Question Help! Just found my IP address is “blacklisted”! Are the emails I’ve sent compromised? Not a tech wizard!

[Cassie2011]

Just set up this business email and sent out quite a few emails today to potential clients. Now I find out that my home ISP IP address and phone IP, which I used both of to send the emails are messed up!

According to Talos
-Sender IP Reputation- Poor
-Listed on PBL.SPAMHAUS.ORG
-Spam level- Critical
-Phone results shows a list of 29 “Top IPs used to send emails in (insert my ip here)” *Don’t see any “top ips” on my home ip check

According to Blacklist Check
-dsnl.sorbs.net
-dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net *Don’t see either of these on my phone ip check

I don’t have a complex network setup. Regular Comcast internet here at the house and Verizon Wireless 5G. Have never sent spam mail. Latest model modem/router installed a few months ago.

Is this as scary as it sounds and what can I do to fix this? Are all the emails I’ve sent likely compromised? Super worried I’ve sabotaged myself now….

-Any insights much appreciated.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

If this is residential home internet, then your designated IP address is not static and will change at times which means that among all the IP addresses they have to give to their customers, when it came to the random assigning you got one that was most likely used previously by someone else who was doing these scam things.
To clarify just a bit further, let's say you've had service with this company for 5 years or whatever, in that 5 years you would have most likely gone through a few different IP addresses in that time because you don't get to keep the same IP forever unless you special request it or even pay for it to be like that.

Business IP addresses are usually static though.

Contact your ISP and let them know the IP they've given you is bad and try to get another one.

 

[Cassie2011]

If this is residential home internet, then your designated IP address is not static and will change at times which means that among all the IP addresses they have to give to their customers, when it came to the random assigning you got one that was most likely used previously by someone else who was doing these scam things.
To clarify just a bit further, let's say you've had service with this company for 5 years or whatever, in that 5 years you would have most likely gone through a few different IP addresses in that time because you don't get to keep the same IP forever unless you special request it or even pay for it to be like that.

Business IP addresses are usually static though.

Contact your ISP and let them know the IP they've given you is bad and try to get another one.

Thanks so much for your reply. Yes this is residential. Does this mean a high likelyhood many of my emails have likely not gone through to potential clients all this time. I’m sweating….

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Thanks so much for your reply. Yes this is residential. Does this mean a high likelyhood many of my emails have likely not gone through to potential clients all this time. I’m sweating….

I have no idea. Based on what you are saying I am thinking that you are using some sort of tunneling service for your emails??? and that they can block your IP from using their service??? If so, then I guess it's possible no emails went through but I would have no idea since I don't know what you are talking about. For both personal and business I have used either Google or custom domain name email from personal hosting so I don't know about this "talos" thing sorry.
Guess you can reach out to whoever that is and ask them to look into it for you? assuming whatever service you are using has any sort of customer support that is.

 

[Cassie2011]

I have no idea. Based on what you are saying I am thinking that you are using some sort of tunneling service for your emails??? and that they can block your IP from using their service??? If so, then I guess it's possible no emails went through but I would have no idea since I don't know what you are talking about. For both personal and business I have used either Google or custom domain name email from personal hosting so I don't know about this "talos" thing sorry.
Guess you can reach out to whoever that is and ask them to look into it for you? assuming whatever service you are using has any sort of customer support that is.

I don’t know what you mean by tunneling service. I just have regular Wi-Fi no complex network setup. I don’t know about complex setups and all that. For Talos Intelligence it just checks the integrity of your ISPs IP and it gave me back those results which led me here. https://talosintelligence.com/. Please let me know if I’ve communicated my issue better now.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

I don’t know what you mean by tunneling service. I just have regular Wi-Fi no complex network setup. I don’t know about complex setups and all that. For Talos Intelligence it just checks the integrity of your ISPs IP and it gave me back those results which led me here. https://talosintelligence.com/. Please let me know if I’ve communicated my issue better now.

If you are using a third party service to send emails (i.e. Gmail, Microsoft Outlook/Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) then your personal IP address will have nothing to do with those emails going in or out.
Even if using an email client application on your computer, as long as it's connecting to a third party service for emails, then it doesn't matter.

Otherwise, if you have set up your own email server at home and are using it for emails and your IP address is blacklisted, it's possible your emails didn't make it to whoever assuming whatever email service those people use blocked any incoming emails from your IP. Could've gone into spam for them as well if not outright blocked. Not guaranteed just a possibility.

 

[Cassie2011]

If you are using a third party service to send emails (i.e. Gmail, Microsoft Outlook/Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) then your personal IP address will have nothing to do with those emails going in or out.
Even if using an email client application on your computer, as long as it's connecting to a third party service for emails, then it doesn't matter.

Otherwise, if you have set up your own email server at home and are using it for emails and your IP address is blacklisted, it's possible your emails didn't make it to whoever assuming whatever email service those people use blocked any incoming emails from your IP. Could've gone into spam for them as well if not outright blocked. Not guaranteed just a possibility.

Okay this sounds promising! I have GoDaddy as my email provider. I use MS 365 Outloook software downloaded to my pc, or the mail app on my phone to send the emails. So these count as third party services that are not affected by my ISPs sketchy IP address ?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Okay this sounds promising! I have GoDaddy as my email provider. I use MS 365 Outloook software downloaded to my pc, or the mail app on my phone to send the emails. So these count as third party services that are not affected by my ISPs sketchy IP address ?

