Plusnet IP addresses listed in SORBS blacklist

[#1]

Hi,

I have a static IP address (at least, that's what I had when I first joined Plusnet years ago, and I haven't asked for it to be made dynamic).  I'm running a mail server from home, but now the whole Plusnet address block is blacklisted on SORBS:

Newest NoServers listings for: 80.229.x.x (Limited to a maximum of 30)
Current status of 80.229.x.x is Listed
Seen/Created Time	Host/Netblock	Short Description/Identifier	Select
18:10:46 12 Aug 2019 GMT-04	80.229.0.0/17	551506133-1048576 [Added via Net Manager...
14:25:47 06 Aug 2019 GMT-04	80.229.0.0/16	551067794-1048576 [Added via Net Manager...

Who at Plusnet can whitelist my IP address?

Thanks!

[#2]

Unfortunately, you can't do anything about it, only Plus Net can.  SORBS can be a real pain, especially to get off of. Sorry I can't be of more help.

[#3]

Thanks Adrian, indeed you are right!  So my question is: who at Plusnet added the whole of the IP address range to SORBS, and can they remove my specific IP address from their list?

[#4]

These IPs are normally listed in the Policy Block List (PBL), which is *not* a Black list since even though static they are not normally used to serve and relay emails.

For those that *do* serve and relay emails a procedure is provided for the individual user to submit their IP so that it is removed from the PBL. The process is explained on the PBL page.

[#5]

Thanks @spraxyt - but the SORBS website does not seem to have a PBL page.  What page exactly are you referring to?

[#6]

Sorry, my mistake  the PBL is on the Spamhaus site.

I'll take another look at this topic.

[#7]

Ah, yes, @spraxyt ; I have already done that on the Spamhaus site.  Sadly SORBS does not seem to offer this functionality - only the ISP can make any modifications to their listing.

Best wishes,

Julian

[#8]

This needs to be picked up by Plusnet staff and reported to the appropriate team..Hopefully they will be along tomorrow.

[#9]

Hi @juliang 

There was a post similar to this last week. 

I spoke to our Network Admin team and was given this reply;

"Please tell the customer to use relay.plus.net as a smart host, we cannot remove immutable blocks"

I have asked for any further info and will update this thread with anything important. 

Thanks,

MoR

[#10]

Well, it turns out that Plusnet managed to ignore all of the increasingly serious warning emails from SORBS and are incapable (it seems) of sorting out their mess.  (By the way, if Plusnet staff are reading this, the question you raised on my account (polya) was #194967963, which has now been closed due to lack of activity.)

I have found a different resolution to this problem: I am leaving Plusnet and switching to Aquiss.  They are more expensive, but they are very technically competent, and I value that highly for my needs. Static IP (v4 and v6) by default, for example, and they know how to deal with SORBS...

[#11]

Hello @juliang,

Thanks for getting back in touch with us.

I'm sincerely sorry that this has issue has led you to move providers and I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

We wish you all the best with your new provider,

Thanks.

[#12]

Hi, Mads,

Just following up on this as I also run a mail server and have been hit by SORBS, who only accept you (Plusnet) as the authority to tell them that the IP block that you have may have servers.

Are you going to do this?

Thanks!

Gabriel

[#13]

Hi Gabriel, unfortunately the SORBS blacklist isn't something we've got any control over as we don't have a relationship with them. Have you tried using our outgoing mail server relay.plus.net as a smart host which should resolve this?

[#14]

Hi, Gandalf,

Thank you for getting back to me - to answer your comment about your relay SMTP server, that isn't an acceptable solution to me, as I would like my emails to go from my server directly to the recipient's. As you probably know, by relaying your email through an external smart host, you expose your emails to whoever has access to that smart host.  You may as well use any freely available email server.

Regarding SORBS, the reason why they are marking Plus Net's IP addresses as spam is that you have registered that block as an ISP in one or more registries and have stated that they are for residential use, when in reality anybody should be able to host their servers on the internet, or at least be given an option to override what you have said about the IP block, similar to what spamhaus.org does.

Regardless of whether you have a relationship with SORBS or not, you can ask their support team to explain to you where they are getting their information from so that you can make it right. There are already many FAQ pages on their website, which I'm sure your team can go through and figure out what to do.

I hope you can get this actioned as soon as possible.

Thanks!

Gabriel

[#15]

Hi Gabriel,

As I might have posted earlier in the thread, I have found out that Plusnet would have received several warning emails from SORBS about this before they were added to the blacklist, which contained instructions for how to avoid being blacklisted.  It is clear that they did nothing whatsoever about these warnings.

As you say, SORBS give very clear instructions on how to handle this situation if you are an ISP, and as an individual user, we have no ability to contact SORBS.

Given Plusnet's ineptitude about this ("intransigence" might be too strong a word), and their unwillingness to engage with this type of request, my decision was to leave Plusnet for a more competent ISP who are technically competent.  In my case I went for Aquiss; it is a bit more expensive than Plusnet, but I haven't had any problems at all.  Static IPv4 address is standard; a static IPv6 address block (or something like that - I don't yet understand IPv6) is available on request.

Best wishes,

Julian