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On March 26, 2010, all of our IP addresses were blocked by Spamhaus (spamhaus.org) for registering domains for "Russian cybercriminal spammers".  We politely asked for a copy of these spam messages as required by our spam policy, however, Spamhaus has refused to give any proof to us since they cannot keep "billions of spam seen every week".

Spamhaus has also asked us to disable domains for an issue unrelated to spam.  Since we'd like our IP addresses to be unblocked, we decided to investigate these domains for any possible Service Agreement violations.  We began the process last Friday and finished the list on Tuesday (March 30th) at about 2pm Pacific Time.  We then emailed Spamhaus, giving them a detailed breakdown of what happened to domains on their list.  This breakdown is as follows:

46 domains that are NOT registered with Dynadot
5 domains that were ALREADY disabled or offline since May 2009 (nearly 11 months ago)
118 domains that were DISABLED upon completion of our investigation
3 domains that are expired and CANNOT send any email
18 domains that are offline
3 domains that are parked using Dynadot's parking service and are unable to send any email (need proof of spam)
8 domains that required proof of spam

As of today, Thursday, April 1st 1:41pm Pacific Time, we have not received any response from Spamhaus.  Furthermore, we are still blocked by them.

We find Spamhaus' behavior highly unprofessional of them especially since we only require proof of spam for 11 domains out of the total list of 201 domains.  It is also clear that they did not do their own research and expected us to "proofread" their list for them since 46 domains are not even registered with Dynadot at this time.

If you would like to contact Spamhaus regarding this issue, you can find their email addresses here:

http://www.spamhaus.org/organization/contacts.lasso

More information about Spamhaus' unbecoming behavior can be found here:

http://linux.andreagozzi.com/content/spamhaus_article.php

Update:
As of April 6, 2010, Spamhaus has removed us from their blacklist.


[This post has been edited by dynadot_staff on Apr 7, 2010 4:44pm.]

Once I've tried using AfraidDNS for a test domain of mine and they denied adding A record pointing to my server IP because of Spamhaus IP blacklist.
I've checked on the Spamhaus automatic system and it said that the whole subnet has been blocked due to a few violators who had their IPs listed, but mine wasn't - normally I am not a criminal and I am not doing criminal activities. I've tried contacting Spamhaus and got no answer at all.

ive had my server's IP listed in the CBL at spamhaus, though i could remove it they kept re-listing it, so i've initiated contact with them and they did the same, removed it but it got back on the listing
i've got a network sniffer running for a couple of weeks and all email traffic was to gmail and yahoo, around 300 emails in this period (theres a public site with no emails originating from it than for registration and a monitoring system that alerts some of my clients, doing the majority of the email traffic)
anyway, i have both mail.logs and tcpdump logs showing theres no spam or viruses going out, the system uses virtualization so the chances that the HN is hacked are minimal

one hint that spamhaus got me as to the continual re-listing is that the server's hostname "looked suspicious".. LOL, so i had to change it.. was like ip-xx.xx.xx.xx.my-provider.com
granted they do answer to support emails, but i doubt they feel responsible for the power they claimed and have, and use it in irresponsible ways, i cant believe yahoo or gmail rely on them

sorry for the offtopic but i ..hate them too

As of April 6, 2010, Spamhaus has removed us from their blacklist.

This "Spamhaus" thing does not only hurt Dynadot's business.
It also hurts our business! I received several phone calls from my clients complaining their e-mails sent to our company are rejected!

I encourage Dynadot to take legal steps in order to resolve the situation ASAP.

Could someone explain to me as to what they are, what do they do, and why are they so powerful.

If I am correct they provide email blocklists so you can put this blocklist on your server to catch any mail coming from a blocked email address, IP, etc.

This hurts dynadot because their IP addresses are now in the blocklist used by however many thousands of people.

This is the first I know of a company called Spamhaus.

Could someone explain to me as to what they are, what do they do, and why are they so powerful.

If they block an IP address, how much would that hurt you.
Will this block only block selected customers of theirs?


Glad to see Dynadot being so anti-spam.

I totally agree you should ask proof, and I totally agree you can sue them too.

My point it: for now, email forwarding is NOT working, can you simple change your email forward server to ignore Spamhaus list?

simply file a legal lawsuit against them, they did something that harmed your business and your client's business, and you got proof about it that it was wrong, and moreover they didnt cooperate

and please use the money gained to make a better domain API :-)

dynadot_staff:

Do you think that is fair to innocent customers?  They've been wrong in the past about certain domains even admitting they didn't have enough evidence to warrant further action from us.  

Suppose they listed one of your domains in their list, would you want us taking it offline without any proof to back up their claims?

Agreed. Need proof.

I hope for everyone's sake that this gets sorted out soon. I don't have hosting with dynadot but I was going to be signing up soon so I hope it is sorted out by then.