Is GoDaddy hosting an email service on their servers? Or are you just using them to register a domain name for your emails that directs to your personal IP and you are doing all email hosting on your computer?

 

[Cassie2011]

Is GoDaddy hosting an email service on their servers? Or are you just using them to register a domain name for your emails that directs to your personal IP and you are doing all email hosting on your computer?

I’m pretty sure the former, but how would I know for sure? It is “Microsoft 365 Email Essentials From GoDaddy”. I never put my ISPs IP in anything ever setting anything up. GoDaddy also has a webmail portal where I can also access my emails.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

I’m pretty sure the former, but how would I know for sure? It is “Microsoft 365 Email Essentials From GoDaddy”. I never put my ISPs IP in anything ever setting anything up. They have a webmail portal where I can also log in and access my emails.

Yeah that means they are the email hoster if you log into their servers with a username and password to access emails. You can use any email client it doesn't have to be 365 btw. All the client on your system is doing is remotely connecting you to the service, the emails themselves are still going to and from the GoDaddy servers and are not associated with your IP address.

 

[Cassie2011]

Yeah that means they are the email hoster if you log into their servers with a username and password to access emails. You can use any email client it doesn't have to be 365 btw. All the client on your system is doing is remotely connecting you to the service, the emails themselves are still going to and from the GoDaddy servers and are not associated with your IP address.

Thank you! The people at GoDaddy must not be educated enough! They told me that my ISPs risky IP could affect the receiving of my emails! Why would they scare me like that!!?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Thank you! The people at GoDaddy must not be educated enough! They told me that my ISPs risky IP could affect the receiving of my emails! Why would they scare me like that!!?

what they probably meant was that it might cause issues with getting the emails from their servers to your client, but if they are hosting everything on their servers, you should still be able to see those emails by logging in through a web browser.

You should still contact your ISP about the IP issue and see if you can get a new one that isn't blacklisted.

 

[Cassie2011]

what they probably meant was that it might cause issues with getting the emails from their servers to your client, but if they are hosting everything on their servers, you should still be able to see those emails by logging in through a web browser.

You should still contact your ISP about the IP issue and see if you can get a new one that isn't blacklisted.

Oh no they made it clear that it could affect the receiveability of my outgoing emails… they related the IP to akin of like a zip code of a sketchy neighborhood that recipients setups might reject…

And if this risky ip won’t affect my emails may I ask why do you recommend I change it?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Oh no they made it clear that it could affect the receiveability of my outgoing emails… they related the IP to akin of like a zip code of a sketchy neighborhood that recipients setups might reject…

And if this risky ip won’t affect my emails may I ask why do you recommend I change it?

If it's on a blacklist that could make it difficult to use your home internet with some services out there and the last thing you want is to get blocked from using whatever online services you want.
And if the way things are set up is that the email has to first be sent from the client to the servers to then be sent out to clients, then it's possible that could be what causes issues as they are mentioning.

It would just be best all around to not have a problematic IP.

 

[Cassie2011]

If it's on a blacklist that could make it difficult to use your home internet with some services out there and the last thing you want is to get blocked from using whatever online services you want.
And if the way things are set up is that the email has to first be sent from the client to the servers to then be sent out to clients, then it's possible that could be what causes issues as they are mentioning.

It would just be best all around to not have a problematic IP.

My apologies for so many questions. I would greatly appreciate your clarification one last time.

I’m not sure what “if the way things are set up is that the email has to first be sent from the client to the servers to then be sent out to clients, then it's possible that could be what causes issues as they are mentioning,” means.

Is me using non webmail programs like outlook software having that setup? And this would cause my isp ip to be tracked and maybe blocked since my isp ip is on block lists?

thank you for all the help you’ve provided me. I made this forum way more convoluted than it had any right to be based on my simple setup/question yet confused mind…

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

My apologies for so many questions. I would greatly appreciate your clarification one last time.

I’m not sure what “if the way things are set up is that the email has to first be sent from the client to the servers to then be sent out to clients, then it's possible that could be what causes issues as they are mentioning,” means.

Is me using non webmail programs like outlook software having that setup? And this would cause my isp ip to be tracked and maybe blocked since my isp ip is on block lists?

thank you for all the help you’ve provided me. I made this forum way more convoluted than it had any right to be based on my simple setup/question yet confused mind…

Depending on how the mail client works.
Let's just assume it's handled in a way where the client generates the email in full, then has to send that out to the mail server, who then has to forward it to whoever. That process of first needing it to be sent to the server means data is coming from your IP initially, at which point, if GoDaddy felt like it, they could ultimately block your IP from sending data to their servers because of the IP being on a blacklist.
Who really knows though.

Just get a new IP address and forget about having any issues.

 

[Cassie2011]

Depending on how the mail client works.
Let's just assume it's handled in a way where the client generates the email in full, then has to send that out to the mail server, who then has to forward it to whoever. That process of first needing it to be sent to the server means data is coming from your IP initially, at which point, if GoDaddy felt like it, they could ultimately block your IP from sending data to their servers because of the IP being on a blacklist.
Who really knows though.

Just get a new IP address and forget about having any issues.

Okay, thanks. I imagine as long as the emails go through the sending process without error and are in the sent mail folder on all devices this means that GoDaddy did not block the transmission?