What's a DNS Blacklist and how do I get off of it?

E-mails of mine sent to my newsletter subscribers and to members of a progressive organization of which I'm secretary are suddenly bouncing back with a message saying my ISP has been listed on a DNS blacklist and refused!

I spoke with some of the people I'd tried sending the e-mail to and they said they did NOT want my emails blocked.

What is a DNS blacklist? How do I get off of it? This is an outrage, as everyone on my email distribution list has asked to be on it, and I'd gladly remove anyone who doesn't wish to receive my mailings.

The email in question was announcing a protest rally against a Republican Congressman, incidentally.

Help would be greatly appreciated!

to people who wish to be on my email list. I added that I'll be contacting an attorney and the media if they don't immediately unblock my isp.

I hope that works! Has anyone else had this happen to them? If so, were you successful in removing the block?

People do take dim views of legal threats. All you have to do is make sure everyone in your e-mail is a confirmed opt-in list that you send out, and verify that your users are, in fact, wanted to be in your list. Simple enough. For an example, go to http://spam.abuse.net

In the anti-spam business, legal threats are called 'cartooney threats'.

These are not spam. Anyone who changes their mind and asks to be deleted (as people occasionally do when going on vacation, etc.) is immediately dropped.

And if my emails are now being blocked, how can I reach people to "confirm" this?

The site you list seems to be for users who want to block spam, not for senders whose email has wrongly been blocked.

I don't believe I should have to pay anything, since I did nothing wrong.

the server that's hosting the email account of your recipient believes that the server hosting your email account (not the email account itself) is likely to be generating spam more than legitimate messages. This frequently happens with "free" email accounts systems like HOTMAIL.COM and YAHOO.COM; less so but occasionally with AOL.COM. The simplest solution is to find another email server to deliver the messages. Otherwise, you'll need to talk to the managers of the mail server (either check with customer servcie for your recipient's internet service, or do a WHOIS search on the destination server and you'll find a technical support contact name) and see if they can make an adjustment.

One of the blocked recipients is also a cox user, the others are from a smaller private server locally.

I don't want to change my server as cox provides good service generally, also this email address is on all of my business cards and other materials.

Also I tried a secondary server address through adnc and it was blocked, too, even though I haven't sent out any bulk emails through it!

Why would some cox recipients have email blocked through DNS and not others?

That someone who does not agree with what you are sending out could have reported you and there you go.

Don't scoff at the notion.

politically and I've gotten complaints. I've assured the complainers that I did not send to them and suggested they contact whoever forwarded the piece to ask that they not do so again.

Possibly one of those individuals could have complained, but I shouldn't be punished for something that is beyond my control.

Has anyone here had success in being removed from one of these lists?

Or know of a public interest group that might take on a legal challenge to this practice of blocking emails to people who want to receive them?

It will take effort. There have been those who have tried legal challenges to blacklisting organizations with little success.

On balance, blacklists do provide some good. But good things can be used to do bad and unfair things.

In the past couple of days I also discovered that articles of mine on a progressive website have been hacked and destroyed. Records of these articles on google have also disappeared!

Emails of at least two progressive groups locally in which I'm involved have recently had emails intercepted and changed to send out false info on "changes" to the time and place of protest rallies, one involving the same Republican office holder who was named in the subject line of my blocked email. This particular Rep is tied in with national security issues and pulls a lot of clout with security and intelligence agencies.


Is anyone else having these problems suddenly, or is it just me?

AKA: "Rat Fucking". SOP for the repukes.

PM me the header of one of those changed emails.

a bunch of emails out of my mailbox, possibly a virus.

Someone else did try to decipher the header on one, with no success.

The server supposedly disciplined the individual responsible but refused to divulge their name.

Yes, I'm quite certain that some, possibly all of this is due to Republican dirty tricks, as I've crossed some powerful people lately. I've also been the victim of an attempt by one public official and GOP officer to smear me in the media (which back-fired on him big time, as I was easily able to disprove his lies and discredit him even more).

Welcome to Amerika.

you should register your own domain and use that for the newsletter and only the newsletter. make sure everyone on it is confirmed to receive the newsletter.

that way you can have a nice clean email address and shouldnt be blocked.

action alerts, notices of local progressive events, meeting minutes, etc.

I do have a yahoo account, but the problem is I can't figure out how to export the extensive mailing list out of outlook express.

I'd really prefer just to get this unblocked and keep my server.

if you get your own domain name and use that for email, you can just keep the same mailing list in outlook express. this way you keep your ISP provider but have a dedicated clean email address for your needs.

make them c0mPl3x to make hacking your passwords as difficult as possible. try not to keep reusing the same passwords over and over. while it is possible that republican operatives hacked your site to screw it up, it is more likely that it was just some malicious person who goes around doing that to random people.

also spammers will "ghost" email addresses to make they seem like they came from you when they really didnt, that might be where you got into DNS problems.

I stopped being on mixed boards and on mixed lists about eight years ago after juvenile, petty, meanspirited, and vindictive right wingers attempted to say that mailings from me and the other lefties on that list were bulk emails, i.e. spam. They didn't get very far, but the point was well taken.

Needless to say, I learned that particular lesson well. Right wingers can't tolerate dissent and can't treat anyone outside the cult with anything approaching either fairness or tolerance. To hell with the lot of them.

Good luck with the blacklisting. Often, when it's an entire ISP, that ISP is motivated to clean up its act and the blacklisting is temporary.

Or you may need a new one.

.... ISP. That is going to be the easiest, and by far the quickest, solution.

Your ISP has been (or someone thinks it has been) being used as a gateway for spam emails. This is not necessarily, or even likely, anything to do with you.

.... Cox is your ISP.

sign up for a service like Netzero or even AOHELL's BYOA program and pay a nominal monthly charge and have your email sent through them. Cox will connect you, but your mailbox will be at AOHELL or Netzero.

You can always tell a true net addict by the number of services s/he has. I have DSL at home but keep a dialup ISP for those times on the road. The charge for the latter is minimal and it's saved me a lot of heaches the few times the DSL has gone down.

there are certain things you can do but if you don't know what a blacklist is, it would be futile to explain how to get off of one.

If the black hole list can't identify a specific user then they will block an entire block of IP addresses.
Try this one and see if your IP comes up.
http://www.declude.com/Articles.asp?ID=97