When your email server is blacklisted... WHUK issue.

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greenbarn
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When your email server is blacklisted... WHUK issue.

Post by greenbarn »

Anyone else had this problem, or can shed some light? Over a period of three or four weeks I've hit an occasional problem (and once is more than enough) of an email being bounced with a failed delivery report. Investigating the report showed that the mail server was blacklisted, so I contacted my domain host, WebHosting UK (WHUK) and reported it. They responded quickly enough, but did say that it can take 24 hours for a server to be cleared from the blacklist.
It happened again a few days later, and now again today.
I can send the same email from my personal address (not hosted with WHUK), so there is a (messy) workaround; I can check blacklists using a tool called MXToolBox, but that just confirms why the email has bounced.
WHUK tell me the've now closed down the spamming account responsible.
So for those in the know, my question: is this just an unlucky occurrence or are WHUK any more likely than any other hosting service to be unreliable and should I be changing to another hosting service? Should I be demanding to have my domain moved to a different server within WHUK, or would that make no difference?
Anyone else who uses WHUK been affected? (It's one of their Wordpress servers).
newtimber
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Post by newtimber »

This happens several times a year for us. We use Blackfoot and I keep looking to see if there is a mail server that is guaranteed not be get blocked. No one blocks gmail but don't want to use our own domain name.
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greenbarn
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Joined: Sat May 30, 2009 6:41 pm
Location: The Westmorland Dales, Cumbria

Post by greenbarn »

Thanks for the info newtimber. Blacklisting didn't affect me once with my previous hosting service so it had me wondering if some were more or less reliable than others. Unfortunately my previous hosting service decided it was okay for the shared server I was on to go down for over a week without hotswapping to another. I think their key business was rather bigger players than me, prepared to pay big bucks for specialised hosting.

My limited understanding suggests that, because the likes of Spamhaus etc blacklist a huge range of ip addresses containing the rogue one, it's of no benefit to have a fixed ip address? (which I think WHUK offers.)
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