
Ask HN: Newly purchased domain blocked by ISP filters – what to do? - joshpangell
I&#x27;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&#x27;s Nomium security product. We&#x27;ve been unable to get any kind of response from them and seem to have no avenues to get through.<p>Anyone have any suggestions on how to get through?
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Someone1234
Did you try contacting them at support@nominum.com (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.

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joshpangell
Excellent idea. Shall try. Thanks!

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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.

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joshpangell
Thanks for the advice

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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/](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/](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/)). There are quite
a few others.

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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.

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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.

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joshpangell
Update: I finally got through to Akamai. Got a tip from someone to email
carrier-support@akamai.com instead of abuse@. I received a response within a
day or so and got the domain unblocked by Nomium.

