blocklists
As part of their continuing efforts to lock down unrestricted public access to their reputation data, Spamhaus has announced that as of February 14, 2024, they’ll be blocking DNSBL queries made via Digital Ocean’s Cloud Server infrastructure. Read more about it here. This isn’t really a bad thing; those who want can still sign up for the free tier of “DQS” access from Spamhaus for small volume or hobbyist usage. Requiring registration for this (and using their unique subdomain-based process) reminds me a bit of email authentication — the goal is so that Spamhaus can see you as you, not as just some random bits of data in the blob of all the requests coming from public servers. I’ve blogged about this before. So if you’re wondering how to safely query Spamhaus reputation data, read this and be informed. Email admins asleep at the wheel tend to wake up weeks
What do you do when you’re a newsletter publisher or marketing manager sending emails to your list and you run into deliverability trouble through no fault of your own? How do you even know? It’s a tricky and sticky situation and I’ve seen it happen more than once lately, and across more than one email service provider (ESP). The assumption, most of the time, is that if a mailbox provider — say, Gmail, decides to put your mail in the spam folder, that it’s a reflection of the quality of your mail — not a reflection of the provider or any issue the provider might be having. Ninety-seven percent of the time, it’s all about the (sending) client, not the sending platform. But sometimes it is actually a problem related to the sending platform. And that’s not an easy thing to measure. But it’s a good thing to ask your
Hey, fellow email nerds! It’s webinar time again. What do you know about Spamhaus? If not everything, I hope you’ll join Matthew Stith and myself on March 21st at 9:00 am central time, where we’ll talk about Spamhaus, what it is, how (and why) blocklists work, how it intersects with domain reputation (and why domain reputation is such a big thing right now) and a whole bunch of at least slightly interesting info nuggets. We’ll try very hard to have time for your questions as well. Want in? Register here. Thanks and hope to see you there!
This is a question I get a lot. Does Gmail use any blocklists? Or, somebody will tell me that they’re having Gmail issues, and they’ve plugged their own IP address into an online blocklist lookup tool, and they are sure that any results found (blocklisting issues) must somehow be part of the underlying cause of their deliverability woes. Except, that’s just about never the case. Here’s why.There are a zillion blocklists out there. Speaking specifically just about DNSBLs (IP-based blocking lists), there’s a good 90+ of them. But blocklists are a bit like blogs, in that anybody can publish them and the fact that it’s been published doesn’t mean that anybody is guaranteed to be actually looking at the what has been published. The net here is that there are a lot of blocklists that, if your IP or domain ends up listed by them, this does not mean that
DELIVTERMS: The weekly series here on Spam Resource that defines deliverability terminology. Today, I’m going to talk about blocklists.What are blocklists? Also called blocking lists, they are lists of IP addresses and/or domain names that are used as spam filters to plug into various email servers and spam filters. The implication is typically that by inclusion of a particular IP address or domain name on that blocklist, that the publisher of that blocklist perceived or believed that the user or owner of that IP address or domain name was engaged in sending spam, or some other unsavory practice.It was common for some folks to call them “blacklists,” though most operators of blocklists avoided that term. Today, most folks refer to them as “blocklists.”Technical terms that typically refer to a blocklist include:RBL (Realtime Blockhole List): Technically refers (only) to the MAPS RBL, one of the first blocklists, but some folks use…