Ask HN: Newly purchased domain blocked by ISP filters – what to do?

[joshpangell]

I'm the CTO of a web company and we recently purchased a domain intended for use on a new product. After a short trial release, we found that the domain was filtered by a handful of European ISPs. With some research, and limited communication with abuse@, we are confidant that one of the sources of the block is Akamai's Nomium security product. We've been unable to get any kind of response from them and seem to have no avenues to get through.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to get through?

[Someone1234]

Did you try contacting them at [e-mail] (as opposed to Akamai's support)? While Nominum was absorbed by Akamai they still run largely as a separate entity.

Cannot guarantee it will work but it wouldn't hurt to at least try. We used to have Nominum as a vendor, and would still use @Nominum.com for support even after the acquisition.

[joshpangell]

Excellent idea. Shall try. Thanks!

[jesterson]

I've had similar case where our email was blocked by Symantec product, which happened to be used by email services a lot.

I've spent enormous amount of time communicating with providers and Symantec with little or no luck. Provider's stuff is incompetent and lazy quite often, they mostly didn't reply or replied with response we can't do so. Contacting Symantec wasn't helpful as well - they recommended to talk to email provider's stuff.

Eventually we set up mail routing for those domains via other server/domain - whichever worked in each case. It's tedious to maintain but there is no way around. Using well known email service is not a guarantee as well - some email services might block it for no reason or just use product which is blocking it.

Summarising, I'd focus on improving deliverability in any possible way without wasting time for communication.

[joshpangell]

Thanks for the advice

[gvb]

At a previous job, I had this problem as well. A few filter providers block extremely aggressively and are totally unresponsive to requests.

I ended up "routing around" their brokenness by using an email delivery service (search for "email delivery service") for emails that went to domains for whom they provided filtering service.

The one I used ended up being bought by dyn https://dyn.com/email/ - the service worked well several years ago, no idea if they are still good. Amazon has SES (https://aws.amazon.com/ses/). There are quite a few others.

[joshpangell]

Thanks. It isn't email that is getting blocked, viewing the domain in a browser. Looks like the domain potentially used to host malware.

[r12477]

If this is the case, how feasible is it to adopt a new domain name? I understand that this may not be desirable, but given what appears to have been a maligned history, it may be the most prudent course of action to ensure that your new product does not suffer from guilt-by-association.

[joshpangell]

That'd be a last resort if we can't get it somehow whitelisted. But since the product isn't live, it is technically still possible.

[KayL]

Huh? Then how do you know other security products haven't blocked it? I'd say change it if it has bad records. And I'd do some research to see what that Domain used for before.

[joshpangell]

Update: I finally got through to Akamai. Got a tip from someone to email [e-mail] instead of abuse@. I received a response within a day or so and got the domain unblocked by Nomium.