In the interests of reducing the amount of Spam traffic I handled in the Mid 2000's, we commissioned an RBL system on BlakJak.net.

RBL = Realtime Blocking List. Its a list of IP addresses that I choose not to receive email from, usually because I've received Spam from them - or from their netblock - and generally this is complicated by either a lack of response from the appropriate admins, .... or its from a netblock where I fully don't expect that cooperation (eg half of Asia or South America.)

January 2010: External RBL Access now disabled!
It appears folks can't read; my RBL was for private use only and yet i'm still seeing LOTS Of attempts to use the RBL externally. These attempts are now denied. Again, complaints about being listed in my RBL must be accompanied by examples that prove you're being hampered by my RBL or they will be ignored.

November 2009: READ THIS!!

I am receiving a significant number of 'remove me' and 'whitelist' requests.
These are NOT necessary. I only want to hear from people who are actually being blocked. That is, You MUST supply evidence you are being blocked!.

Requests to be 'whitelisted' or otherwise removed from my RBL will be IGNORED if such evidence is not provided.

October 2009: The RBL is privately owned and operated; It is not offered for use by anyone else. Requests to be unlisted have started to come in from people who're listed in my RBL thanks to some fairly wide range blocks I put in several years ago, It seems rbl.blakjak.net is now referenced on at least one mass-RBL-lookup-site. This is odd as the intended audience for my RBL is me and me only! (And perhaps people I host email for.) In short, I don't expect to hear from people just because I block them. I expect to hear from them, though, if they are actually impacted by my RBL.

So anyway, here's my RBL FAQ....

I can't send an email to [email address]. The error message says youre involved. What do I do?
- Use the Contact Form to send a message explaining your difficulties, including the IP address you're trying to relay from and a copy of the error message. If appropriate, I can whitelist you.

I am the administrator of a blocked IP. How do I get unblocked?
- Demonstrate to me that you can prevent further abuse from your IP and you'll be removed. Contact me as per above.

You dropped my email - but it mentioned SORBS - what now?
- The only lists I use from the SORBS stable are those which list Dynamic IP address space, and space from which email should never originate in the first place. Make sure you're using your ISPs SMTP relay or if you're doing your own relay, that you're in fixed IP address space. Assuming the latter, someone needs to tell SORBS.net. Refer to their website for information on what it is, and how it works - and how to get delisted if appropriate.

You're incorrectly attributing my mail as originating from China or Korea.. - The SinoKorea database I was using as a component of rbl.blakjak.net has been disabled due to identified in accuracies in its source data. You should no longer be seeing this behavior. If you are still seeing this error / bounce, please put a copy through the Contact-Us form.

October 2009: The RBN entry which is blocking my IP is very old!
I've actually had the RBL 'dormant' since the end of 2008 for various reasons; that is, i'm no longer routinely adding hosts to the RBL. I can-and-do manually add specific entries of interest but that's it. I do expect to discover that some of my (legacy/very wide entries) from the past few years will cause a few problems, and I am genuinely interested to hear from anyone who's been inadvertantly blocked. For the meantime however, the RBL continues to trap spam and i'm happy with that.

Also fixed in October 2009: The DNS hostname rbl.blakjak.net resolves correctly in the DNS now. OOops.. :o