How To Check If My Email Is Blacklisted?

Being on a minor blocklist might not significantly impact your email deliverability if you’re following good email practices. But being listed on a major one like Spamhaus can significantly affect your ability to send emails. If you’re having deliverability issues, it might also be helpful to review your email practices, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to ensure everything is configured correctly. Having said that, it’s important to check if your email is blacklisted. So, how to check if your email is blacklisted?

Guide on How To Check If My Email Is Blacklisted
  1. Identify Your IP Address or Domain Name: First, you need to know the IP address that is used to send your emails. This is typically the IP address of your email server. If you’re using a service like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook for personal emails, the service provider manages the IP. For business emails sent through a dedicated server or an email service provider (ESP), you can find the IP address in your email server settings or ask your ESP. Some services like our IP Blacklist Check API allow for domain name checks because we do the domain to IP address check. This is helpful only in some cases, as it doesn’t make sense to check gmail.com because they use many IP addresses.
  2. Use Blacklist Check Tools: There are several online tools available that can check if your IP address is blacklisted. These tools check your IP address against multiple blacklists to see if it appears on any of them. So does our Email Blacklist API. After more than a decade of experience, we’ve decided to monitor 7 major blacklists. You can also make email blacklist checks in our Console.
  3. Enter Your IP Address: Go to the website of the blacklist checking tool and enter your IP address or domain name in the provided search box. In our case, you first need to signup.
  4. Review the Results: After submitting your IP address, the tool will check it against 7 major email blacklist databases and display the results. If your IP address is listed on a blacklist, it will show which one(s). Screenshot example below.
  5. Resolve Any Listings: If you find your IP address on a blacklist, you’ll need to follow the specific procedure for that list to request removal. This often involves proving that you’ve fixed the issue that got you blacklisted in the first place, such as addressing spam complaints, securing your mail server against unauthorized use, or improving email-sending practices.
  6. Monitor Regularly: Even after resolving blacklist issues, it’s a good idea to periodically check your IP address to ensure it remains off blacklists. This helps maintain your email deliverability and reputation. This is where our Email Blacklist API is helpful because it allows you to check if your email servers are blacklisted programmatically.
How To Check If My Email Is Blacklisted?
Checking Multiple Blacklists at Once

This JSON response from an Email Blacklist API provides information about the blacklist status of a specific IP address (184.154.70.198) regarding email sending. Here’s a breakdown of the key components of the response:

  • status: “0” – This indicates the overall status of the API request. Per API Documentation status of “0” means that the request was successfully processed without errors.
  • ip: “184.154.70.198” – This is the IP address that was checked against various email blacklists.
  • blacklisted: “0” – This field shows whether the IP address is currently listed on any of the checked blacklists. A value of “0” indicates that the IP address is not on any blacklist.
  • blacklists: This is an array of objects, each representing a different blacklist database where the IP address was checked. For each tracker (or blacklist database):
    • tracker: The name of the blacklist database (e.g., “zen.spamhaus.org”, “dnsbl.sorbs.net”).
    • blacklisted: Indicates whether the IP address is listed on this particular blacklist. A value of “0” means it is not listed.
  • requests_available: 437 – This suggests the number of requests you have left that can be made to the API before reaching a limit per your plan.
  • status_desc: “Successfully processed” – A descriptive status message indicating that the API request was executed successfully.

If you are ever wondering how to check if my email is blacklisted, then this response tells us that the IP address 184.154.70.198 is not currently blacklisted on any of the checked databases. It is in good standing regarding email delivery reputation on these specific trackers.

Why is Checking Email Blacklists Important?

Checking if your email is blacklisted is important for several reasons, particularly if you rely on email communications for business operations, marketing, or other professional activities. Here are some key reasons why you should periodically check if your email is blacklisted:

  1. Email Deliverability: Being blacklisted can significantly impact your email deliverability. This means your emails may not reach the intended recipients, ending up in spam folders, or being blocked entirely. For businesses, this can affect marketing campaigns, customer communications, and overall reputation.
  2. Reputation Management: Your email reputation is crucial for ensuring your communications are trusted and delivered. If your email is blacklisted, it indicates to email service providers (ESPs) that your sending practices may be problematic. This can damage your reputation, not just with those ESPs, but also with customers and partners who may not receive your emails.
  3. Identifying Security Issues: Being blacklisted could be a symptom of a larger security issue. For example, it might mean your email account or server has been compromised and is being used to send spam or malicious content without your knowledge. Promptly identifying and addressing such issues can prevent further harm to your email reputation and protect you and your contacts’ security.
  4. Operational Continuity: For businesses and organizations, email is often a critical tool for operations, customer service, and communication. Being blacklisted can disrupt these activities, leading to communication breakdowns, unsatisfied customers, and lost business opportunities.
  5. Resource Optimization: Resolving blacklist issues can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Regular checks allow you to identify and address problems before they escalate, helping you to allocate your resources more efficiently and avoid the hassle of delisting processes.
  6. Compliance: In some cases, being blacklisted might indicate that your email practices are not compliant with regulations like GDPR, CAN-SPAM, or others that govern electronic communications. Ensuring compliance not only helps avoid blacklisting but also legal and financial repercussions.
  7. Trust and Reliability: In the digital age, trust is paramount. Regular checks and maintenance of your email’s health reflect a commitment to best practices, enhancing your credibility and reliability as a communicator or business.

