I'm on a blocklist! HELP!

Recently, an abuse desk rep asked what to do when customers were complaining about being assigned an IP address located on a blocklist. Because not every blocklist actually affects mail delivery it’s helpful to identify if the listing is causing a problem before diving in and trying to resolve the issue.

  1. Find out whether mail is actually being blocked, or whether the customer just went to one of the jumbo economy blacklist checker sites.
  2. If no mail is being blocked, it’s not an issue.
  3. If mail is being deferred (Yahoo…) it’s not the same issue as being blocked, and likely isn’t worth pursuing.
  4. If mail is being blocked, don’t take the customers word for why. If they got an email rejected by, say, Earthlink for some reason and then went to the blacklist checker and discovered that they’re listed on FIVETEN, they might grab onto that listing like a rabid terrier when it’s really an irrelevant rathole.
  5. Start with the rejection message. If it has a URL in it, that’s all you need to start with.
  6. If not, see if it’s consistent – does test mail get rejected. If not, it’s either a transient issue or it’s a content-based block rather than an IP based block, and hence not your problem.
  7. If there’s no URL in the rejection, contact the entity that blocked the mail, perhaps.
  8. Make a good judgement call about whether it’s worth caring. If it’s just one guy in his Mom’s basement blocking mail then it’s not worth the time or energy to care about the issue.
  9. If this is really business-critical for the customer then they should talk to a decent consultant rather than relying on their abuse desk for assistance.
Tagged Email Addresses
Delivery consulting: it's all about the credibility

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They’re not blocking you because they hate you.

Really. They’re blocking you because you’re doing something that is triggering their blocking mechanisms.
This has happened over and over and over again. Some political or activist website sends out an email that gets blocked by some large ISP and the political site turns it into a giant crisis that means the ISP hates them or is trying to shut them up or is trying to silence their message.
Except that’s not what is going on. The folks at the large ISPs who handle blocking and incoming mail are incredibly smart and conscientious . They take their jobs seriously. They, both personally and corporately, want their customers (the end recipients) to receive the email they want. Additionally, they do not want to deliver mail that the recipients did not ask to receive.
In almost no cases is the block a particular activist site encounters a result of the ISP not liking the content of the email. If an activist site is being blocked it’s due to complaints or reputation or something that ISPs measure and block on. Some person at the ISP didn’t read your email, decide they didn’t like what you had to say and then block that email. That email was blocked because something related to that email triggered the thresholds for blocking.
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Generally, though, if an activist site is being blocked by a large ISP in the US or other free countries it is because their mailings are somehow not complying with that ISPs standards. Instead of starting an email campaign or blog campaign to shame the ISP for suppressing speech, it is much more productive to actually contact the ISP in question and find out what went wrong.

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