Posted on 11/18/2009 7:41:00 AM PST by rudy45
From time to time, I get messages saying my earlier email was rejected or blocked for being spam. Is there some way I can get a report on my email address, sort of like a credit check? If my address has a bad reputation, how can I repair it. I am not sending spam, but perhaps someone is spooking me? Thanks.
Do you have your own email server or are you using another service like Yahoo! or Hotmail?
Those emails you are getting are likely hoaxes themselves. Do not reply to them.
It just depends on how the recipient has the spam blocker functions set. Some people have it pretty tight, even blocking all unknown addresses.
Some people can block all emails that are not on an approved list. If you are emails people who you have never email before this would cause some returns. Even if they email you first doesn’t mean that you can return the email.
Are you getting notices from addresses to which you have never sent e-mails? Perhaps some program is spoofing your address and sending out spam without your knowledge.
Thanks. My mail domain is hosted by a third pary, IX Webhosting.
Also, I’ve noticed that even when someone sends me an email, i don’t automatically get “whitelisted,” ie I still am blocked if I reply.
So, maybe my domain hosting company is the one with the problem?
Yes, I am getting emails from Delta Airlines and Barrons, saying “thanks for your inquiry.”
How can I prevent others from spoofing my address, if at all?
Yes, I am getting emails from Delta Airlines and Barrons, saying “thanks for your inquiry.”
How can I prevent others from spoofing my address, if at all?
When I am using wireless away from home, I sometimes get a message I am blocked, due to spamming. It happens most often when I try to send a group message to 10 or more. I just wait a while and send the message to three people, then three more and so on.
It sounds like you are on a shared hosting environment...which means that if some one else that is on that server starts spamming people...they can get everyone that shares that IP address added to a black list...it is fairly common for this to happen.
You can check your IP address for free at sites like spamhaus.org etc. Just search ip black lists (and don’t pay for the service). If you are getting email forwards...i would first check that you don’t have any forms posted on any of your web sites. Contact forms are notoriously insecure and are used by spammers to forward viagra adds that look like they came from you.
Get your ISP to run a check of your logs and see where the traffic is coming from...they can either block the IP address or make preparations to further harden the server against the attack.
It is most likely coming out of China or one of the Soviet eastern block countries (my servers get hit thousands of times a day from these locations.)
Email will be completely gone in a couple of years...so hang in there!
My earthlink mail is constantly flagging my son’s emails to me as phishing.
Finally got it out of junk mail but now it’s in phishing.
No amount of tweaking helps but it does let me read the emails.
Most likley it’s not your address but the server or host sending the email. Most admins don’t block on an individual level they block on a server level. If the server you are using is on a blacklist then your mail can be flagged as SPAM and blocked.
In order to see if the server you are sending from is blacklisted go here:
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/
enter the domain name of your email address, thats everything to the right of the @ symbol, and press MX lookup. This will give you the IP address of the server you are using. Then go here:
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
enter that IP address and press blacklist check. This will tell you if the server you are using is blacklisted anywhere. This system checks the biggest blacklists out there. About 31 of them.
If you are receiving messages that say your message was blocked and you never sent the message then most likley this is either a phishing attempt or someone is spoofing your return address in order to send out SPAM. Unfortunatley there is not a damn thing you can do about either of these.
If the return message you are getting says something about a Barrcudda server or your “reputation” let me know and i cna tell you how to get your email address whitelisted.
“Email will be completely gone in a couple of years...so hang in there!”
Most likley or at least existing in some radically different form. I run the servers for a small company. We have 19 employees and about 40 email addresses if you include all of the generic boxes etc.
Currenlty we receive approx 20,000 SPAM messages per 24 hours and about 250 valid messages per day. It’s ramping up by about %3 to %5 per week. Email wont last long under that load.
From your other answers this may not be your problem. But the accept list is normally somewhere in your local settings most of the time.
Wow, thanks. That was helpful. According to your sources, my IP address is blacklisted on 2 out of 101 blacklists: Lashback and Backscatter. So (pardon my lack of understanding), I guess that if the spam filter of my intended destination relies on either of these blacklists, I get shut out?
McAfee Trusted Source says my IP address is “minimal risk.”
Is the info from mxtoolbox similar to a “whois” lookup?
Thanks for your help. Should I talk to my hosting provider and ask what they can do?
I'd strongly suggest setting up both SPF and DKIM for your domain. These can help you get past spam filters even if you are on a shared server with other users. That said, Backscatterer.org gathers its problem sites from badly configured email server behavior. In your case, their problem with you is that your email server is sending replies back to forged email “From:” fields, effectively spamming people who didn't even email you. This is also what is happening to you with Delta Airlines and Barrons—they are spamming you from forged emails sent to them from spammers, and their servers are replying to you.
Are the blocked messages ones you actually sent?
I was getting undeliverable messages returned - not ones I had sent. Chinese spammers had captured my email and password. Changing the password alone was enough to stop it and my email has not been re-hijacked.
Two things are going on. First, I a small number of legitimate emails that I send are being rejected by recipient, and I know because my email system tells me so, and I recognize the address that I was trying to reach.
Second, I am getting “thanks for your email” replies from Barron’s and Delta Air Lines, even though I never sent them emails.
Are you saying that all you did was change the password for your mail server?
Thanks.
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