SUPPORT CONTACTS
Telephone: 0845 467 0006
helpdesk@bta.com
RUN YOUR BUSINESS,
NOT YOUR IT
EMAIL BLACKLIST POLICY
"host smtp.bta.com [80.84.160.10] said: 591 The server you are SENDING VIA ([ip address of server]) is blacklisted by a public blacklist (name of blacklist) - see http://www.bta.com/blacklisted for background information..."
IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ THIS FIRST!
If you are a BTA client and have been directed here due to someone not being able to send you mail, please refer the sender to this page. Thank you.
If you are not a BTA client and have been directed to this page as the result of a blacklisted email message or bounce from one of our email servers we strongly recommend that you (or your IT Administrator or your ISP) read this entire page and take action. In a nutshell, under most circumstances (or if you are unsure how to proceed) you should just refer your IT Administrator or Internet Service Provider (ISP) to this page—i.e. whoever administers and is responsible for your email system or server.
We also thank you for taking the time to visit.
CURRENT BLACKLIST PROVIDERS (1 MAY 2008)
We are currently utilising the following public third-party blacklist services:
Please note that we purely subscribe to the above services as an end-user. We are not responsible for these lists and/or how IP addresses get listed therein. We are unable to have IP addresses for servers which we do not manage removed from any third-party list. Please do not contact us about removal from any of these lists—please contact the list concerned directly.
In addition, due to direct spam and other network attacks, we are currently also directly blocking mail and/or all access from a number of IP address blocks originating in the Far East (notably in China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan), South America, and known junk mailers in the USA. Direct blocks are easily identifiable as they will not list a blacklist name in the bounce error message. In this instance only, you may contact us regarding removal.
BACKGROUND
BTA does not condone the use of bulk unsolicited commercial email, aka 'junk mail', aka 'spam'. Whilst we can relatively easily control mail being sent out to the Internet from our network, it is not so easy to stop unwanted mail coming into our network from elsewhere and cluttering up our—and more importantly our clients'—email boxes.
The BTA mail servers, which collect and store mail for BTA Internet subscribers, subscribe to several third-party 'blacklist' services which are available publically on the Internet. At any one time, we may be using multiple blacklists from different, separate providers. Many ISP's, companies and other groups around the world subscribe to the various blacklist services.
These services helps us reduce—although unfortunately not eliminate—unwanted commercial email (aka UCE, aka 'junk mail', aka 'spam') entering our network by 'blacklisting' all messages coming from mail servers which are known to the blacklist service to have at some time previously sent or relayed junk mail. Such junk mail often is received from servers which have been badly configured (and are, unknowing to their owners, being used as 'open relays') or from companies or ISP's who condone bulk junk mail sending.
We feel that, generally speaking, anyone who has a mail account on or via such a server (or with such an ISP) should arguably be concerned about their position and the policies of their ISP.
IN MORE DETAIL
A Blacklist service normally keeps a database listing the IP addresses of internet mail servers known to have originated or 'open relayed' junk mail. The information on these lists is collated from junk mail/spam reports sent to the list maintainers from users all over the world.
When one of our mail servers receives an incoming email message from the Internet, it queries the IP address of the server sending the message to see if that server appears on any of the lists to which we currently subscribe. If it does, the message is immediately rejected back to the sender with a 'blacklist' error message. The blacklist message will indicate which list the server was found on. Effectively speaking, we're saying to that server "you're known to have sent or relayed junk mail, so we don't want to talk to you until you take measures to stop doing that".
It is important to note the following:
- It is the mail server (or the mail relay, or the ISP mail relay) of the sender which has been blacklisted.
- They are blacklisted by measure of being listed on a third-party blacklist service. Therefore, we're not the only people blacklisting them, as any site or ISP subscribing to the same blacklist service will also be blacklisting them.
- The creation of the blacklist entry for your mail server would almost certainly not have been at the behest of BTA. However, we have directly ourselves selectively blacklisted a very small number of known servers and netblocks (mostly outside Europe and the US) who have directly spammed BTA in the past (in which case, the reject message from our server will not show a blacklist name).
- It may well be that your mail server is no longer susceptible to junk mail or being an open relay - which is great - but your system administrator has not yet taken steps to inform the relevant blacklist administrator of this fact (they should do so immediately!).
If you suspect your (or your ISP's) mail server of being on a blacklist somewhere, you can check this out at DNSstuff.com (amongst other places). Enter the IP address (not the name) of the server concerned below and click Check.
Lookup mail server IP on blacklists:
If you received a blacklist error (bounce) message, the error text should include the IP address of the server concerned and, if blocked by a public list, the name of the list involved.
Microsoft Exchange/Outlook users: Microsoft Exchange may only return generic error messages to local users, and not the actual text of any SMTP error returned by a remote server. If you are not receiving a full error message, please consult your system administrator.
RESOLUTION
If your email server (or your ISP's email server) is on a public blacklist, then the server's owner/administrator—typically your company IT manager or your ISP support desk—needs to visit the web site for the blacklist concerned (as given in the reject message—also noted at the top of this page) and submit a 'remove' request to the list owner in order to be removed from the list. Most list owners are very responsive about handling remove requests for servers, assuming the server is now 'secured'. Please note that BTA does not have the ability to remove third-party servers from any third-party blacklist—the server owner/administrator must do that.
- If a server is on a list because it is an 'open relay' (i.e. it has or will pass third-party-to-third-party junk mail) then please note that the list maintainer generally will not remove that server from the list until the relay has been 'closed'. If the client cannot or will not close the relay, they will not be removed from the list (and will continue to be blacklisted by every list subscriber, not just BTA).
- Servers often end up on one of the lists unknowingly because they have been accidently misconfigured and will act as an 'open relay', which junk mailers will use to 'bounce' their mail off to help hide their tracks. Fixing the problem and submitting a remove request to the list provider will get such servers off the list, normally quite rapidly. Mail server administrators should be strongly concerned if their servers are unknowingly being used as relays by other parties.
If you happen to have hit one of our own internal direct IP address/netblock blacklist entries (VERY rare, but possible), please email us as noted below. Such blocks are easily identified as they will NOT include the name of a third-party list (as noted at the top of this page) in the SMTP error response.
ADDITIONAL
If you are reading this page as a result of being unable to send email to a BTA Internet service subscriber, hopefully this document has helped clarify things and helped you towards a resolution.
If you do not understand this document or are otherwise unclear of how to proceed, then please refer your ISP and/or company IT administrator to this page instead and have them take the relevant action or have them contact us.
If, after doing that, you still don't have a suitable resolution, then and only then please contact blacklist-admin@smtp.bta.com. Please include a full copy of your rejected message including all message headers (important: we cannot help without those details). Note that you may need to use another email account to avoid getting your message blocked (see 'WORKAROUNDS' below).
We are very willing to discuss our policy and assist you (or your ISP) in resolving issues of blacklisting where at all possible.
WORKAROUNDS
As an interrim measure—or if your IT administrator or ISP cannot or will not remove their server's IP address from the relevant blacklist—then in order to reach people whose email is hosted by BTA (or are hosted via other ISP's and providers using the same blacklist service) we would suggest the use of a (hopefully temporary!) free web mail account with a provider such Yahoo!, Hotmail or GoogleMail and use that so as to avoid having your messages routing through the blacklisted server.
BTA's own hosted email (SMTP/POP/IMAP) service also provides a free 'webmail' interface to allow the reading and sending of email from a web browser anywhere on the Internet.
