Website and email issues

The Black Oil

Hi,

I realise that this may be the wrong forum, so feel free to move it to somewhere more appropriate.

Apparently our (work) mailing list is blacklisted. We discovered this after some clients contacted us about receiving messages later than usual. From looking at http://mxtoolbox.com/ we're flagged under BARRACUDA and SORBS-SPAM. Now we have to send out notifications earlier than before to ensure they're delivered.

Does anyone know how we go about resolving being blacklisted? I am not knowledgeable enough to start messing around with this on my own, neither is my boss. Unfortunately, the tech support people who host our email services seem a little impatient. The guy we deal with offered some advice, but I've trouble understanding it and my boss finds him a little challenging, tbh.

Separately, with our website, we currently get a breakdown of stats and information through Google Analytics. Most of our traffic seems to originate in the Dublin region, but I've a feeling this may not be accurate. Is there any way of checking? As an experiment, I asked my mother who was on holidays in the south east of the country to send me her IP address. She had Vodafone USB modem with her. After checking her IP it said she was browsing from Dublin even though she wasn't - is there any way of finding out if this is happening in other instances? I don't mean snooping around...just that the Dublin thing might be a bit off.

Any insight would be appreciated.

mneylon

Without having more details about what you've been doing to get blacklisted it's hard to offer any advice on resolving it.

The Black Oil

Thanks. We'd be sending emails to around 1,000 people, though not too often. Less than 100 on other occasions or just between ourselves.

The techie people said the sending of bulk mail will get picked up by the likes of Yahoo, etc and that they will slow down the delivery of messages. Apparently our spam rating may be affected.

He advised that we cease delivery of bulk mail and getting delisted from SORBS and Barracuda.

Tbh, it's all a bit double Dutch to me.

yoyo

The Black Oil wrote: »

Thanks. We'd be sending emails to around 1,000 people, though not too often. Less than 100 on other occasions or just between ourselves.

The techie people said the sending of bulk mail will get picked up by the likes of Yahoo, etc and that they will slow down the delivery of messages. Apparently our spam rating may be affected.

He advised that we cease delivery of bulk mail and getting delisted from SORBS and Barracuda.

Tbh, it's all a bit double Dutch to me.

If you want to send out newsletters/mass emails this will likely happen. Try schedule them so only a small portion are sent per hour (50/100 or even less). There are services out there that specialise in this that will mean you won't get blacklisted. Many ISPs will limit you to send a certain amount of messages in an hour, even still this may be considered "too high". Also if multiple people report your companies messages as spam, this could also be the reason you were blacklisted. Make sure to have clear unsubscribe options on all messages sent and limit the number you send out per week/month. The more people receive, the more likely they will get annoyed and report it.

Nick

The Black Oil

OK, thanks.

The newsletter goes out about 5 times a year, that's around 1,100 subscribers, but that's a separate list to the other 1,000 people I mentioned before and they would be emailed more frequently 3-5 times per month.

It was suggested that we use Mail Chimp which we already use for the newsletter, but I'm only learning the ropes and am not terribly familiar with it. Currently using it for the newsletter, but I think there is a limit to the number of groups or something you can create. Transferring to it would involve very careful work so as contact info was not lost and new users would have to be added regularly and manually and then also kept in sync, but even so, would it then not run into the issues you have mentioned? The blacklisting, etc or might Mail Chimp have some in built feature that can reduce this possibility?

yoyo

The Black Oil wrote: »

OK, thanks.

The newsletter goes out about 5 times a year, that's around 1,100 subscribers, but that's a separate list to the other 1,000 people I mentioned before and they would be emailed more frequently 3-5 times per month.

It was suggested that we use Mail Chimp which we already use for the newsletter, but I'm only learning the ropes and am not terribly familiar with it. Currently using it for the newsletter, but I think there is a limit to the number of groups or something you can create. Transferring to it would involve very careful work so as contact info was not lost and new users would have to be added regularly and manually and then also kept in sync, but even so, would it then not run into the issues you have mentioned? The blacklisting, etc or might Mail Chimp have some in built feature that can reduce this possibility?

