It has been about a week that I have had problems with my email function on my website and my hosting company claims it is because my IP has been blacklisted in 5 different places. I can send and receive emails but I can not reply... So if anyone has any experience with this how exactly could I delist my IP from these places. The guy showed me the following website www.dnsstuff.fastnext.com and under IP tools and Spam database look up I put my IP which is 98.148.132.14 and it shows 5 red dots meaning it is blacklisted in those places. Could someone help me out to get this delisted so that it all shows at green dots? Any idea's at all because I'm pretty much stuck now. No one has been able to help.
I'm assuming the IP is dedicated to you. If it isn't, it's your host's responsbility to get the IP delisted. What you have done so far? Waiting a week to try to fix email problems doesn't seem like you are in any particular hurry. You'll need to email each list, tell them you are the owner/user of that IP, and ask them if they can provide you with any information about why your IP was listed. The chances are they won't give details, but they might provide some general information. Once you know the reason, you'll then need to clean up your act regarding the sending of emails. Do you operate a confirmed opt-in list for any email marketing you do? Do you keep this list clean? Do your emails contain your contact details and a removal link - do you use it? Do your sites contain any vulnerable emailing scripts? Something has caused them to add you, and most anti-spam lists (not all of them) are usually fairly accurate about a spam source and if they list you there is usually good reason. Getting the IP removed isn't an easy thing to do and the lists are under no obligation to remove you. Stay polite, ask for help, and if you know (or suspect you know) what caused the problem - fix it. Tell them you've fixed it, explain what procedures you have in place to stop this happening again, and hope that they will remove you. If you start getting stroppy, unreasonable, or threaten them with something as stupid as a law-suit, then you will just end up digging a very large hole for yourself. I've only ever had an IP address listed once - at Spamhaus - due to a configuration error on our firewalls that caused a change in the outgoing email server IP. They were very helpful, I explained what had happened and what we had done to fix it, and within 20 minutes our IP address was removed. Good luck, and I repeat my warning. Be polite, ask for help, and do what they ask and fix whatever it was that caused the initial listing to happen and tell them what you have done.
That's the thing. I have done nothing. This is a brand new computer, and a dynamic IP so IP is always changing. I have not sent out mass emails or anything to be considered as spam. I just called "make it work" and they said its my hosting, I call my hosting they said its your ISP, my ISP said upgrade to business class which is 2 much money a month. Everywhere I call for help they just point fingers at someone else. I'm stuck...
The ban is not specifically on your IP address, its a ban on an entire block: 98.148.0.0/14 Which is: 98.148.0.0 => 98.151.255.255 (262144 IP addresses) You should set up your email client so that it authenticates through your web server, instead of using TimeWarners servers.
so are you saying, If I upgrade to time warners business class ISP that gives me a static IP, will this solve this problem?
What I am saying is that you use your websites email servers to send email from. In your email settings, there is a spot for outgoing server. To use your websites mail server, you would use something like mail.yoursite.com, not the TimeWarner outgoing email servers. A note though, some ISP's block outgoing email on port 25, unless you use their servers. I have all of my servers setup to also listen on port 26 for email. You should check with your host to see if they have this setup as well, and you can just use port 26 and mail.yoursite.com for the outgoing servers.
If it's the whole IP block, and your IP is dynamic, then it's completely out of your control. It seems that these anti-spam lists are getting regular spam from someone (anyone) using these IPs and as a result lots of innocent users end up with problems sending emails. The reason these lists add the whole subnet (which is a bit excessive in most circumstances) is so that other users of the IP range put pressure on the owners to sort the problem. The problem is with the onwer of these IP addresses. If it's your hosting company demand that they fix it. If they belong to your ISP, do the same thing. If neither will do anything, change your supplier. It's not acceptable for the company who owns these IPs not to do anything about their listing with an anti-spam list. Rogue users can sign up and cause issues for everyone but why should everyone suffer due to their actions? Now that's it gone on for over a week I'd be talking about duty of care, failure to provide a service, and other areas where they must be in breach of contract.