What does being blacklisted mean?

Being on a blacklist is a sign of trouble for your email deliverability.  Since companies screen out traffic from blacklisted IP addresses, your emails may be dumped into a spam folder or refused completely.  If your email server’s IP address is blacklisted, it could make doing business difficult.  It’s also a sign that your servers may have been used for spreading spam, viruses or malware.  This could indicate a security breach or an employee issue.

If your website IP address is blacklisted, then you have a bigger problem.  Typically, web servers do not send email.  Since the primary means of collecting bad actor IP addresses is via email, your web servers might be sending email without your knowledge.  This is definitely a sign of a malware or virus infection on those servers, or someone running email inappropriately from a web server.

Occasionally, small businesses will run email and web on the same servers.  If you do, you run the risk of a blacklist event taking out all your e-commerce channels because companies may deny access to your website and email activity based upon your blacklist status.

Domain blacklisting is a serious issue.  It means that someone is using your domain for malicious activity, either on a server hosting your website, or by breaking into your DNS.  If the activity is coming from a server in your datacenter, then you need to root out the virus or malware on your servers, patch your servers, and upgrade your security systems and firewalls.  If the activity is coming from a server outside your datacenter that is using your domain name or a subdomain, you have another big problem.  In this case, your DNS has been hacked and the attackers have added subdomains that use your brand.  The attackers can utilize the remote server to host malware and viruses all the while using your brand to make their attacks look legitimate.

Regardless of the type of blacklist, being blacklisted could be a serious issue. Team Discovery  uses a number of Monitoring services that help us monitor when a client website has been blacklisted, giving you notice before it becomes a serious business issue.  We will take prompt action to solve the issue and ensure your website is impacted for the minimum time.

Contact Team Discovery if you would like to know more about blacklist monitoring.