IP address on Naughty List

[Dogg Thang]

Hey there,
I'm sending out some mails and a few bounced back and it seems my IP address has a poor rating on some spam sites and is blocked by one. Now it's a dynamic IP that I think is assigned by my internet provider (I'm never 100% sure how this all works). There doesn't seem to be anything wrong on my end in terms of malware or anything and we're not sending spam so anyone know what one does when this happens? Do I contact my service provider or is there something else I should be doing?

[briareos_kerensky]

Are you using your own mail server or someone's else (like your provider's)? It might be that the range of IPs you're in has been blacklisted because spam originated from it (or your provider's mail server IP range). Anyway, try to contact your provider, but I fear that the real solution would be to contact the blacklist(s) bouncing you back to have your IP/IP range removed; expect some blacklists to be reeeeeeeally obnoxious and/or ask for money to be unlisted.

[Dogg Thang]

I guess my mails are sent through the servers of my web hosting company, which is an entirely different company. I have no idea how to check the IP address that they get sent through at all. Would that be the issue rather than my own IP address here? One mail specifically said my IP address was blocked and when checking my own home IP address here, sure enough it was blocked. But it's also possible there is a whole other mail IP address...?

[briareos_kerensky]

If you are sending mails through your hosting partner's mail server, then their IP (or IP range) has been listed by one or more blacklists, can happen, maybe there's one hosted website with some badly written form that can be abused to send spam; maybe the hosting partner already took care of the problem (as something like that will effectively hurt their business), but some blacklists might not be up-to-date...or even willing to unlist the IP range without some money.
Normally bounces contain the receiving server's IP, why it was bounced, and if it's a blacklist you normally also have the blacklist name; the mail headers usually contain more useful information to address this kind of problem.
The best thing would be to contact your hosting partner by explaining the problem and including some bounces.

[Dogg Thang]

Cool, thanks for the advice. Getting in touch with them now.

[Dogg Thang]

Well they didn't waste any time. Came back to me quick as a flash thanking me for letting them know and saying they have taken action against an account found to be sending mail from this server. You were right - seems they thought it could hurt their business. They reckon blacklist entries should be removed in 24-48 hours.