Hello, I bought a new VPS and didn’t migrate my box yet, I checked the VPS IP, and it’s blacklisted on SpamRATS as “Worst Offender Alert”.
Apparently, the whole VPS provider IP range is on that list, will this blacklist stop me from getting/sending mails to others?
The IP is not on any other lists.
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SpamRATS! will negatively affect your delivery with SOME providers, so my recommendation is to get the listing removed, ask the provider for a new IP (If they have any ranges not blacklisted) or use a smtp relay such as:
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I read mixed opinions on the internet, some people say, quote:
"SpamRats is a very unreliable blacklist. They basically ignore everyone including ISPs, so there are always a good number of innocent sites listed by their system.
Ignore or remove Spamrats and use the more reliable lists like Spamhaus, SpamCop, Truncate, UCEprotect.".
“SpamRats is a cheating “company” that is adding whole IP ranges and after than they try to sell you commercial services provided by their official companies … if you write them an email with demand to stop illegal discreditation of the good name of your company or you will sue them they will remove it within an hour … personal experience”.
Besides, out of all blacklists, I’m only on one blacklist, will mail servers really care that I’m only on ONE blacklist?
It doesn’t seem easy to delist my IP. I talked with the VPS provider company. They said that they are talking with SpamRATS for a few years now without any agreement.
I could try contacting them to try and just delist my single IP, but idk how long that would take and if they would even respond.
This ONE specific blacklist, yes. 
You can try, yes … but they likely will require that your email address matches the IP owner’s email address in WHOIS and since it does not, probably won’t reply.
Unless your provider actively polices their network against spammers, they will get nowhere. To me this is a clear sign that you should be dropping that provider and going elsewhere.
You can remove it from SpamRATS blacklist by paying a fine 
Its about US $100 for the first offense but it could go up as much as US $1000 for repeat offenses.
That sounds suspiciously like the UCEProtect racket. 
Pay a fine? For what? Not doing anything? Like I explained, I bought the VPS and the IP was already blacklisted, in fact not the specific IP but the whole IP range of the cloud provider.
- Why should I pay a fine for something I didn’t do?
- I’m definitely not paying this much to get removed from a shitty spamlist.
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Arm1nas, if you really sent a legal letter threatening to sue SpamRATS, can you please provide a link to that legal letter? This is for transparency reason, so we all know if you really did tell your company lawyers to send such a letter and if yes, we all love to know SpamRATS response.
My VPS provider LightNode.com normally blocks port 25 but they will unblock port 25 when I agreed to pay a security deposit of US $100 per VPS. However, only one of their IPv4 addresses was blacklisted and I agreed to pay SpamRATS a fine of US $1000 and they promptly removed it from the blacklist.
I am running two mail servers, one Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Mail In A Box) and one Windows 2019 Server (MailEnable). Both work smoothly.
Sorry, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I didn’t send a legal letter threatening to sue SpamRATS. I’m not a company, I’m just trying to run a personal email server. Maybe you’ve got confused with my earlier post where I quoted what other people said on the internet about SpamRATS.
Arm1nas, I will answer both your questions:
- Eventhough you did not do the spam abuse, you were using an IPv4 address that was previous abused and the abuser did not pay the fine, so you will have to bear the consequences (called “karma”) and pay the fine for using an abused IPv4 address. If you do not like it, then, you can always request your VPS provider to give you a new IPv4 address that is not blacklisted.
- Its yours right not to pay especially if you think the fine is too much. But it is also the right of SpamRATS to put your IPv4 address in their blacklist as your IP number has bad “karma”.
Take care and stay safe.
Have a nice day.
The provider’s whole IP range is blacklisted, so you’re telling me each user that gets their server with the IP on that range has to pay a fine? Besides like I mentioned below, I talked to the provider, they explained to me that they’re talking to this blacklist and I’m not aware that there were any abuse attempts on this IP range, but SpamRATS simply blocked it because the range didn’t have a set reverse DNS record, so what karma are you talking about.
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I am sorry, but this answer is absolutely lucicrous @sugumaranv …
@Arm1nas your only courses of action are to
-
Demand that your VPS provider provide you a clean IP address.
-
Change to a different VPS provider which cares about their IP reputation.
-
Use a SMTP relay such as my AnyMXRelay
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No, that is not how this works at all. Your VPS provider needs to resolve this with the blacklist.
Your recourse is to demand the provider give you a clean IP address, or one of the other options I already mentioned.
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Do you have any evidence SpamRATS simply blocked the IPv4 range because it did not have a set reverse DNS? Even if it is correct, I personally believe every IPv4 address should have a reverse DNS, so we know more information about that IPv4 address, and thus I will support SpamRATS blacklisting IPv4 addresses without rDNS as anonymous IP numbers must not be allowed to exist.
SpamRATS is backed by Namecheap so they are certainly reputable blacklist.
If your IPv4 address is in a blacklist, this means you cannot send out email but can only receive email. Anyway, you can always request SpamRATS to remove your IPv4 address from the blacklist by paying the fine.
The Internet is a free place and anyone has right to blacklist any spammer as spam is a waste of bandwidth and also time. To many of us, spam causes information overload.
Take care and stay safe.
Have a nice day.
You obviously are against the spirit of the internet. This is not how the internet was designed. It was designed to allow a free flow of information, not to be controlled by corporate or special interests.
alento, I am sorry as I was too quick to make the comment
I made the edit to reflect the changes.
I agree with you the Internet must allow a free flow of information and not be controlled by corporate or special interests. This is why I oppose “blacklists” and one of my mail servers that run on Windows 2019 does not subscribe to any blacklist, ie. I can receive any email, even spam
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Again, this is absolutely incorrect information.
SpamRATS! does not remove IP addresses in exchange for payment. They remove IP addresses upon request from the owner of the IP address in question and upon providing proof that the underlying issue has been mitigated. The OP CANNOT request removal. The request must come from the listed WHOIS contact for the IP range.
I think that you are confused with another very scammy RBL who does indeed do this type of extortion.