Do you have a website? Whether it is a blog, forum, or e-store, anti-spam protection is a must. Spamming is more than a nuisance — it undermines Google rankings and puts your reputation at stake. Bots are used for unethical SEO and phishing, as they harvest data. Sending messages to fake addresses may cause your own IP to land on a blacklist! Fortunately, a simple solution will keep your contact lists clean.
IPS, emails, and domains of violators are added to special databases. They are growing all the time based on automatic detection and user reports. Reporting a spam IP address on https://cleantalk.org/blacklists takes seconds, and you can check your mailing lists just as easily. Here is how these systems work.
What Spammers Want
We all get messages from spammers sometimes. Internet Service Providers are updating their defenses all the time, but spammers are ingenious. They exploit legit sites to harvest email addresses, which are then used for different nefarious purposes, from identity theft to black hat SEO.
For website owners, the consequences of defenselessness are drastic. Spambots can fill out every submission form and leave hundreds of comments with malicious links. When users click on them out of curiosity, their personal data is compromised. Meanwhile, the website slows down due to the overflow of information. Google rankings drop, and telling genuine traffic from fakes becomes insurmountable.
How Blacklists Are Formed
Mail Abuse Prevention systems monitor mass mailing campaigns to weed out senders with unethical practices. If your mailing lists include suspicious addresses, the IP may appear on a blacklist. Some fake or inactive emails are turned into spam traps. As you can see, getting blacklisted is highly likely if you do not verify your lists.
Sometimes, spammers leave addresses of real users. When they get your emails, they may report them as spam. Complaints may be submitted due to a range of other reasons, too. For example:
- users who signed up for the newsletter may forget to do so;
- they may not like the content of your messages;
- the unsubscribe link may not be prominent enough;
- their inbox may be flooded.
Check and Prevent
As you can see, your own IP, domain, or email may be added to these databases for objective and subjective reasons. Fortunately, one user complaint does not suffice, but once the feedback passes the 0.01% threshold, blacklisting will happen.
For website owners, there are two major implications. First, it is crucial to check the validity of every email on the contact lists. Ideally, you should install an anti-spam plugin to detect spammers in real-time. Finally, checking your own IP regularly is a must.
What to Do
Go to an online database and enter the IP you want to verify or report. The system allows bulk checking, so you do not have to enter every item manually. You may also download an offline database for convenience and choose from a range of modules and plugins for automatic detection.
