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Why do some hosts block port 25 on 'clean' IPs

General Discussion by cleardmitri 3 replies 143 views
2 #1

Got a new /29 from Hetzner. Spotless history. No spam, no blacklists. Port 25 blocked at upstream level. Support says "policy." What gives? This is standard VPS tier, not residential.

Basically I just need to relay alerts from my monitoring stack to my own mail gateway. Not running a mail service. Sorry if this is dumb, sir/ma'am, but I checked all the RBLs and my IP is clean please help. Never had this issue with my old provider.

Is there an appeal process? What do I tell support to escalate? I used https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx to verify — anything else I should check? Please help and thank you.

No logs, no proof. I have logs.
#2
cleardmitri said:
I checked all the RBLs and my IP is clean

Basically I thought clean IPs meant clean, like, everywhere? Please help. My old provider never did this and I checked teh RBLs like ten times. Is there a form or something I can fill out sir/ma'am? Basically I just need alerts for my homelab please help.

#3

The upstream dont care. Contabo did same to me on a €4/mo VPS. Had to pay €5 extra for "mail enable". A lot of hosts do this now. Definitely check if Hetzner has a paid unblock. Im on Vultr now, $3/mo, port 25 works but they receive complaints fast.

#4

Now the upstreams—Level3 types, the real carriers—pressure hosts into blanket blocks because it's cheaper than handling abuse tickets. Kids these days think "clean" means a Spamhaus lookup, but the blocklists don't matter if the ASN itself is flagged as "consumer grade." Mark my words: within five years port 25 will be a paid add-on everywhere, if it isn't already.

Your appeal letter needs to cite:

  • Your use case
  • Your domain's age
  • Your willingness to accept liability

I've written dozens. Most fail. The ones that work go to a human at the NOC, not the front-line support drone reading from a script.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me

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