of abusers with or without prior warning. In many cases however a site is abused by spammers / hackers without the direct knowledge of the site owner. Lack of IT knowledge, lack of IT education, lack of webmaster skills often lead to people having a site with totally open or unsecured scripts, forums, galleries or script hosting services. Thus opening a backdoor for hackers in need for a mail server to send out thousands or millions of spam email thru the service of another serever NOT listed in any spam block lists published in http://www.dnsbl.info/advanced.asp and similar spam list verification servers.

Check to see if your IP is listed in any mail blacklists

Specialized services allow you to check if your server IP is listed on any DNS block lists.

The only secure way to stay clean with your own mail server is to own your dedicated server and only have your own site hosted on that server. Another risk would be allowing other people having eMail accounts on your server using @yoursite.com as their eMail address. Anyone using your site name as eMail address who is sending out private or business mail in violation with strict spam laws will automatically get your entire server listed on spam blacklists. Hence if ever you allow anyone the use of your eMail services or an eMail address @yoursite, then you have to make sure that person is 100% reliable. Never assume that your own children are reliable! A single abuse may cause your entire online family business being compromised and out of business within hours.

NOT listed on any DNSBL block lists - what now ?

What to do is a remote mail server refuses to communicate with your mail server even if you are clean of any listing? There is little you can do except wasting your time and $. If you are clean of any spam listing, then it is the refusing remote mail server such as these past weeks the AT&T owned/operated eMail services that have created a wrong system configuration or that mailserver admin may have blocked entire IP blocks in the occurrence of individual spam from single IPs. Services like AT&T have online forms to request removal from their DNSBL. Such procedure is a waste of your resources and may or NOT work at all. In the case of AT&T, it appears than many other site owners / server owners have similar problems in recent weeks and when contacting AT&T for blacklist removal, they are being told that they are on NO blacklist. Which of course may be correct in most cases. A verification of my own server shows clearly that I am on NO DNSBL block list at all, yet I am blocked by AT&T operated mail servers. Hence the same may apply to many other victims of mail server misconfiguration by ISP mail services.

Love and Bliss

hans