When you spam an email, the originating location of the email is inspected and sent to an IP black list or clearinghouse run by a third-party company. These clearinghouses are supposed to gather IP addresses that are malicious so that everyone can know who they are. Your web host or internet service provider will then check each email that comes in against this black list to make sure that the sender isn’t a spammer.

This is a great idea, as long as the clearinghouses are ethical about only blacklisting genuine spammers. Unfortunately, Quoin has recently had a run-in with another kind of company.

One of our clients had their email rejected by the recipient’s web host. It was an important message to a supplier. This happened several times, so the supplier talked with their host. The host said our server had been blacklisted. I checked and found that it was on a single black list, UCEPROTECT. I emailed my web host, and they sent me this reply:

Hello,
While the server is listed at UCEPROTECT, there is very little we as a company can do.  They run their blacklists only as an effort to make money.  We’ve tried to work with them before and it all comes down to them wanting money to do something that is automated in the first place.  We have repeatedly asked them for logs/evidence/proof and they adamantly do not provide any.  Unfortunately, even paying them to remove the listing gives them no reason to not re-list the server at their whim, based on little or no evidence, based on past experiences where they have done just that. Armed with this information, upper management refuses to deal with such unscrupulous companies.

Essentially, this black list holds email hostage. We did some research on UCEPROTECT, and discovered that they want 50 Euros ($70) to de-list a single IP address.

What we couldn’t understand is why reputable web hosts would be working with a black list like this. We’re very glad ours doesn’t! Web host administrators have the option to exclude lists such as UCEPROTECT but sometimes don’t take the steps necessary to exclude them.

We’ve posted this in an effort to increase the exposure of this practice. If it’s not illegal yet, why isn’t it?