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How To Remove Ip Address From Blacklist

INTRODUCTION

In today’s time, almost everything has shifted online including all our basic everyday stuff to all business-related work including the advertising. But these regular uninvited mails can be real stress sometimes and to reduce that the ‘report spam’ option always comes as a savior. It not only allows you to report any frequent unwanted sender but you can also permanently block or blacklist that person.

But what to do when you get blacklisted from any place or to be precise what to do when you’re entire IP address gets blacklisted? We are going to discuss the same problem here and will try to come up with exact solutions.

What is IP address blacklisting?

IP address blacklisting is generally blacklisting (in easier terms restricting) those IP addresses which are marked as spam by users or have a specific format that is considered spam.

IP address blacklisting is not only limited to the former two reasons there are various other reasons as well by which your IP address can be blacklisted. Those reasons are broadly classified into three factors

• Technical listing: when there are technical issues in the mail server which include the format that is common in spam emails, missing DNS records, and a few others then it comes under the radar of technical listing.

• Policy listing: when the receiving server does not intend to receive any emails from that particular ISP that has a reputation for unwanted emails.

• Evidence-based listing: it’s quite a simple listing process. It works when the server has evidence of spam or uninvited mails towards a particular IP address.

Now based on these categories if any IP address falls under the spam category or is even similar to any spam mail it will automatically be sent to the spam mail and in extreme cases, it is blacklisted.

am I blacklisted?

Now the question comes that how to check whether your IP address is blacklisted or not

Now to check if you are blacklisted or not there are various websites and they all perform differently

Here are few sites from where you can check whether you are blacklisted or not –

• Toolbox - it will show your IP address on the top in red if it is blacklisted. All you have to do is go and search for your IP address if it appears in red then you are blacklisted.

• Blacklist alert – it also works similarly if any IP address is blacklisted then it also shows it in red it sometimes also provides an URL to reach the blacklist.

Sometimes the person needs to understand the difference between blacklisting and greylisting.

Greylisting is the process in which a person is not entirely blacklisted but is in the middle and will be blacklisted if the situation prevails.

The steps to remove the IP address from the blacklist

Now the major concern.

THE PROCESS

The process can differ from site to site or from IP address to IP address. It also depends upon the reputation the IP address has.

1. First of all, find out the reason why your IP address was blacklisted –

Indeed, it may not be intentional but a person might have made few errors due to which they ended up getting blacklisted, you just need to find out that error. You can do this via a simple process go to the site where you are blacklisted most of the time they provide the list of reasons why they blacklisted this particular IP address.

1. Fixing the errors – once you find out the errors try to fix them, run a security check, correct your DNS record, and also if possible scan for all the viruses in your system.

2. Request for removal of blacklist – when you see everything is fine from your side go to the site and request for the removal of your IP address from the blacklist your request will be seen from the other side and they will decide whether to remove your IP address from the blacklist or not.

3. Time took – the total time required to complete this process depends upon the level of offense one’s IP address holds it can vary between a few hours to several weeks.

things to remember

• It’s not guaranteed that even after following the process one’s IP address will be removed from the blacklist.

• The time taken in the process is directly proportional to the level of offense the IP address has created

Do I need to worry about me being blacklisted? Short answer NO. The long answer, Well there are times when the blacklisting is for a short period. There are times when the level of offense is very less hence the IP address is either greylisted or is blacklisted for a very short period. In such cases, the person need not worry they will be removed from the blacklist after that certain time.

How can you prevent getting blacklisted?

As said and followed it’s better to be aware and alert and not to do those mistakes which will land up your IP address on the blacklist.

v Always have a strong password - this will restrict spammers from trying the dictionary attack (trying to use a bulk of words to guess the password).

v Set up SPF code – Sender Policy Framework will determine if the domain is authorized to send mail for a particular domain.

v Have a valid PTR record – it will allow the receiving server to have a reverse DNS check-up on the connecting IP address. It will make that the domain is authorized to send mail for that domain.

There are various other ways as well via which one can secure their IP address

• Do not allow relaying

• Configure the IP shield

• Enable SSL

• Use a static IP

Conclusion

The IP address blacklist is done because for the following reasons Technical listing, Policy listing, Evidence-based listing. There are two ways to check if you are blacklisted or not. One by using the toolbox and the other by blacklist alert. The steps to remove an IP address from the blacklist are one first of all find out the reason why your IP address was blacklisted, Fixing the, and Request for removal of a blacklist. The total time taken in the process depends on the offense registered. Summing up, I would say that you should take care of the precautions of developing a safe.