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 SPAM:
BLACKLISTS AND WHITELISTS |
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Now before you even press the button you should realize that on this list there are several obscene Blacklists here. There is a very good chance that your IP is listed with them. Let me give you a concrete example. The IP we have been using in this article, 67.18.67.33, is listed on two of these Blacklists. Even before it was used by www.uturn.net.nz it was listed on these two Blacklists. In fact even before the IP was owned by the management of U-Turn Internet it was listed. In fact, six months before it was owned by U-Turn Internet it was blacklisted. What happened is that the person running the Blacklist determined that the IP, 67.18.67.33, was owned by someone who, in their mind, was soft on spammers. Therefore rather than taking the chance of receiving spam from this IP address they blacklisted the IP and keep it on the Blacklist. So even though the IP is no longer used by the person who was soft on spammers, and is now used by a completely different company they are still blacklisting the IP. Why? Because they run the Blacklist and can do anything they want with it. Now are e-mails being refused by the hundreds? By the thousands? No. In fact since taking ownership of this IP not a single e-mail has been refused. Why? Because very few, if very many at all, are using this obscene Blacklist. Realistically, why would you want to use a Blacklist which never removed IP addresses from the Blacklist even after they have new ownership? Why would you Blacklist an IP which never spammed? It is partly ridiculous to do so and most companies and individuals realize this. These are not the Blacklists you need to worry about. You need to worry about the most used ones: SpamCop, SpamHaus, etc. If you are listed on one of these chances are your e-mails will be coming back to you.
Now if you do find your IP address listed on one or several big Blacklists you need to do something about it now. You should contact your web host immediately or your server provider. If you do nothing chances are you will stay on some of these Blacklists. To get off a Blacklist you have do very specific things to satisfy the owners of the Blacklists. And if you have mail being refused on a daily basis you need to do something about it now rather than later.
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There has been a lot of time spent talking about Blacklists, but what about Whitelists? A Whitelist is the opposite of a Blacklist--in order to send any e-mail to someone using a Whitelist you have to be approved and verified. You are approved and verified by by listed in the Whitelist. A Whitelist is a list of IP addresses which are trusted implicitly. That means all e-mail will be accepted from them if the sender of the e-mail is on the Whitelist. Anyone sending e-mail to a server using a Whitelist must be on the list or it will be sent back.
Why would someone use a Whitelist? For a lot of reasons. Consider a company with two locations, one on each side of the world. They want to block spam but want to send e-mail back and forth. They each set up Whitelists with each other and they now can send e-mail back and forth without ever having any spam enter anyone's mailbox because the only two IP addresses on their Whitelist is each other. Now if they only wanted to send e-mail to each other they could stop there. But if they want to receive e-mail from anyone else they need to add the new people to their Whitelist. And this is what they do; when they find a person or company they want to receive e-mail from they add them to the Whitelist. The only downside is that Whitelists require that they be set up before they are used or people won't get their e-mail. Whitelists are gaining a lot in popularity so you will see them gaining popularity in the coming months. In fact a major player in the dial-up ISP market is promoting the fact that they are using Whitelists. Basically, before any e-mail is received by anyone using the service the person sending the e-mail must identify themselves in the e-mail and then be approved by the recipient. If the recipient doesn't approve the e-mail it is sent back and never seen by the recipient.
Blacklists and Whitelists are here to stay. The abundance of spam has precipitated their use. Chances are you personally will not be involved with maintaining either a Blacklist or a Whitelist in your lifetime. But, there is a good chance in your lifetime you will run across either Blacklist or a Whitelist in your hosting account. Also, before you consider you next host you should consider whether the IP address you will be placed on is Blacklisted.
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