Spam: Blacklists & Whitelists
The second method to determine if you are on a Blacklist is to contact the people running the Blacklists and find out. If your IP is listed they will tell you. This is simple enough to do in theory but contacting all of these Blacklists can be time consuming. Fortunately, there is a faster method. There is a web site, a very useful one at that, which allows you to enter in an IP address and search the current Blacklists for that IP address. If the IP is listed on a Blacklist it will tell you. Now if you don't know your IP this site can still search because this site will translate your domain name into an IP address and then search for it. This wonder site is www.dnsstuff.com. To search for Blacklists you simply go to www.dnsstuff.com and at the top of the page there is a box titled "Spam Database Lookup." Just enter you IP address or your domain name into the box and press "Lookup" and it will query the major Blacklists and provide you with the results. If your IP has sent spam you will be able to find out who is blacklisting you.

Now before you even press the button you should realize that on this list there are several obscene Blacklists here. There is a very good chance that your IP is listed with them. Let me give you a concrete example. The IP we have been using in this article, 64.5.52.211, is listed on one of these Blacklists. Even before it was used by www.xtremewebhosts.com it was listed on this Blacklists. In fact even before the IP was owned by the management of Xtreme Web Hosts it was listed. In fact, six months before it was owned by Xtreme Web Hosts it was blacklisted. What happened is that the person running the Blacklist determined that the IP, 64.5.52.211, was owned by someone who, in their mind, was soft on spammers. Therefore rather than taking the chance of receiving spam from this IP address they blacklisted the IP and keep it on the Blacklist. So even though the IP is no longer used by the person who was soft on spammers, and is now used by a completely different company they are still blacklisting the IP. Why? Because they run the Blacklist and can do anything they want with it. Now are e-mails being refused by the hundreds? By the thousands? No. In fact since taking ownership of this IP not a single e-mail has been refused. Why? Because very few, if very many at all, are using this obscene Blacklist. Realistically, why would you want to use a Blacklist which never removed IP addresses from the Blacklist even after they have new ownership? Why would you Blacklist an IP which never spammed? It is partly ridiculous to do so and most companies and individuals realize this. These are not the Blacklists you need to worry about. You need to worry about the most used ones: SpamCop, SpamHaus, etc. If you are listed on one of these chances are your e-mails will be coming back to you.

Now if you do find your IP address listed on one or several big Blacklists you need to do something about it now. You should contact your web host immediately or your server provider. If you do nothing chances are you will stay on some of these Blacklists. To get off a Blacklist you have do very specific things to satisfy the owners of the Blacklists. And if you have mail being refused on a daily basis you need to do something about it now rather than later.