A blacklist is a list of sources, such as IP addresses, mailing domains, URLs, or even users refused access to your device or network because of fear that they are the source of unsolicited bulk emails or, worse, that they contain malicious code that could cause harm. In particular, email blacklists are used to deny or separate messages from suspicious IP addresses and domains that are sent as “spam.”
Who is creating blacklists?
Many ISPs, like US providers Verizon or Comcast, and email services like Yahoo, or Gmail, hold their own internal blacklists. Blacklists are often created by private organisations, often distributors of anti-spam products, and in some cases non-profit agencies, which maintain a list of emails and IP addresses that have been marked as sending spam. Then those blacklists are made available for use by ISPs or any organisation operating their own mail servers. Most blacklists are implemented as real-time databases that decide whether mail from a specific IP address is spam, based on pre-set requirements.
There are lots of blacklists available, all with slightly different ways to determine whether an inbound email is considered spam. Blacklist developers typically use a combination of spam reports, spam traps and other proprietary data as requirements for adding a source to a blacklist.
May I get deleted from the blacklist?
If a specific ISP or search engine blocks your sent mail or domain, you will often be able to request a delisting or at least further investigation as to why your IP address or domain is being blocked. To send such a request for unblocking, you may need to include some information about your email program, usually including IP addresses, domains sent, date of occurrence, and any unique SMTP error codes.
I’m not a spammer! How do I prevent my sending address from being blacklisted?
Here are some tips on how to prevent your legitimate emails from being blacklisted:
- Never buy email lists. The recipients on such lists are likely to mark your unwanted emails as spam; marking them as a source for adding to their blacklist to the ISP or spam filter; There is also a good chance that the list contains a spam trap, which is an email address specifically created to “bury” spam.
- Emails you ‘re sending should each contain unique content. Do not repeatedly (as in tens or hundreds of thousands of times) submit the same or similar material.
- Use double opt-in to approve subscribers to email list. This ensures subscribers sign up with their own email addresses, which are valid indeed.
- Don’t overuse certain triggers that spam detectors look for: punctuation like exclamation points!) (and many words that suggest hype like “guaranteed,” “win,” “free,” and “opportunity.” Also, messages that contain offensive words or off-color topics are often automatically flagged as spam.
- Don’t send an email composed of one big image. Spam filters look for these, as it could be a way to circumvent the algorithms that are looking for signs of spam in the message text.
- Don’t use all capital letters, in the subject or the message.
- Employ double opt-in to approve email list subscribers. This ensures subscribers sign up with their own email addresses, which are valid indeed.
- If you run your own email server, use nice, reliable security software to secure the server against cyberattacks that might compromise it and make it part of a spam-sending botnet.
My emails aren’t spammy, so why blacklist my domain?
Despite adhering to these best practices to avoid spam-flagging of your addresses, you can find that your IP address or domain is on a blacklist anyway.
This is because malicious actors can hack your device, the network, or your website and send emails from your IP address or domain without your even being aware of it.
In particular, hackers often compromise legitimate websites in large numbers, and using their stolen resources together to launch attacks on larger domains. One of the assaulted resources may be email generator for the website. Attackers are able to load malicious files into targeted sites. Code in those files can send tens of thousands (or more) of spam emails that appear to come from the domain of the website. The emails may contain explicit content and may redirect traffic to other websites or, worse still, may spread more malware. These large amounts of spam, with additional features indicating that they could be malicious, can cause website blacklists by antivirus vendors (such as Norton, McAfee, Sophos) and search engine operators (such as Google , Bing and Yandex).
Yikes … Yikes! How do I avoid cyberattacks leading to blacklisting?
The good news is that you can take even stronger measures to avoid, patch, or restore blacklisting beyond adopting good email-sending protocols. A website security solution like Fixhackedwebsite could be your tool against hackers trying to send out malicious emails from the domain of your website.
Fixhackedwebsite is a fully featured, managed, cloud-based security solution that can protect your website from hackers who may infiltrate your systems. A powerful web application firewall ( WAF) is available that can block advanced threats like Denial-of – Service (DDoS), Cross-Site Scripting, and SQL Injection attacks.
The WAF is provisioned over a stable Content Delivery Network ( CDN) and managed via the Fixhackedwebsite security information and event management ( SIEM) program. Web traffic is continuously monitored and alerts are immediately received by security experts at the always-on (24/7/365) Fixhackedwebsite Cyber Security Operations Center (CSOC). Once an alert is received, certified analysts deploy countermeasures to the web application firewall and address security events before they escalate to security incidents, all in real-time.
Fixhackedwebsite includes those powerful features that can lead to blacklisting to protect against hacking:
Web application firewall (WAF): The web application firewall offers powerful, real-time advanced malware protection for web applications and websites, including filtering and intrusion protection. The firewall keeps out those who would spamming your website and worse.
Security information and event management (SIEM): The SIEM is the “brain” of the cybersecurity stack at Fixhackedwebsite. This addresses security monitoring in real time, automated threat detection, incident management, and forensics, all with data support from 85M+ endpoints and 100M+ domains.
Cyber security Operations Center (CSOC): A team of always-on certified cybersecurity professionals provides surveillance and remediation services 24/7/365.
Then, Fixhackedwebsite can also boost your site in a different way:
Better SEO from a secure, fast content delivery network ( CDN): In addition to built-in security, the Fixhackedwebsite CDN delivers web content at a faster rate through caching on many global data center servers to meet traffic spikes and shorten the distance to local servers. This can boost visibility and ranking of your website’s search engine (SEO).
PCI scanning: If your website is also a payment portal, PCI scanning ensures that PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) complies with this.