What blacklist monitors do I need?

Blacklisting can be a pretty complex issue.  There are several different catgories of blacklists and each finds bad actors in it’s own unique way: honeypots, customer reports, protocol scans, etc.  This can leave many users confused.

What blacklists matter?

Which ones should I monitor?

What servers should I monitor?

First, MxToolbox monitors the most comprehensive, best curated list of blacklists.  Our experts understand blacklists and the causes of blacklisting better than anyone out there.  You can trust that our list of 100+ blacklists is the list you need to know about for your online reputation.  In fact, new blacklists are often asking us to add them to our checks!

Second, you need to understand the causes of blacklisting.  Even if you are using a legitimate server on a legitimate IP address, you could legitimately get caught in a blacklist honeypot, attacked by malware, accidentally spam someone and flagged for malicious activity.  Monitoring your servers for blacklisting is like an insurance policy – you need it whether or not you’re planning to have an accident.

Our experts recommend the following monitors to ensure your email delivery and online operations by monitoring your blacklist reputation:

  • IP Blacklist monitor for each mail server IP
    At minimum, you should have an IP monitor for the IP referenced in your MX record
  • IP Blacklist monitor for each web server IP
    At minimum, you should have an IP monitor for the IP referenced by your website’s A record so that traffic is not interrupted to your e-commerce site.
  • Domain Blacklist monitor for your domain
    This is optional, few companies are referenced enough in spam to be blacklisted unless they really are a major source of spam, malware or botnets.

There are other monitors that will help your overall system reputation, stability and reliability:

  • An MX monitor for your mail server in case it should ever be changed or DNS go down
  • An A record monitor for webserver
  • A SMTP monitor for your mail server to ensure uptime and report downtime and issues with availability
  • A Mailflow monitor to check your end-to-end mail system performance