See if mailchimp supports staggered sending, and make it only do 40/50 mails per hour. I'm sure most bulk mailing tools would support this

Nick

mneylon

You don't need to stagger anything if you use mailchimp, as they are a "trusted" sender and don't get restricted

You can send a plain text email easily

NB: they won't let you send email to role accounts such as info@ or sales@

yoyo

Blacknight wrote: »

You don't need to stagger anything if you use mailchimp, as they are a "trusted" sender and don't get restricted

You can send a plain text email easily

NB: they won't let you send email to role accounts such as info@ or sales@

I assumed Mailchimp was a newsletter script that op was running on their own server,

Nick

The Black Oil

Thanks both.

Blacknight wrote: »

NB: they won't let you send email to role accounts such as info@ or sales@

Is it OK to make it look like you're sending from info@ using Mail Chimp?

Snowbat

Symptoms of blacklisting are immediate rejection/bounce indicating the blacklist used, or your emails arrive in the recipient's junkmail folder. The delivery delay you are experiencing is is due to Greylisting, not blacklisting. The solution for this is to send more frequently - the wikipedia article indicates a window of 36 days.

To get delisted from SORBS, go to http://www.sorbs.net/cgi-bin/support to create an account, then use the delisting procedure.

To get delisted from Barracuda, go to http://www.barracudacentral.org/rbl/removal-request

SORBS and Barracuda are well known in the antispam community and are reputable. Getting your IP address delisted will not only get your email delivered to systems that use these RBLs for rejection, it will improve it's reputation and help you avoid the junkmail folder in systems that use RBLs for scoring (like SpamAssassin). I use SpamAssassin... if your SMTP server is listed by both SORBS and Barracuda, your email goes automatically to my junkmail folder.

Are you using a closed-loop email address confirmation system?
http://www.cluelessmailers.org/info/listmanagement.html

The Black Oil

Thanks for that.

Snowbat wrote: »

To get delisted from SORBS, go to http://www.sorbs.net/cgi-bin/support to create an account, then use the delisting procedure.

Here, I can see:

Address/Netblock/Host Count/Instances Listing Type Latest Occurance
(removed*) 6 Spam 10:23:46 29 Jul 2010 GMT+00
(removed) 20 Hacked 10:41:48 04 Jan 2010 GMT+00
(removed) 6 Spamvertised 10:23:46 29 Jul 2010 GMT+00

*Won't post the address on here. :cool:
I then go in and see the information that's categorised as red, i.e., listed. I try the 'get delisted' option, but get this response.

Sorry we have been unable to delist your address.

Additional information:

Not Authorised to delist this IP!

Additional Information: You must use the listed IP to be authorised, however if you work for the ISP and have a Netmanager Account covering the networks for this IP address, the requirement is not applicable.

You may log a support ticket for this issue instead, however, if you have already done this it will delay your case if you log a second ticket.

I logged a ticket, but I won't go for another just in case. Is there anything else I can do?

Snowbat wrote: »

To get delisted from Barracuda, go to http://www.barracudacentral.org/rbl/removal-request

SORBS and Barracuda are well known in the antispam community and are reputable. Getting your IP address delisted will not only get your email delivered to systems that use these RBLs for rejection, it will improve it's reputation and help you avoid the junkmail folder in systems that use RBLs for scoring (like SpamAssassin). I use SpamAssassin... if your SMTP server is listed by both SORBS and Barracuda, your email goes automatically to my junkmail folder.

OK, thanks, I've tried this and will see if anything comes from it.

Right, just got this back, don't know if it's automated or if it's

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you. We have removed 12345678 from our blocklist for 30 days, at which time it will be re-evaluated.

There are a number of reasons your IP address may have been listed as "poor", including:

The email server at this IP address contains a virus and has been sending out spam
The email server at this IP address may be configured incorrectly
The PC at this IP address may be infected with a virus or botnet software program
An individual in the organization at this IP address may have a PC infected with a virus or botnet program
This IP address may be a dynamic IP address which was previously utilized by a known spammer
The marketing department of a company at this IP address may be sending out bulk emails that do not comply with the CAN-SPAM Act
This IP address may have a insecure wireless network attached to it which could allow unknown users to use it's network connection to send out bulk email
In some rare cases, your recipients' Barracuda Spam Firewall may be misconfigured
If you do not think any of the above apply, please also contact the person who manages this IP address, as they may be better able to investigate this issue.

I've just checked on http://www.mxtoolbox.com but it still seems to be listed, perhaps not surprisingly.

OK, I followed up on the steps with SORBS and Barracuda, now it appears we're no longer listed in the negative on http://www.mxtoolbox.com

Success! Now, whether this is a long term fix, I'm not so sure.

Thanks for the help.