I cannot send emails, am I blacklisted?

When you connect to the Internet, your connection has its own IP address.  For the vast majority of Internet Users, this IP address is assigned from a block of IP?s that belongs to your Internet Service Provider (the company that provides your Internet connection ? an ISP).  It is possible to have a fixed or static IP address, but usually you have a dynamic IP that changes when you connect to the Internet.

So other people using the same ISP as yourself may be using the same block of IP?s, or even had your IP assigned to them before you (as a general rule of thumb, every time your router/modem logs on to the Internet, it is assigned an IP address).  The IP address is used every time you send an email or browse the Internet.

There are several ?blacklist? organisations that maintain databases of IP addresses that have been used to send large amounts of spam (amongst other things).  If an IP address is blacklisted, it is entered into these databases.  When you send an email, the mail server checks your IP address against blacklist databases ? and refuses to send if you?ve been blacklisted.

If you get a message to this effect, it should contain a link or, at the very least, the name of the company that has marked your IP address as blacklisted, as well as your IP address.  You will in almost all situations be able to search for the company on the Internet and request that your IP address is removed from the blacklist database.  Once this has completed, you will be able to send mail again.

The other option is to try and force a change in your IP.  As mentioned before, you are assigned an IP address when your router/modem connects to the Internet.  So ? turn your router or modem off, and wait anything from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes.  Connect to the Internet again, and try to send an email.  With any luck you?ll have been assigned an IP that has nothing to do with the blacklisted IP and you will be able to send mail once more.

If you find that you have repeated the above process several times, and you have had the error message with multiple IP addresses ? you may want to contact your ISP and complain!