Blacklist information

[kjohnson5576]

Last week my domain got thrown on a blacklist. I don't know why or who would have done it, but it drastically reduced both my business, my traffic rank and even my ranking in Google Search in just four days! Is there anyway to find out from the blacklisting organization, Prodigy, who put me on the blacklist?

I will go on to say, I do not advertise from my domain, I use Topica confirmed opt in email list when I send out announcements (primarily for contests and contest winners). I use my domain's email to communicate with customers and vendors and also to receive and send information on shipping, tracking, etc. Like Janeth's thread, I also use my domain to communicate with people who want to link, however, 99.99% of the linkers are people that have contacted me.

Can a competitor complain and get someone blacklisted? How do you find out? Is there legal action one can take against a blacklister for negligently degrading a business? I never want to go through that again.

Kent
www.discount-leather.net

[minstrel]

Blacklists are a simple-minded and heavy-handed "solution" to the spam problem (see the story "Spam Filters Revealing Their Darker Side" at
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/0909spam.html) but it doesn't seem that they are going to go away soon. I just did a search for information on the Prodigy blacklist and, maybe not surprisingly, didn't find a lot that was very informative.

I did come across this - I know nothing about the service and it may be little more than a scam itself but you might want to investigate it further: It's billed as e-filtrate - "get off the Blacklists and through the spam filters" - at http://www.e-filtrate.com/tool_3.html. Even if that doesn't turn out to be legitimate, my guess would be that there are other similar services available...

[ren23]

We have recently received bounce errors, caused by a different company with a close IP address to ours. Is there really no recourse to this injustice?

[bfleming98]

Yeah it could be a competitor....

We had one do that too us and completely knocked us off google.. What a nightmere that was..

[kfegarty]

Black List Monitor - monitors and lists up to 75 common black lists. http://www.blacklistmonitor.com

[kfegarty]

Sorry ment to post my previous message to another forum post looking for a list of blacklists.

[bjbtexas]

I found this awesome little tool in searching for ways to get off a spam blacklist last week. In my client’s case it was a Trojan virus that Symantec didn’t catch. I found the mass mailer virus using antivirus.com

www.dnsstuff.com

I little bit of everything and pretty straight forward.

[JayDrake]

What kind of blacklist were you added to that affects more than email traffic? Other than lists that ISP's maintain to keep their subscribers from reaching sites they deem 'indecent' at the wish of the subscriber, I have never heard of a blacklist that does more than keep people from receiving email from domains on that list.

What indicators show that you are on a blacklist? What suggests that this is the cause of all of your troubles? Where is this blacklist located and can you post a link to it so that we can investigate it further?

Simply put, there are good blacklists out there and there are bad ones. I use a couple to keep my spam count lower and I have no complaints with the few I use.

[kjohnson5576]

It's been over a year since I posted the message and yes it got resolved. I have been blacklisted two more times in 2004 though. Here is the problem: I've got a web store, like many WP members do. If say, the earthlink system decides to blacklist me, somehow, all mail going to my ISP goes through the earthlink system. As orders are filled out and automatically submitted, each hit a wall at the earthlink system and all of a sudden, when I normally get 100's of emails a day, perhaps only 3 slip in.

How much business do you lose? and how do you know? These are the consequences of being on a blacklist.
I do this for a living, not a hobby and if I'm not pulling in orders, I'm in serious trouble.

I'm not quite sure how email gets routed, although all mine goes through my Yahoo account, but I did learn that mail may go through many large systems before reaching your Outlook express inbox. Note, it takes a friend outside your system sending an email in to receive the autoreply that says the domain is on a blacklist. That's really the only way you know. You then have to somehow get the mail header information to find out where the blacklist was and try to get it corrected.

[omahtld]

I'm sure there is a law in the US, that basically states that if you interfere in someones business and you are not attempting to merely get their customers, they are liable.... Tortuous interference or something...

I dont know if that makes sense or not, but it may be worth looking into.

Personally, I like blacklists, and use them, but its my choice to use them, I'd hate for the guy upstream to use them, and block my mail, it should only be an end user solution.

Cheers.