This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Making Money Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I have spent more than 100 hours going back and forth with some of my hosting customers on some of my servers, ThePlanet, spamlist databases, et cetera.
The basic problem is that all email on certain blocks of IPs assigned to some of my servers have been going straight to spam. They are listed in spam databases and no matter how much effort I expended to get them removed, nothing was helping.
This issue has been going on since January of this year, 2008. ThePlanet’s support constantly shrugged off my complaints and tickets by saying it wasn’t their problem that I was listed in spam databases –regardless of the fact that I have NEVER spammed.
Ok, I could buy that. I talked to the spam databases, spent $600 to a dedicated email service provider, spent more than 100 hours building in safeguards, SPF records, and the list goes on and on. In the end, I still saw that 10%-15% of my (and my affected customers) email was still going to spam.
Today, however, I have discovered WHY. And, what do you know? It IS ThePlanet’s problem and fault after all!
Here’s what happened:
I was assigned a couple of new blocks of IPs late last year when I upgraded three(3) of my servers to faster, more powerful servers. What I *assumed* was that I was being assigned a clean block of IPs. I believe that ThePlanet has a policy to request removal of IPs from spam databases (also known as RBLs) before re-assigning (because none were listed when I first got them), but they do not remove the reverse DNS entries that got them listed in the first place!
And that, folks, is the kicker.
Even though none of my customers were sending spam, those who were on the IPs with reverse DNS of known spam domains were still getting tagged as spam –as if they were still the old domain. That was killing my reputation -as you can imagine. I lost hosting customers over this -as they could not afford the reputation or lost credibility of being labeled a spammer -which I completely understand.
Now that I know the heart of the issue, I have had the reverse DNS removed and the spamlists I’ve been in contact with assure me that this is the remaining factor in getting my IP block off their block lists.
I have demanded that ThePlanet puts in place a “Reverse DNS Cleaning” procedure before assigning us any new IP blocks, and I have demanded a refund for my wasted time, lost income, and additional expenses in this matter.
I hope they will improve on this point in the very near future.
In short, if you have your own dedicated servers and have trouble with your emails going to spam folders, be sure that you do not have lingering reverse DNS entries for domains you do not host.
Orphaned reverse DNS entries could be making all the difference!
p.s. Please note, however, that accurate reverse DNS entries can HELP your spam score. So, please take the time to set them up whenever possible. 
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March 28th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
[...] This is work-related so I will post the details on my work-related blog (visit SE Conspiracy - Warning: Reverse DNS Can KILL Your Business!). [...]
March 28th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Another thing you might want to warn about is that if you run your own DNS servers then don’t register them through Enom. I’ve actually found several ISPs around the world consistently have issues with them, I had to register a domain through opensrs so I could register more reliable NS servers to use with the domains I bought through an Enom reseller
March 28th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Hmm… I will keep that in mind. I use eNom and haven’t had any issues but you never know. I know that using their redirect services back in the day used to be a bit of a mess.
Thanks for the note and taking the time…
Cheers,
Brandon