I work for a company called ACT Conferences (we stage telecommunications industry conferences). I've been charges with looking into changing hosts for our website, and after some initial investigation I had questions for 2 companies - Pegasus (pwebtech.com) and Vortech.

2 weeks ago, I sent 2 separate emails to the sales address at Pegasus. After several days with no response, I looked up jayglate's email address on this forum, and sent a message directly to him. Still not getting a response, on Monday of this week, I registered on this board and sent a PM to jayglate, which still has not been read. OK, I thought, for some reason Pegasus does not want our business.

In the mean time, on Monday the 1rst, I sent an email message with similar questions to the sales address at vortechhosting.com. Since I had no reply by Wednesday, I sent a message (via the email function of this board) to the user Vortech asking for follow up. It's now Friday, and I still haven't been contacted by any Vortech company rep.

Now I'm worried that either somehow our company is on a "black list" and I'm being intentionally ignored, or that our service provider is blocking/losing certain email messages while letting others through. I guess it's possible that I just happened to pick 2 companies that don't respond to email, but I want to make sure that it's not some problem with me or our company.

If anyone knows of a reason why our company, ACT Conferences, or myself would be an undesirable client, or have our domain (actconferences.com) on a "black list" or mail filter - please let me know.

TIA,
Tony Miller
ACT Conferences

I never got any of your emails. And the PM feature here isn't all that noticable and to tell the truth yours is the first one I recieved. I will get to your PM shortly.


Sorry about that. :)

Hello
It is remarkably common for e-mail to go missing.
Our ISP's mail server was blacklisted with orbs and rbl so we couldn't communicate with some of our customers.
It took a few days to work out what was going on and put an alternative in place.

Don't worry about it - these things happen.

Gordon

No one should really be using an RBL, ORBS, or any other public system to block people. Notice I didn't say spammers? I've run into problems with the RBL where people were being put on the list for no reason. RBL also blocks out certain ISP's simply because they have a few users on the list. Why would you block thousands of users when only a few are causing problems?

What is RBL, ORBS?

Web addresses?


Thanks

Originally posted by vizi
Why would you block thousands of users when only a few are causing problems? That's exactly the point, though, and the goal of those systems: to force providers to take action against "spammers" by causing even legitimate clients of those providers to complain. "Innocent" users are inconvenienced in order to force them to pressure their provider to take action against the "guilty."

I'm not saying it's a good idea, and I wouldn't use such a system, but you ask why, and that is why.

Hello
How it works is that when you report someone for spamming, whoever owns their mailserver is reported to various bodies who keep blacklists.
Its a nightmare if you get on these lists.

We went through a period of spam going out with one of our IP's on it when it had not been through our mail server (according to the logs anyway)
Our Ip was listed in one of these blacklists which did not cause huge problems blacklisting wise but we then came under constant attack from spammers who thought we were an open relay.

One evening I logged nearly 100,000 relaying denied messages.........

Gordon

logan66
We never got a e-mail from. You if you think you are listed in some kind of list you may want to use a Hotmail or yahoo address to till you know what is going on. I did not even get your PM.

Please Resend your e-mail to info@vortechhosting.com if i get it will be happy to help you.

I've also heard of ORB being on the proactive side of blacklisting IP's. Searching/testing for open relay mail servers...and putting them on the deny list if they find a problem.

Originally posted by Matrix
What is RBL, ORBS?

Web addresses?


Thanks


ORBS is the Open Relay Behavior-modification System. It tests mail servers to see if it is an open relay. If it is, it blacklists that mail server. You can find more information on ORBS at http://www.orbs.org/.


RBL is a Realtime Blackhole List. They are really aggresive when it comes to blacklisting people and ISP's. You can find information on RBL at http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/.

Originally posted by GordonH
Our Ip was listed in one of these blacklists which did not cause huge problems blacklisting wise but we then came under constant attack from spammers who thought we were an open relay.

One evening I logged nearly 100,000 relaying denied messages.........



Very interesting. One of the downsides of a blacklist is that it gives spammers hosts to go and spam through. It does the work for them. Finds open relays and makes a list.