Ask HN: DigitalOcean IPs added to UCEPROTECTL3 Spam list and they want money?
Apparently, a lot of DigitalOcean IPs are added to some SPAM database called UCEPROTECT [2] and I just found out that some large companies (microsoft/outlook exchange etc) uses this list to block emails from an entire domain IF this domain is on this list.
DO is one our primary server provider and looks like tons of their iP is on this list by default because 100%, we don't do any spamming. We run a legitimate SAAS business and this is very concerning as a customer who pays thousands of dollars a month to DO.
The part that is really troubling is that now to unblock a specific IP, we have to PAY these guys. The amount is not the issue for me but as a principle, it feels like a Ransom and I absolutely hate paying a random 3rd party when I know we are not at fault directly.
Does anyone at HN know what's going on here ?
I googled DO's support on this and found that they are replying with generic answers on this which is not good enough. [0]. Also found an interesting reddit article on this [1]
[0] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-removed-my-ip-as-blacklisted-in-uceprotectl3-spam
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eur4ju/removal_from_uceprotectl3_blacklist/
[2] http://www.uceprotect.net/
My conclusion is that Digital Ocean doesn't care if their tenants run hacks and scams.
FWIW, I rarely get scans from AWS. When I do, I report it - I get a response email logging the complaint and a day or two later I get a follow-up email closing the ticket and saying "it's been taken care of."
Did you get the email headers from a customer that is reporting this? You can analyze the headers to see who is flagging you. Are your emails generated on DO and you relay through another service (SES), but you are not obfuscating the DO header that your MTA injects? [1]
[1] - https://major.io/2013/04/14/remove-sensitive-information-fro...
I would even go as far as to suggest that both they and their customers should have aliases on all domains for spam@, uce@, postmaster@, abuse@, malware@ and security@ that route to a distribution list or mailbox that the domain holder responds to that same day. Back in the day, that was a requirement to varying degrees to sign up for any of the big email campaign providers.
Every domain holder should also have a proper DNS dmarc rule with a reporting email address listed. Example using ycombinator.com [1]