[Hidden-tech] Ongoing problems with email being tagged as spam

[Bruce Hooke]

Thanks Rich. Sorry, I should have made it clear that the email is going out
via the hosting company's SMTP. So, this is their issue. They responded to
my ticket and said that it was IP address 216.67.248.40 and that it was
blacklisted on spamhaus. They have taken the steps to deal with the
immediate issue (as I expected they would). I have also done some testing to
confirm that it is not just an issue with this particular website. I am
having the same problems with other websites on this same server.
 
So, it is back to the underlying issue, and my real question, which is why
this same issue seems to crop up every few months and what to do about it.
>From the sounds of what Charlie said, it seems like this is a common issue
whenever a lot of website share a server. 
 
Thanks again,
Bruce

  _____  

From: Rich Roth [mailto:rich at on-the-net.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 3:06 PM
To: Bruce Hooke
Cc: hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] Ongoing problems with email being tagged as spam


There is a missing piece of this issue:
       how is the outgoing mail being sent ?

The web site has nothing to do with email being marked as spam and neither
does the hosting company,
if the email is not going out via the smtp at the hosting company.

It's the outgoing smtp server used by the senders of email that cause the
issue,
and the nature of the content -- using collected lists can be a very bad
idea.

It might be useful to give us both the IP being blocked and the web site in
question,
you should also look to find exactly what service is black-listing the IP
Barracuda devices (like all other spam services) can share many (RBL)
black-listing providers
although they also have their own at: http://www.barracudacentral.org/rbl

You mention constant contact -- they go to great lengths to keep their
mailings and servers from becoming spam marked

Also if you are using an ISP that has virtual machines, and the email is
going out via those, then be aware that those use floating IPs
internally and routinely get marked as spam - just like an IP owned by cable
company -- there are special measures that need
to be taking to send email from Amazon cloud servers for example.

In short, it looks like you are looking in the wrong place - track the path
of the outgoing email, not the websites.

We run servers that send 100K or so emails a day and it takes serious work
to keep them from being blocked,
this is usually handled by using a service like constant contact -- so I
think something else is happening.

Rich

On 10/31/2011 12:54 PM, Bruce Hooke wrote: 

 
Hello, 



I maintain the website for a non-profit watershed group and they have been
having repeated problems with their email getting tagged as spam by systems
such as Barracuda. This causes a lot of headaches for both them and me. The
site is hosted on Arvixe, a major hosting company with the usual server farm
with lots of websites on it. However, while I have multiple websites hosted
with Arivxe this one is the only one that regular seems to run into this
problem. Meanwhile, when I check Barracuda it appears that the IP address
(which presumably covers multiple websites) is what is getting blocked, not
the domain name. So, I am trying to sort out:

1. Does this issue originate with something the non-profit in question is
doing (they do use Constant Contact but so do other groups I work with) or
is this a problem with the server the site is hosted on.

2. If it is something they are doing, how do we figure out what? 

2. If it is a problem with the server, what do we need to do to stop this
from happening: 

        a. Would getting our own IP address help? 
        b. Or would paying for our own server help? 
        c. Or do we need to go with a more local, hands-on host. When I
priced this out I was getting prices that were on the order of 15 or more
times higher than what we are paying now, which for a small non-profit is a
real budget issue. 

I already tried moving them to a new hosting company (previously they were
with another big hosting company) and that did not fix the problem.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. 

I can work with Arvixe to get the immediate issue fixed but I don't really
trust them when it comes to being up-front about the origins of the problem
since they do not seem to be likely to say "yes, it is a problem with other
websites on our server" or something similar.

Thanks! 
Bruce Hooke 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20111031/bd44abf4/attachment-0001.html