New Tactic for Competitors - Black Listing

[manuellynch]

I went to dinner with some people in the industry the other night and heard about something that was happening to them that also happened to our company. Their competitor reported their sending domain/IP address to a "Blacklist" and their emails were blocked from being received by quite a few customers.

The same thing happened to us and we found out thru a bit of research that the company that reported us had an IP address of an LED module competitor.

Just wanted to let you know that this a new and rather interesting way of people trying to stop competitors as opposed to making a better product at a better value.

Just a heads up.

[YYZ]

So the customer's servers would be blocking potential emails due to the blacklisted domain/IPs? I'm pretty sure that many people have to submit the same "complaints" to get a domain or IP blocked. It's not as simple as one person submitting it.... or is it?

[Erik Sine]

From my understanding you report it to your isp and they blacklist it (Email domain), but it has to be yours

[manuellynch]

From my understanding you report it to your isp and they blacklist it (Email domain), but it has to be yours

And if the ISP they report it to happens to be national company - you are quite screwed - especially if your customers use the same domain. So they may very casually blacklist you to their ISP but it may affect a lot of your customer base.

So to answer YYZ - it can simply be one (1) person.

Kind of works that way in Las Vegas - if you are blacklisted as a gambler or as a dealer - you dont work in this town again - the ISP network of Casinos all work together.

[bdmargison]

So how can you protect or eliminate this from happening? or fix it after it happens?

[manuellynch]

So how can you protect or eliminate this from happening? or fix it after it happens?

Our ISP suggested something...they said you can:

A) turn off your incoming DSL/Cable/Ethernet modem for 24hours - the IP will reset itself

B) change the hardware on your incoming modem to a different device (computer, another router, etc) and it will assign a new IP address....and then you can connect your old modem after some time...this assigns a new IP address to the MAC addresses of your modem.

And then - when you find out who reported you - Blacklist them.

[geraldi]

I can't remember the name of the org. but there is a company that takes care of the blacklisting and reporting the names web-wide. They will check your servers if they get a complaint. If they find open ports that can be used to let an outside person use it to send malicious emails they will black list you. There area a lot machines out there with open ports.

[servant74]

Blacklisting is a nasty game.

The easiest blacklisting to do is by IP address, but by domain blacklisting is possible too.

There are large blacklists maintained by various groups. Some require a second

mortgage on your first borns soul to get off of (figuratively, of course). Others

automatically roll off if there are no reports after 1, 3 or 6 months.

If you want to find out about it, google "blacklist internet" and there is more than

you want to read on the subject.

My domain got blacklisted because someone cracked in and send a few million

spam email. It doesn't take long on a good connection, an hour or so. It took the

better part of a year to get off the automatic and 'automatic on, manual off' sites.

AOL (of course) was the hardest to get off their nasty list. But it can be, and has been, done.

If your upstream ISP will help, you can clear up things faster than without their help.

Doing blacklist retribution is a loosing game. Be better than that, provide a superior product

at a reasonable price, and have their customer come to you because you stay as above the

frey as possible! This kind of winning may take a little longer, but the satisfaction (and bottom

line) will be so much sweeter for it.