woller Posted July 24, 2003 Share Posted July 24, 2003 When my husband started work at his large company, he found that web traffic to my domain (wollernet.com) was blocked by whatever filtering software they use there. There's certainly no questionable content on *my* domain's web site(actually, there's very little of anything so far), so I suspected that since I'm sharing an IP, somebody else may have something unsavory. (I asked him to ask their IT people specifically why wollernet.com was blocked, but I don't think he got an answer.) It's not just that it's a non-business site--no other commercial site he could think of was blocked (including such relevant sites as espn.com, of course). Now, my mom's ISP is tagging all messages I send to her from my wollernet.com account as spam. Am I sharing an IP with a spammer? Is there a way to get a dedicated IP without buying a dedicated server plan? I don't need much storage or bandwidth, but this blocking problem has me worried (since I will soon be putting up a site for potential clients on my domain). -Joy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-JimE Posted July 24, 2003 Share Posted July 24, 2003 Hi, First of all, ask your mum to stop tagging all your messages as spam, this could end up with you having serious problems in the future. Bill, Rick or Mitch should look at this more in depth for you, but your husbands IT department could be blocking it for a whole number of reasons, not just spam. Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Guru Posted July 24, 2003 Share Posted July 24, 2003 Ok here we go. I have checked the IP address of your site and it is not blocked. http://www.samspade.org/t/rbl?a=wollernet.com&r=on As you can see this IP is not blocked. I dont host spammers! I think this problem boils down to this. When I was in the consulting business I was asked this same question by IT Managers all the time. What sites do we block. Normally my answer was none. However, some business owners did not like that answer. The thing to remember is most if not all IT Departments monitor all http traffic. My guess, is they have blocked access to your url intentionally. They may have audited workstations and found traffic to the site and blocked it. I think even if we placed you on a dedicated IP, they would still find it and block access to that IP. It is their right to block access, so I am not sure where we can go on this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woller Posted July 24, 2003 Author Share Posted July 24, 2003 Actually, my husband's company didn't block it intentionally--the first day he was there, it was already blocked, and they unblocked it at his request. (He does a fair amount of web browsing--ahem, not all of it work-related--and mine is the only site he's come across that was blocked.) So *something* got that IP on the blocked list before he even got there, and it was probably not my site, which has little more than family photos on it so far. Thank you for the URL to confirm it's not on any blocked lists, by the way...it may have to remain a mystery. However, it's unnerving that of the approximately 10 people who know about my website, and the limited number of people I send email to, 2 have had problems. I don't have all the details on my mom's email thing yet (getting accurate details about what she did or didn't do will be excruciating, as anyone who has dealt with a computer-illiterate parent well knows), but I was working under the assumption that her ISP installed something like Spam Assassin which was changing the subject line, and the ISP-configured mail client automatically refiled those messages. Completely possible that she *did* manage to do something to killfile me all by herself, but I am still curious about my original question: Any way to get a dedicated IP without a dedicated server? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Guru Posted July 24, 2003 Share Posted July 24, 2003 Submit a ticket for the dedicated IP request. Chances are we will 'not' approve your request for dedicated IP. We require a technical reason for giving dedicated IP's out. With the limited technical reasons you list, its not within our guidelines to give you a dedicated IP. Funny thing is, your the only site on Server16 that has ever complained about their IP being blocked. Reason is, the IP is clean. Like I said, we dont host spammers, we dont host sites that would cause IP's to get listed. Im afraid this is a case of your husbands employer controlling his employees and attempting to increase the bottom line. Its a sad fact in todays internet world, but its true. Let me inform you a little bit about proxy filtering. Key word filters! The proxy that your husband filters thru at work is most likley using some sort of filter. Every request it process will filter its content and will ban sites based on a predetermined set of values, usually put in place by the IT Department. I can be very confident in saying that one of these key words could be Photography. When a site is hit with that keyword it can be filtered. I mean the chances that one of the other 200 or so sites on server16 causing a world wide global ban is pretty slim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curtis Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 I used the samspade.org URL above to check my domain (www.cmg02.com ) and found that the IP is listed in FIVETEN IP address 66.246.87.127 is listed here as nac.net spam-support. Please note that the following comments apply to nac.net since 66.246.87.127 seems to be owned or controlled by them. This does NOT mean that we ever received spam from 66.246.87.127. It just means that the upstream owner of that address block (which seems to be nac.net) is listed here for spam support. That upstream needs to resolve the below issues. "added 2002-10-26; spam support - auto-forwarding spam complaints directly to their spamming customers" "added 2003-04-05; spam support - hosting admanmail.com on 207.99.77.11" So does this mean anyone spamming from this IP can cause my mail to be blocked? curtis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Guru Posted July 27, 2003 Share Posted July 27, 2003 Dig a bit deeper and you will see that the 'block' is listed, but not the IP. It means that nac.net has some unresolved issues within that class C block of IP's. As it states - This does NOT mean that we ever received spam from 66.246.87.127. It just means that the upstream owner of that address block (which seems to be nac.net) is listed here for spam support. That upstream needs to resolve the below issues. "added 2002-10-26; spam support - auto-forwarding spam complaints directly to their spamming customers" "added 2003-04-05; spam support - hosting admanmail.com on 207.99.77.11" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatAdamGuy Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 A note about keyword filtering... Even if you think your site is totally "innocent" (and it is!), the stupid filtering programs can block it because you had innocuous text like: "The mother held her infant to her breast" (oh no, BREAST!), or "All the kiddies went out to play" (kiddie is just one word short of kiddie p0rn) or even "The scientist was unable to determine the sex of the insect" (oh no, SEX! eeeeek!) I know, this may sound Goofy, but do a little reading on personal and business filters on the Interent, and you'll see example after example of stuff like this being filtered :-( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayners Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 I remember last year when a friend of mine couldn't access my site when he was at school. They were blocking it, claiming that it was a sex site. As I'm sure any who are readers of mine, that's a crock. Probably just some goofed up keyword filtering that eventually got worked out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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