NTL email address Blacklisted - why ?

spiderwebb46 · 10-08-2011, 16:58

Good afternoon - I am just an everyday user of email so please no techy stuff in your replies as I will have problem understanding what you are saying.

I have received today an Undeliverable Message email and it refers to an IP address of

5.7.1 Your IP 81.103.221.48 is blacklisted. Click delist.emailfiltering.com to delist

I have come to the conclusion that this is a Virgin Media issue . I had the same thing happen to a different email contact a couple of weeks ago.

Does this mean that I cannot email these two email adresses anymore. I can't think of any reason why this blacklist reason has come up. I do not particularly want to change my ntlworld.com email address but perhaps this is a subtle way of suggesting I should.

Can anyone give me a bit of advise and help please - Roger

**Stuart** · 10-08-2011, 17:03

It is a virgin media issue. One of their mail servers is blacklisted. You can try reporting it as a fault, but I am not sure if faults or customer services can do much.

spiderwebb46 · 11-08-2011, 08:20

Does anybody have an email address of a Virgin person who can deal with this issue. I can't believe that they just take a "tough luck" attitude to it - do they ?

Hom3r · 11-08-2011, 12:02

The IP may have been black listed by a previous owner, who may have forced his modem to get another IP, which then has unfortunately been given to you. (IPs are moved from customer to customer)

Somebody here will be able to tell you how to get another IP.

APS · 11-08-2011, 12:38

Changing your own IP address will not fix this as the IP blocked is a VM mail server.

Try filling in the form on the delist site to request an unblocking.

Although the spam blocking site may have some evidence SPAM came from via that mail server this is not strictly a VM fault. However, if they have enough complaints they may contact the spam blocking service to convince them there is not a SPAM problem with the mail server.

As the recipient either directly or indirectly employees the spam blockng service you could ask them to complain from their end, or if they have a lot of control get you put in a whitelist.

spiderwebb46 · 11-08-2011, 13:32

The message I received referred to an IP address that was not even mine. The Message is :-

This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:

Each of the following recipients was rejected by a remote mail server.
The reasons given by the server are included to help you determine why each recipient was rejected.

Recipient: <********@******.UK>
Reason: 5.7.1 Your IP 81.103.221.48 is blacklisted. Click delist.emailfiltering.com to delist

Please reply to <Postmaster@ispmail.ntl.com> if you feel this message to be in error.[/I][/B]

I have written to the "Postmaster" and still got no reply and I have gone down the delist route as well only to be advised that the IP address is already delisted..!!
Surely this is a VM issue with one of their servers and I am not sure how I get them to do anything about it

APS · 11-08-2011, 14:48

The blacklisting is done by the remote server which is receiving the email not the one sending it. If the VM server has been delisted by emailfiltering.com, it seems that the receiving server is using an old blacklist. You need to get the recipient of your email to harrass their email provider to update the blacklists in their email servers more regularly. Email the postmaster of the server that rejected the message (if you can get the email accepted).

Virgin are not responsible, as this is equivalent to complaining to Royal Mail that a letter was returned to you which you sent to an address in America (say) where someone has nailed up the letter box.

**Stuart** · 11-08-2011, 18:10

It's not a VM issue, but as it's one of their mail servers, it's in their interest to ensure it's sorted as many of their customers could be affected.

APS · 11-08-2011, 19:40

It sounds like someone has already dealt with the black listing by emailfiltering.com I don't think we can really expect VM to chase down every email server that uses that list to tell them their blacklist is out of date. They would not know who they are for a start.

spiderwebb46 · 12-08-2011, 08:18

Thanks for the replies guys.
Well, in all of my 25+ years of sending and receiving emails I have never experienced one of my emails being rejected by the person I am sending to on the grounds that the server that provides them with my email communication doesn't like it as the server from my provider is on a blacklist. This is ludicrous and I am powereless to be able to resolve it. The two instances I have had are profesional business contacts and there is no possibility of me asking them to get their ISP's to sort this out. This must be happening to other's also and it must be in Virgin's interest to resolve it on behalf of their customer. The Postmaster address after all is "ispmail@ntl.com" which I assume is something to do with Virgin and not the email recipients provider as it's the same Postmaster for both events.
The situation seems to have passed for the time being now as subsequent emails to both contacts have gone through succesfully and responses received, I can therefore only conclude that my earlier attempts went through a "rogue" VM server in which case the issue should be resolveable by VM. They have a duty after all to ensure that their systems are kept "clean" and bug free.

APS · 12-08-2011, 11:57

FYI the normal reason an email server gets on a blacklist is because one of the users who is using it has sent a load of SPAM, either intentionally or unintentionally (their computer has an infection). By either automatic means (using "honeypot" email accounts) or just by receiving customer reports the person/company running the blacklist can add any IP to their list without reference or informing the owner of the email server.

This is one of the problems with using a shared email service. However even if you run your own email server you can still get on a blacklist either because some blacklisting companies will tar a whole bank of IPs from same supplier as a problem if they detect spam coming from one or more in that bank or just by an error in their system (some do not vet the customer complaints too closely).

Companies that provide paid for mail filtering (in and out) tend to be more proactive in getting themselves off blacklists, but they also are more stringent in controlling who sends email through them and how it is sent.

Since switching out company to Postini for mail filtering we have never had a problem with blacklisting, whilst we did have problems before when using general ISP mail severs. Ironically Postini, now part of Google, is used by Virginmedia for SPAM filtering, but I guess as you are not paying extra for a premium version of that service they do not monitor outgoing emails to closely to detect blacklist bounces.

The email address your saw in the bounce must have been in an email generated by VM outgoing server, which was reported the other end had rejected the email. Somewhere in that message or the headers you should have been able to see email server it was going to, or if you wanted to complain again you could try emailing postmaster@ the domain of the person you are trying to send the email to.

methyl · 29-08-2011, 20:58

Please check whether your ntlworld.com or blueyonder.co.uk is now working and report either way. This problem has gone on long enough. If you still get bounces from emailfiltering.com, please report detail against this thread or my main thread at Virgin Media:

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/.../617437/page/6

Ps. I don't work for Virgin Media. Just a customer technical support person acting for multiple NTL customers.