Email problems due to EE being blacklisted

[T20001]

Hi Bristolian, can you please advice me ? , I have email problems due to EE being blacklisted (uceprotectl3)

[bristolian]

Post moved to a new thread.

What is the email problem you have - can you explain in a bit more detail?

[XRaySpeX]

@T20001 : As EE provides no email services it can't have email addys blacklisted. So who is your email provider?

[T20001]

Hi,

i have a uceprotectl 3 issue with my IPS provider.

my business emails are going to spam.

[XRaySpeX]

Going to spam folder isn't blacklisting. Your email provider & client decides that!

So who?

[bobpullen · Accepted solution]

@T20001 - are you talking about emails you are sending via your EE connection, or emails you are receiving via your EE connection?

Which email provider are the sender and receiver both using?

uceprotect is an IP-based RBL service so looks at your IP address and matches it against a spam database. It should only cause problems if you are sending email directly from your broadband connection i.e. running your own mail server, which I’m assuming you’re not?

If your IP address is causing some sort of problem then you can probably get it to change by turning your router off for 30 mins or so, before powering it back up. You can see the IP address you are assigned at a given moment in time by browsing to a website like this one - https://ipinfo.io/what-is-my-ip

[T20001]

H Bristolian,

I have checked my Public IP Address, and it seems to be blacklisted by an external Email Security Server; that's why the emails I’m trying to send land in the Spam/Junk Folder, even though I’m using valid/proper Subject Lines and Contents.

How can I  fix the issue that caused the IP listing ?

“***.**.*.*/** is listed on the Policy Block List (PBL)

https://check.spamhaus.org/results?query=217.43.73.203

Outbound Email policy of EE for this IP range

It is the policy of BT Retail that unauthenticated email sent from this IP address should be sent out only via the designated outbound mail server allocated to BT Retail customers. Please consult BT's documentation for details on how to configure your email client appropriately.”

[Mod edit - IP removed, please don't share these details in public]

[Peter_W]

Thanks for sharing those details @T20001.

Like @bobpullen mentioned your IP on EE is dynamic, so this can change intermittently and won't remain fixed.

Have you tried the restart like he recommended? 

If these issues persist with a different IP, it's unlikely that this is going to be the cause and more likely linked to your email provider.

Peter

[bobpullen]

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@T20001 wrote:

How can I  fix the issue that caused the IP listing ?

“***.**.*.*/** is listed on the Policy Block List (PBL)

https://check.spamhaus.org/results?query=217.43.73.203

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You can't. BT/EE's IP addresses being on Spamhaus' PBL is completely intended. Even if you manage to cycle/change your dynamic IP address, then there's a majority chance your new IP will be exactly the same.

It is the policy of BT Retail that unauthenticated email sent from this IP address should be sent out only via the designated outbound mail server allocated to BT Retail customers. Please consult BT's documentation for details on how to configure your email client appropriately.”

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It's a bit ambiguous but what this is saying is that SMTP email should never be sent directly from IP's on this list. How are you sending email? I'm assuming you're using a Webmail service or a standalone email application configured with a mail provider's SMTP server details? If so, you are not sending email directly. You are sending via whatever SMTP server the Webmail/email application is configured to use.

At the receiving end, the only IP address any spam detection should really care about is the one that belongs to the previous hop in the chain. In the case above, this is the IP address of the mail provider's SMTP server and not the IP address assigned to your EE broadband connection.

In other words: you're mistaking the presence of your broadband IP on the PBL list as being the cause of your emails being marked as spam. It almost certainly isn't. And if it is, it's probably because the email recipient is doing something silly/overly aggressive with their spam filtering.