Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blacklist

Answering Machine with white list to permit only certain callers

royalchinook — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:39:36 -0800

I would like to find a hardware answering machine that has some advanced controls to manage which incoming numbers can make the phone ring. I have an annoyances that I'd like to cut out - telemarketers calling (I went on Canada's DNC list but that made it worse because now all the spam calls are from the States); the solution I thought of would be to have all numbers that I haven't approved to go straight to voicemail without ringing the phone at all. Other callers in a "white list" would ring the phone like usual. My current answering machine does actually have a "black list" feature but the spam calls are always from a new number so it doesn't really make sense.

The other annoyance I had that I was able to solve is to have certain hours where no one can ring the phone. I solved this with the Night Mode feature on my Panasonic phone which is awesome.

Some restrictions I have is that I'd like this to be a hardware solution instead of software because I don't want my computer running all night just to be an answering machine, I'd also like to stay away from VoIP because I've tried that previously with Vonage and found the quality and reliability to be unacceptable.

Spam No More! How do I convince gmail of this?

darth_tedious — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:53:39 -0800

How Do I Get Hosts to Stop Labeling My Email As Spam? For the last five years or so, spammers have been systematically spoofing my domains, and sending out the usual Viagra and whatnot emails under my name. I finally asked my hosting service the right question, in the right way, and they finally uncovered the misconfiguration that apparently allowed this to happen. Since my domain name rep is now so shredded that even my actual emails to myself get automatically routed into my Spam Box, I'm curious: How do I go about reversing this, so that my actual emails get sent to my customers' inboxes, instead of their spam boxes?

Huh? What happened?

hungrysquirrels — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:58:14 -0800

Do airlines keep records of passengers who, for example, pass-out mid-flight? If so, does it affect future travel? So, the background story, sorry it got a little long...A month ago I took a domestic 5 1/2 hr flight.

Since I dislike flying and especially awareness of the sickness bag, I tend not to eat, take ginger gravol, get anti-anxiety meds (which shouldn't be combined with alcohol, it amplifies the effects), and limit myself to a (yes, alcohol) liquid diet for good measure. Rough on the system, but gets me through them. This was an overnight flight and part of a move, so combine the above with exhaustion.

I was fine in the terminal and gate. Plane was slightly delayed so I had a glass of wine at a past-security pub to help kill the time and keep my nerves under control.

Got to my seat in cattle class, middle seat, yay for cheap rates. Took off, drink cart came around, had another glass of wine. No problem. Dinner cart came around a bit later, I poured another glass of wine, but declined the 'meal' figuring to pick something up at the destination airport. 3 glasses of wine doesn't pose a problem for me.

Next thing I know, there's a vague memory of some commotion and someone saying they think there's doctors and/or paramedics on-board. Next thing I know I wake up in front-row business class with some guy beside me keeping on eye on me. At that point I was obviously confused, asked the guy how long until landing, 3hours. Next thing I knew was the plane had landed.

I started to get-up and find my carry-on bags, but was told to wait until a wheelchair was brought to take me to paramedics in the terminal. They asked a few questions about what I had taken then let me go, under escort by an officer to await the shuttle bus to the hotel. The fresh air cleared my head somewhat, while I went to sleep it off.

I think the most obvious cause is an overdose of the anti-anxiety meds (maybe different dosage than usual) and the wine. Combined with exhaustion.

So, the core of the question, I imagine the event would be noted somewhere. If I booked another ticket with this airline or another, would it show-up and make things more difficult booking or flight staff attention? Some sort of blacklist of passengers.

Secondly, if such a list exists could I get access to it given the date and flight number. I'd like to know more about what happened.

How can I get websense to undo a nonsensical "sex" block on my boring blog?

cortex — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:37:18 -0800

Websense has apparently blacklisted my personal blog (my whole domain, in fact) for adult/sex content, which is pretty strange. What can I do about this? My blog is geeky and banal. The only thing I can think of that'd even be in the neighborhood of "adult" content is a short chapter of a several-years-old NaNoWriMo novel I was posting in real-time, which featured among other things some not-very-sexy sex between two characters.

But that has been on the site since 2005, and I only started getting anecdotal reports of websense trouble in maybe the last year or so. Which has me all the more boggled.

Is there any way to find out what triggered the listing, when, why, or by what mechanism? Any channel for appealing this with the company? Anybody know a guy who knows a guy?

My domain was spoofed I am becoming blacklisted, help!

UMDirector — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:40:03 -0800

I assume someone has spoofed my domain for spam! I am becoming blacklisted...what to do? I started getting emails bounced back from servers...started as a few now its at least ten to twenty a day. I also have tried emailing a few people (including a classmate at Citigroup) and have seen it bounced back marked as "spam". It cannot be the content as I sent a normal message with no works or attachments that would flag a spam sensor.

Is there anything I can do? Becoming blacklisted as a spammer is begining to cause problems.

Can't send E-mails to CompuServe, AOL, and Comcast

hodyoaten — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:46:05 -0800

E-mails from my small business are slowly starting to get blocked by AOL, CompuServe, and now Comcast. It appears my ISP (WildBlue) has lots of IPs on some blacklists. What can I do? Basic background: my business (scientific programming and consulting) is on a hosted server at Dreamhost. The setup is pretty simple. I use the PocoMail client. Outgoing messages go from my WildBlue business account (wildblue.com) via SMTP to my domain at Dreamhost, which sends the E-mail under my TLD (me@mycompany.com).

