Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Big Guys get Blacklisted too

Ya the Big Guys can get black listed too.


NOTE: Black list is an email domain or IP list with known spamming activity. Thus receiving mail servers use these lists to deny emails if they come from a black list. This is a form of Anti-Spam Control)


Who are the big guys?
Google, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Comcast, SBC, GoDaddy, ect..


With so many mail servers (hundreds) and so many users (thousands upon thousands), the 'big guys' are bound to at some point have a user with an infected computer sending spam.   Thus that mail server IP gets put on a blacklist.  AND EVERY email user who happens to be using that mail server will have rejected mail.  Unfortunately you can't choose which of the hundreds of servers in the 'big guys' server farm your email will send from. So the users don't really have control over this.


The only prevention is clean computers and safe users. (Good article here on how you individually can do this: Don't Click That Link) Since it's impossible to ensure this from the 'big guys' side, they are forced to be in constant reactive mode on this. You would think: "this can't happen to the 'big guys' ", ohh but it does. In fact it’s so bad, the 'big guys' have a team on staff whose sole job is to monitor blacklist and submit for removals as they happen. 
Usually though, by the time you receive a kick back email that your message was blocked, and you go check the black lists, they may already be cleaned.


So what should you do?
Well if you’re a business; use your own trusted domain on a dedicated host. If you a small business or personal user or SOHO, then you may be stuck with this. Best option then, is to just resend the email. And as a courtesy, for important emails, it’s a good practice to always reply to the email sender confirming you received their email.





Happy Clicking!


Nathan DeSutter
IT Consultant
Compnology LLC

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