Video Transcript
No one ever thinks it will happen to them, until it does. You’re going about your day, emailing your clients, but no one seems to be getting back to you. Have you ever entered some strange alternate reality where you no longer exist.
You check in with your colleague, who acknowledges your existence. They also mention to you that one of the vendors received a bounce back when they tried to send an e-mail. What’s going on? Maybe your e-mail server has been blacklisted.
Hi there, I’m Wayne with Idealogical Systems. Today I’m with Alwyn to talk to you about e-mail blacklists. Now, an e-mail blacklist is a very serious thing. If you or your company happen to be on one, it can prevent you being able to send e-mails to clients, vendors, whomever is out there in the e-mail world. And the worst part about it is you won’t even be notified. Now because you’re not notified, it could be hours before you or anyone in your contacts list actually realizes that you’ve been blacklisted. Consider your e-mail being down like your phone system being down. It’s that serious.
A blacklist, like in the show, is a list of problem causers that need to be stopped. In the I.T. world, it’s a list of domains, I.P. addresses or senders that are suspected of sending spam. A blacklist created by an anti-spam organization will block your e-mail server’s I.P. address if your e-mails are deemed ‘undesirable’
It’s possible for someone to flag your e-mails as spam, and that could mark your server as a source of junk mail. Don’t hold it against them though, it was probably an accident. Probably.
Your company’s exchange server could get blacklisted if a user opens or forwards spam messages. A spam filter like Logical Vault will go a long way in preventing junk mail from reaching a user’s mailbox. Educating your employees on what to watch out for will ensure that they do not open or forward messages that may enter.
If you’re sending out a high volume of e-mails, like for marketing, using an e-mail service provider can protect your exchange server from being viewed as a source of unwanted e-mail.
So if users across your company are receiving bounce backs on their outgoing mail, or if recipients are not receiving your e-mails at all, what we would to is determine what caused the blacklist, address that particular issue, and then get you whitelisted as soon as possible so you can get communicating with your clients again.
If you have any questions about e-mail blacklists, please feel free to give us a call, we’d be happy to help.