AOL and CompuServe troubles started intermittently in 2004. Now most addresses bounce with this error:
host mail.mx5.compuserve.com[149.174.40.183] said: 550 5.7.1 IP address denied-4 (in reply to MAIL FROM command)

Comcast problems started this week. Messages now bounce with this error:
host gateway-r.comcast.net[ 216.148.227.126] said: 550-208.97.132.5 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net 550 Comcast does not support the direct connection to its mail servers from residential IPs. Your mail should be sent to comcast.net users through your ISP. Please contact your ISP or mail administrator for more information. (in reply to MAIL FROM command)

Source of trouble. The trouble appears to be my home WildBlue connection. Its IP (12.213.80.xx) appears as shown below. However I tried a bunch of random addresses by varying the last group (12.213.80.16, 12.213.80.142, etc) and get the same blocked results.
all.rbl.kropka.net http://all.rbl.kropka.net all.rbl.kropka.net LISTED
dnsbl.sorbs.net http://www.dnsbl.nl.sorbs.net/ dnsbl.sorbs.net LISTED - Aggregate zone (contains all DNS zones)
dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net http://www.dnsbl.nl.sorbs.net/ dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net LISTED - Dynamic IP Address ranges (NOT a Dial Up list!)
dynablock.njabl.org http://dynablock.njabl.org dynablock.njabl.org LISTED
ip.rbl.kropka.net http://ip.rbl.kropka.net ip.rbl.kropka.net LISTED
l1.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net http://l1.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net l1.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net LISTED
l2.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net http://l2.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net l2.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net LISTED
spews.dnsbl.net.au http://spews.dnsbl.net.au spews.dnsbl.net.au LISTED

My SMTP server is probably not important, but is 208.97.132.5. According to this blacklist compilation, there is no problem.

My workaround so far has been to use GMail.

Kyrgystan's religious censorship via web: technique?

vanoakenfold — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 17:20:32 -0800

Does anyone know, loosely or extensively, of Kyrgystan's methods of web censorship of religion? More specifically I need to know how the actual censoring action works: by scanning words and phrases, by domain/IP blacklisting, by a person actually checking them out with their eyes, etc?

False positive spam problem with hotmail

twiggy — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 14:32:37 -0800

Despite plenty of googling, and even email with Microsoft's support - I cannot seem to solve my problem. I'm wondering if perhaps any of my fellow geeks have had this problem: I run a web/email server of my own, colocated in a highly reputable facility. For some reason, Hotmail views any email coming from my box as spam, and tosses it in a junk folder. I've done all the checks to make sure I don't have an open spam relay problem, etc. I've checked all the blacklists I can think of -- I'm not on any of them. Are any of you having your legitimately sent email relegated to Hotmail's SPAM coffers? Hotmail says they'd love to help me, but they use Brightmail by Symantec, and it is they who need to help me. Symantec, however, has not responded to repeated emails/phone calls.

I've even done what I need to do (I think) to follow Microsoft's Sender ID program - yet still my email is relegated to spam folders. Personal email - no attachments, nothing out of the ordinary.

My emails to various AOL addresses get rejected...

stevejensen — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 06:45:42 -0800

My emails to various AOL addresses get rejected... I have 4 clients that have AOL email addresses.
My address is "steve.jensen@frontlineservices.info"

When I send them a message, it gets rejected as "not allowed"

I've sent the AOL postmaster a request to be allowed in, but they never reply.

My mail server (in-house) isn't listed on any blacklists-
What other steps can I take?

blocking "ilicit" sites

quadrinary — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 00:16:24 -0800

i'm in a central-asian country right now working with an NGO run hospital. they've recently acquired satellite based internet access, and are concerned about limiting website access for their staff. basically, instead of using keywords to block sites and searches, we are hoping to use blocklists (ideally the free DNS query lists at rhs.mailpoilce.com) to referenec with our local DNS server - Microsoft Windows Server 2003

at this point, i've got no idea how to have server 2003 do this, or if possible, set up another linux box to act as a gateway. any ideas?

thanks!!

-tim

MoveableType Comment Spam

scarabic — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 09:36:33 -0800

I have put my Moveable Type weblog to sleep, although I am keeping its archives up. Not surprisingly, comment spam continues to come in. It looks like there is no way to globally turn commenting off in MT. Rats. But I do have MT Blacklist installed, and I'm wondering if there's a good way to add some kind of regex wildcard to my blacklist that will deny all comments. Any ideas on how to stop all comments?

Dealing with comment spammers

willnot — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 10:13:54 -0800

Is there any way to punish comment spammers? Comment spam started out as an annoyance, but it really seems to have gotten worse recently. Or maybe I'm just getting hit more lately. I use MT-Blacklist, and that helps me to keep my own site clean.

However, there are a lot of dead blogs out there that don't sanitize their comments, so there's an incentive for spammer scum to keep flooding our sites.

I would like to find a way to disincentivize them from doing it. My first thought, a DDoS attack on the URL's they're promoting, while attractive from a vigilante standpoint, probably isn't the best response. It would feel good, but, no.

I think common wisdom is that they're just trying to increase page rank, and maybe that's the place to hit them. Google can't like to have their systems gamed like that. Do they have an abuse department where you could report domains that are trying to game their system and get them removed entirely from the index? Maybe if enough people did it, and it got around that comment spamming was the quickest way to get your site unlisted on the various search engines, people would learn to stop doing it.