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What is an IP blocklist, and what does it mean for your business?

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Email is the lifeline for a company and a means to communicate with your clients and promote your offerings directly into their inboxes.

What happens if your IP address has been temporarily blocked?

This is known as IP blocklisting (formerly also known as IP blacklisting). It’s a technique used by network operators to stop IP addresses that they believe are malicious or are sending spam.

According to Statista about five percent of emails is being categorized as spam, which has led to less trust from the public for the email industry itself.

It’s costly for companies as well. Research shows that spam costs businesses more than $20 billion a year and can reduce productivity.

In all of these instances it is imperative to stay clear of the IP blocklist is at the highest priority on your list.

Not only does avoiding blocking lists improves your ability to send emails however, it also helps increase the efficiency of your team and help your business save money.

This article will be covering:

What exactly is an IP blocklist? What is it to your company?
Signs of warning that you’ve been blocked.
How do you determine whether your IP address, or domain has been blocked
How can you avoid having the possibility of your domain or IP address from being blocked
How do you get rid of your IP address or domain from the blocklist

What exactly is an IP blocklist and what is it to your company?

A IP blocklist is a place where a network prevents the IP account or domain’s name from sending email to them due to suspicion of sending malicious or spam-like content.

Being placed onto an IP blocklist isn’t a random event. There are many ways you could end up being listed on the IP blocklist. These include:

An enormous increase in size of the list: Like any other organic process the quality of your email list will expand in time, not just overnight. In the event that your mailing list expands by 100,000 subscribers in a matter of hours it could set off alarms for your email provider and internet service providers. This could lead users to believe that instead of getting subscribers on your own, you’ve bought a list of email addresses, which could lead to a blocked list. Utilizing confirmed opt-ins is an excellent way to prove that your customers are genuine and not spammers, and using other anti-bot strategies such as reCAPTCHA on the sign-up form will show that your organic growth is genuine.

Spam complaints If you send unprofessional emails or overflow the inbox of your customers 50 emails every day, they might become frustrated and label you spam. If they start to mark their emails as spam on a regular basis this could result in the internet provider being skeptical of your email content , or its quality. list of emails. More complaints that your Internet service provider receives from your subscribers, the more likely you’ll get blocked. By adding confirmed opt-ins to your mailing list could aid in preventing complaints about spam.

Incorrect email addresses or lists If your email addresses aren’t properly maintained and you have spam addresses or send emails to them will be bounced. If your Internet service provider discovers that a lot of the emails you send are not working or going to a person who hasn’t signed up to receive your emails is an indication that you have an unprofessional addresses list for email. This could lead to your IP address being blocked.

Computers infected or compromised websites If you run your mail server located on the same IP as the traffic from your internal computers as well as websites and one of your PCs gets infected, or a website becomes compromised, they could be used to distribute large amounts of spam. This can result in blocking the IP address. It’s essential that the IP addresses for email are devoted to the use of only.

The above reasons might not be the first thing that comes to the forefront when thinking about spam email. When you take into consideration that the idea behind blocking lists is to prevent suspicious spam and other malicious activities that could include sending messages without permission from the receiver The reasons for being added to a blocklist begin to seem more rational.

In any event, being placed on an IP blocklist is never without proof.

Alert signs that your IP has been blocked

If your emails are not being sent to the recipient’s “Spam” folder, or if they bounce back, you receive a message that says it could not be delivered. In certain situations it may state outright that you’ve been blocked and offer a clickable hyperlink to learn more about the situation.

They could be a sign of warning that you’ve been blocked and you should verify and confirm the blocklist.
What can you do to determine if have been blocked

It’s simple and there are numerous websites that will examine your IP address and domain against many different whitelists and blocklists like DNSWL.

There are a variety of open websites (for no cost) to find out whether your IP address has been blocked. Tools such as MXToolbox and multirbl.valli.org examine your IP address or domain’s name against known blocklists to determine whether your website has been added to one of them.

How can you remove your IP address the blocklist

If your IP address is blocked, getting it removed can be a long and difficult process, but it doesn’t need to be.

Many blocklists let you make a request to be removed any address that is listed in the event that you’ve rectified the problem that put you on the list in the initial in the first.

How can you avoid having your IP address from being blocked

Each blocklist comes with its own set of criteria an IP address has to satisfy before it can be added to it.

While some of the reasons are grounded in evidence or on behavior other reasons are focused on technical issues like inaccurate or insufficient DNS records.

However, the most frequent methods to cause your IP to be listed in a blocklist are due to servers or accounts that have been compromised and bad email practices. If you have evidence that suggests your accounts or servers were compromised, or if you don’t have effective email collection practices in place There’s a good chance your address will get blocked.

Technical blocklists usually relate to problems with the configuration of your mail server or DNS configuration. They are difficult to identify for those who do not have a technical eye.

The positive side is the fact that you can find best practices to follow to stop IP blocklists from occurring. Be sure to:

Make sure that your software for your website is up-to-date: WordPress is one of the most widely used and thus most frequently targeted softwares, so you need to make sure that it’s kept up-to-date, particularly all plug-ins you are using.
Make use of a password manager as well as distinct passwords for each website This will prevent your credentials from being used when the website you’ve an account with is compromised.
Make sure you protect any forms that are used to sign-up for emails or newsletters by using anti-bots such as ReCAPTCHA. This will ensure that the automation won’t contaminate your forms and consequent information.
Confirm all email addresses using activation or opt-in links: Send an activation email with a verification link that has to be clicked in order to activate. This stops any automated system that gets through any anti-bot mechanism from signing up with third-party email addresses.