IP address has been blacklisted as spam
FrodoLives1
Newbie

Verizon FiOS is my Internet service.  I have two e-mail addresses that I regularly use: an aol one and a gmail one.

This week I sent an e-mail from my aol account to a family member (who has a verizon.net e-mail address.)  It was returned with a message indicating that my IP address was blocked as spam.  Oddly, when I resent the message, it went through.

Yesterday, I sent an e-mail from my gmail account, using a different computer, to a hotmail account user.  That also got returned with a message saying the "mailbox was unavailable."  Researching this phrase turned up a site that explained that hotmail uses that term when an IP sender's address has been rejected as spam.

Researching this issue, I uncovered that my IP address has been blacklisted by both Spamhaus and SORBZ, two companies who apparently specialize in spam control.  According to Spamhaus, it is Verizon itself which has requested the block on my IP address (it falls within a range that has been blocked), and only Verizon is allowed to request its removal. It is on their "Policy Block List."

Verizon is the one who assigned me this IP address, and now Verizon is blocking it?

Since this problem has occured while using different computers, I don't think it is a virus issue.  Just to be sure, I ran a virus scan anyway and it came up clean.

Please help.

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Re: IP address has been blacklisted as spam
Hubrisnxs
Legend

@FrodoLives wrote:

Verizon FiOS is my Internet service.  I have two e-mail addresses that I regularly use: an aol one and a gmail one.

This week I sent an e-mail from my aol account to a family member (who has a verizon.net e-mail address.)  It was returned with a message indicating that my IP address was blocked as spam.  Oddly, when I resent the message, it went through.

Yesterday, I sent an e-mail from my gmail account, using a different computer, to a hotmail account user.  That also got returned with a message saying the "mailbox was unavailable."  Researching this phrase turned up a site that explained that hotmail uses that term when an IP sender's address has been rejected as spam.

Researching this issue, I uncovered that my IP address has been blacklisted by both Spamhaus and SORBZ, two companies who apparently specialize in spam control.  According to Spamhaus, it is Verizon itself which has requested the block on my IP address (it falls within a range that has been blocked), and only Verizon is allowed to request its removal. It is on their "Policy Block List."

Verizon is the one who assigned me this IP address, and now Verizon is blocking it?

Since this problem has occured while using different computers, I don't think it is a virus issue.  Just to be sure, I ran a virus scan anyway and it came up clean.

Please help.


All Dynamic IP addresses show up on the Email Blacklists. 

That is only important if you are acting as an email server, meaning you're in fact running your own email server on your FiOS.

If you're a regular user, using pop.verizon.net and smtp.verizon.net, then those are the IP's that are sending and receiving your mail.  So you don't have to worry about those spamhaus blacklists.

This is the explanation from Sorbs


The SORBS listing criteria is not easily defined due to the large amount of zones that SORBS maintains. There are some zones that everyone will find themselves listed on, such as the Dynamic IP zone. This is a zone that contains large network blocks of IP addresses that are known to be allocated to dynamic IP address space. Because it is generally against the terms of service with an end users ISP to host an SMTP server on their residential line, it is safe to list those large ranges. Other SORBS blacklists are similar to the majority of DNSBL providers offering similar services.


You aren't hosting one, so you should be golden. 

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Re: IP address has been blacklisted as spam
FrodoLives1
Newbie

That sounds encouraging, but why am I having this problem at all then?  I'd like to be sure that my e-mails are being received.  The first e-mail went through on the resend, but for the second one, it got sent back to me twice with the same message.  My e-mail always used to be reliable (we've lived here 2 years, always with Verizon FiOS) and have never had this problem until now.

Something is buggy or I wouldn't be having this issue.

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Re: IP address has been blacklisted as spam
Hubrisnxs
Legend

Well that kind of a problem should never really happen if you use Verizon Webmail.  http://webmail.verizon.com

If you are using an email client, then they can sometimes send false negatives to a spam server and then it thinks you're a spammer when you're really not

you can test what red flags your email program might be sending.  Sometimes it's something as simple as a new email background on your outgoing messages and it could be a signature, or a url link or a business name etc...

http://www.isnotspam.com/    try that website and see if it reports back that your email is being sent and looks spammy or not.

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Re: IP address has been blacklisted as spam
FrodoLives1
Newbie

Thanks for the help.  I checked my two e-mail addresses against the spam site you listed and nothing unsual popped up.  A few elements were listed as "neutral," but that's it.

I haven't had any other e-mails rejected yet, so this problem appears to be sporadic.  Is it possible that somewhere along the pipeline my e-mails are getting routed through a bad source and that is why they sometimes trigger Verizon's spam block and other times do not?

I've been thinking about this and I have a wrinkle to add. I realized that the first e-mail that got rejected, the one sent from my aol address, was not even sent from my home at all.  I was at work.  Different computer, different town, different IP altogether!  When the second e-mail got rejected (gmail account, sent from my home this time), and the research suggested that it too was an IP block, I thought they had to be related.  Could the two incidents have somehow been coincidental?

I checked the IP address at work today for blacklists and found none, even though the automated rejection message Verizon sent me specifically said that it had been rejected for an IP block.  I just re-looked at the e-mail message again, and the IP it shows as being blocked does not even match the IP that my work has.  I've reached the end of my technical know-how and don't understand this at all.

I may try resetting my router at home in order to force a new IP to get assigned to me and see if that helps.  I'm glad the problem hasn't happened again yet, but I am uneasy not being sure if all my e-mails are making it through.

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Re: IP address has been blacklisted as spam
revans4352
Newbie

I am having the same problem with receivers having my emails go into their spam folders. To be clear, Verizon has in fact listed it's dynamic IP address in the Spamhaus database. That in and of itself will not cause the problem, the problem occurs when the receiving party's email service subscribes to  that list/service from Spamhous (or other similar list) when that happens the emails are then routed to the trash.

After spending an hour and a half this morning on the phone with Verizon they basically told me that I needed to get a business account so I could get a static IP address which would cause me to have to cancel my two year contract etc. etc. - ridiclulous. 

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Re: IP address has been blacklisted as spam
techtank
Newbie

I know this is an old question, but it's missing a good bit of information for anyone who happens to stumble in here from google looking for answers.

Basically 3 major DNS blacklists, Barracuda, SORBS, and SPAMHAUS have listings for many of Verizon's dynamic IP ranges. This creates a very large problem that was glazed over in this topic. 

If you are using your Verizon Data Services to send email from a mail client and not from the email providers Webmail, then your IP address will be listed in the header of the message sent. Any business or email system that uses spam protection provided by any of the above blacklists will reject your message as spam.

Chances of your email being rejected with a failure notice or just discarded (which means you will never know it didn't arrive) is astouningly high and I cannot fathom why Verizon doesn't work with these blacklists to keep their IPs clean. unless of course they want to force people into purchasing static IP addresses for around $500 per account level. Which does nothing to help the residential user who keeps having his emails rejected trying to email his electric company while out of town.

Do you see what I'm saying?

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Re: IP address has been blacklisted as spam
LawrenceC
Moderator Emeritus

As this thread is now over two years old, it will be locked in order to keep discussions current. If you have the same or a similar question/issue we invite you to start a new thread on the topic.

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