Your IP address is your personal identification tag online. Every device is connected to the internet in some or the other way and it is assigned a unique IP address. The IP address is your unique identification code and it is utilized as a medium of facilitating the transfer of data. An IP address is also used for tracing your physical location and as a way to block access to some websites and networks.
Irrespective of whether you are a small business or a large organization, being able to communicate to your customers through email is important. However, this facility can be compromised at times because of many reasons like the actions of malicious hackers. Usually the IP addresses are blacklisted for preventing the malicious actions, let’s understand this further…
What Does Getting Blacklisted Mean?
IP blacklisting is a technique that is implemented by the email hosting companies for filtering out the invalid and malicious emails. This is done through the process of blocking the communications from the IP addresses that are suspected for malicious activities. The ‘blacklist’ is a list that comprises of many ranges of IP addresses that are blocked.
The aim behind blacklisting an IP address is guarding the web and the other internet servers from any possible attack. This is done by setting rules within the hosts’ server software or hardware routers that determine what is treated as an attack and then restricting the computers from connecting to that traffic source again.
This is not just about emails being redirected to the spam folder of the inbox, when any IP address gets blacklisted all the sent emails are bounced back until the IP address is removed from the blacklist.
When Does IP Blacklisting Happen?
IP blacklisting is caused due to various reasons. For instance, if some spam traps are hit or if some suspected email spam is received through a particular email or IP address within a time frame, an email provider like Google will know that it came from a particular IP address. The action taken in response to this is that the IP address is blacklisted and in case any email is sent from that specific IP address, it will bounce back.
As the spammer shares the web host, the IP address is also shared. This IP address belongs to many people and innocent users and these people will also be included in the blacklist and they will not be allowed to send emails and all this because of no fault of their own. This is why the host would either provide a dedicated IP or in such cases the host should provide a quick solution for the blacklisted IP.
Related : Dedicated IP Address Vs. Shared IP Address : Clearing Up The Myths
How Does IP Blacklisting Affect You?
In case your host’s IP address is blacklisted, any email sent by you or your company will bounce back from the recipients email provider in case they are a part of the same blacklist.
This can be highly intimidating for an individual user and even for a company that relies on email marketing to reach out to a huge number of customers, this can be very disappointing. If your IP address is blacklisted, this will have a bad impact on your overall marketing campaign.
To prevent any issues because of IP blacklisting, it is important to get a dedicated IP so that nothing can affect your online activities.
Who Is Responsible For IP Blacklisting?
Unwitting Marketers
When a genuine email marketer gets wrongly judged as a spammer, the IP used gets blacklisted. In this case a large number of marketing emails are flagged as spam as the senders do not follow the so-called ‘best practices’. The examples of best practices include having ‘unsubscribe’ link option on emails or ensuring that all the recipients have signed up through a confirmed opt-in procedure.
Professional Spammers
The main reason why any IP gets blacklisted is because of spammers! The spammers and malicious parties sign up for web hosting services with the only intention of using this platform for spamming. Their motive is to send emails that look like they are from genuine sources in order to get to the personal data or for infecting other networks with malware or viruses.
In case many other users are operating from the same server that is used by a professional spammer, they unfortunately have to suffer the consequences when the IP address that they share is blacklisted. For this, MilesWeb follows strict guidelines and doesn’t allow spammers to get any web hosting services. We are constantly in lookout for spamming activities and strict actions are taken against spammers and malicious parties so that the other genuine accounts are not affected.
Some Very Common Reasons For IP Getting Blacklisted Include:
- Your device has been infected by a virus.
- You are engaging in illicit or illegitimate activities.
- You are running a certain type of program, web application or browser.
- You use a website that is deemed to be inappropriate.
Over To You…
An IP blacklisting is the most straightforward solution and effective for denying access in the world of computing. While in most of the situations, the blacklist is assigned for a valid reason, but there are various reasons when an IP ban is enforced without a cause. In any case, if you are not able to sent emails or if you emails are getting bounced back, it is important to get in touch with your web host right away so that the web host can take timely action to remove the IP from the blacklist. To avoid your IP getting blacklisted, you can consider using a dedicated IP or a VPN service.
