Many H9 Nodes Blacklisted

[ro-john]

Hello all,

I know this is an ongoing problem with blacklisted nodes by H9 and that they're getting numerous amounts of support tickets and I am hoping they're doing what they can to resolve this issue. Whether it is working with their data center providers on issuing new clean IP/blocks or even ensuring the configurations for the e-mail servers are all setup properly and catching any spammers. As a reseller and many other resellers out there, it's difficult to support your customers if they can't even e-mail you. For the first couple months that we have joined H9 - things were running fairly smooth until these blacklisted nodes arise. We really need to isolate these problems and if needed get new blocks of IPs because I don't know how much longer our customers can deal with it as we know spam is an ongoing issue. I've submitted a support ticket and Blake so far is doing what he can to help with one of the nodes, which is our own site.

But to help out a little - here's a list of known blacklisted nodes that I found from our end of sites that we have throughout H9 nodes: All with either Backscatter/Fiveten/Sorbs/SpamCannibal to just name the common ones we found.

Blacklisted:
Node 10
Node 17
Node 20
Node 21
Node 27
Node 30
Node 38
Node 53
Node 66
Node 72
Node 73
Node 79
WIN 1


-John

[H9NickH]

Hello,

Most of the blacklist programs you mentioned are extortionists - They basically tell us either pay us $XXX or we won't delist you. Because of the VERY little people/companies that actually use those blacklists, we will not cave to their extortion and pay them money to remove a blacklist. If we did this, we'd have to raise our rates to cover the massive losses we'd experience as a result of spam by our customers.

If you find our IP on a major blacklist such as Spamhaus, Spamcop, etc then please do report it to abuse@hostnine.com and we will be sure to get it taken care of.

[JJ27]

Node30 has been blocked by AOL for weeks.

[ro-john]

Nick - I will keep on a look-out as to the major spam servers that may list them. Then again, even though not all mail hosts out there use the ones I listed to check for spam, the most common ones that people use sure do (Hotmail/Yahoo/AOL/some cases Gmail that I have seen).

JJ27 - I hear ya, we're having issues with Yahoo primarily and couple other business hosts we communicate with.

[H9NickH]

We've put some measures in place a few weeks back to stop the spam exploits that were the main cause of these blacklists. Since implementing these changes we've received a total of 2 spam complaints - compared to the 5-10 per DAY that we were receiving. I think that's a pretty significant change.

We are still working on getting delisted by some ISPs such as AOL. The problem is that they take forever to reply back to us. Also with AOL/Hotmail and what not - if ANY AOL/Hotmail/etc user marks an email as spam in the respective email provider's panel (whether it is spam or not) - our IP is blacklisted without being reviewed or questioned.

If you have an email forwarder setup to forward you@yourdomain.com to you@aol.com - and a spam message gets forwarded - it appears as if it's coming from our server and our server gets marked as the spammer - even though the spam wasn't originating from our server.

So it's a Catch 22 and we're working on solutions.

[ro-john]

Oh I hear you. I've worked in trying to get delisted off from AOL/Yahoo etc.. before and they take FOREVER! However during the time it was critical to get communication going to those that were sending from AOL/Yahoo that I just requested a new set of IPs to shut them up :P But I hope all this will improve.

[JJ27]

Interesting points, Nick.

First of all, the statistics you cite regarding the dramatic drop in Spam complaints since implementing your changes, would seem to indicate that the problem has been real Spam being sent form your servers, and not the two other issues you mention. This has given me renewed confidence that you guys are taking this seriously, something I was starting to have my doubts about.

Regarding AOL blacklisting an IP address, based on a single person flagging a message as Spam, while I don't have specific knowledge of the details of AOL's policies, our experience indicates otherwise. We send our bulk mail using an e-mail marketting service, and while our list is strictly opt-in, we have had two cases of AOL users flagging our mail as Spam. (The e-mail service reports these to us.) It had no impact on delivery of our mail to any other AOL users, from that IP.

As far as Spam getting forwarded through HostNine's servers, they should really flag the originating address, but I can see why they might be inclined to flag the relaying address, on the basis that the originating address may have been forged. If, in fact, this is what they do, this is indeed a difficult problem.

[idwebca]

Originally Posted by H9NickH

We've put some measures in place a few weeks back to stop the spam exploits that were the main cause of these blacklists. Since implementing these changes we've received a total of 2 spam complaints - compared to the 5-10 per DAY that we were receiving. I think that's a pretty significant change.

We are still working on getting delisted by some ISPs such as AOL. The problem is that they take forever to reply back to us. Also with AOL/Hotmail and what not - if ANY AOL/Hotmail/etc user marks an email as spam in the respective email provider's panel (whether it is spam or not) - our IP is blacklisted without being reviewed or questioned.

If you have an email forwarder setup to forward you@yourdomain.com to you@aol.com - and a spam message gets forwarded - it appears as if it's coming from our server and our server gets marked as the spammer - even though the spam wasn't originating from our server.

So it's a Catch 22 and we're working on solutions.

Nick, perhaps they do like me as well.. they stop sending email because the problem disappear for few days and always come back, its been months and months now!!!!

I can't even sent an email to you support@hostnine.com with my reseller account company on node9 .. with your smtp on port 26... so image how fun it is. But again, this issue has been raise numerous time and still not fix, I need to use my cell phone email to contact h9. Very annoying!!