In summary, regularly checking if you are blacklisted is a proactive measure that helps maintain effective communication channels, protects your online reputation, and ensures the security and compliance of your email practices.

How to Prevent Getting Blacklisted?

We already wrote two in-depth articles on how to avoid email blacklists. We are highlighting them here, and you should definitely check them out. If you don’t have extra time to read them now (and you don’t want to bookmark them for later), here’s some quick advice on how to prevent getting blacklisted. Remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Preventing your email from getting blacklisted involves adopting responsible email sending practices and maintaining a good email sender reputation. Here are some key strategies to help you avoid being blacklisted:

  1. Maintain a Clean Email List:
    • Regularly clean your email list to remove invalid, inactive, or unresponsive email addresses.
    • Use double opt-in methods to ensure that subscribers genuinely want to receive emails from you.
  2. Follow Email Sending Best Practices:
    • Avoid sending too many emails too quickly, which can be seen as spammy behavior.
    • Make sure the content of your emails is relevant and valuable to your subscribers.
    • Clearly identify yourself or your organization in the email “From” name and address.
  3. Implement Authentication Protocols:
  4. Monitor Your Sender Reputation:
    • Use tools and services that monitor your sender score (reputation) and provide insights on how to improve it.
    • Keep an eye on feedback loops and respond to any spam complaints by removing complainers from your list.
  5. Avoid Spam Triggers:
    • Be mindful of your email content and design. Avoid using excessive capital letters, spammy words, and too many images compared to text.
    • Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly and test them across different email clients.
  6. Engage Your Subscribers:
    • Encourage interaction by asking for replies, feedback, or by including surveys. Engaged subscribers are less likely to mark your emails as spam.
    • Segment your list and personalize your emails to increase relevance and engagement.
  7. Provide Easy Unsubscription Options:
    • Always include a clear and easy way for recipients to unsubscribe from your email list.
    • Respect unsubscribe requests promptly to avoid spam complaints.
  8. Use a Reputable Email Service Provider (ESP):
    • A good email service provider can help manage your email campaigns, ensure compliance with email sending best practices, and sometimes intervene on your behalf if you are blacklisted.
  9. Educate Yourself on Anti-Spam Laws:
    • Familiarize yourself with anti-spam legislation in your country and the countries of your subscribers, such as CAN-SPAM in the U.S., CASL in Canada, and GDPR in the EU.
  10. Monitor Blacklists:
    • Regularly check if your IP address or domain is listed on any blacklists so you can take immediate action if necessary. (Our Email Blacklist API can help with this).

By implementing these strategies, you can significantly reduce the risk of being blacklisted, ensuring your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes and maintain your sender reputation.

Cybersecurity professional knows how To Check If My Email Is Blacklisted
Cybersecurity professional checks if their email is listed on blocklists

Summary Of How To Check If Your Email Is Blacklisted

Checking email blacklists is a part of cybersecurity practices. It involves monitoring and ensuring that an organization’s or individual’s email domain and IP addresses have not been marked as sources of spam or malicious activity. Here’s why it’s considered a cybersecurity measure:

  1. Preventing Spam and Phishing: By ensuring that your email system is not blacklisted, you help prevent it from being used for sending spam or phishing emails, which are common cybersecurity threats.
  2. Maintaining Email Integrity and Security: Regular checks help identify potential vulnerabilities or breaches that might have led to the blacklisting, such as compromised accounts being used to send malicious emails.
  3. Protecting Reputation: Being blacklisted can harm an organization’s reputation, making it seem untrustworthy or insecure. Maintaining a good email reputation is crucial for cybersecurity, as it affects trust in digital communications.
  4. Compliance: For businesses, especially those in regulated industries, ensuring emails are not blacklisted is part of compliance with data protection and privacy laws, which are key components of cybersecurity frameworks.
  5. Enhancing Email Deliverability: Being on a blacklist can prevent emails from being delivered, which can disrupt business operations and communications. Cybersecurity involves ensuring the reliability and availability of communication systems.

In essence, checking for and addressing email blacklisting is part of a broader cybersecurity strategy aimed at maintaining the security, integrity, and reliability of email communications and protecting against cyber threats.

In this quick guide, we delve into the essential steps to determine if your email has been blacklisted, a critical factor affecting email deliverability. Starting with identifying your IP address, we introduced various online tools such as our Email Blacklist API for checking your email against multiple email blocklist databases.

We highlighted the significance of knowing your blacklist status for reasons such as email deliverability, reputation management, security issues identification, operational continuity, compliance, and trust enhancement. Furthermore, the article provides actionable strategies to prevent blacklisting, emphasizing clean email lists, adherence to sending best practices, and the implementation of authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

Through vivid digital illustrations, we metaphorically and realistically visualized the discussed concepts, catering to both general and professional audiences interested in maintaining the integrity of their email communications. This guide serves as a valuable resource for anyone looking to safeguard their email reputation and ensure their messages reach their intended recipients.

GoranDuskic

Goran Duskic has been the Founder and CEO of WhoAPI Inc. since 2011, a company that specializes in developing APIs, including the well-known Whois API. He started his career in internet entrepreneurship in 2006 and has co-founded several online businesses, including a web hosting company that he later sold. Goran's work primarily involves creating practical API solutions to meet technological needs.