Uceprotect, a good guy or a bad guy?
August 13th, 2008 by bfebrianThere are some users reported to me that emails to certain domains are being rejected. After further check, I realized that the emails are being blocked by uceprotect.
This is the error message
—– Transcript of session follows —– … while talking to
some.domain.com.:
>>> DATA
<<< 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
blocked
using dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net; Net xxx.xxx.0.0/16 is UCEPROTECT-Level2 listed
because of 301 abusers. Your ISP xxx has to fix this. See:
httpx://www.uceprotect.net/rblcheck.php?ipr=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
<<< 554 5.5.1 Error: no valid recipients
I heard about uceprotect before, how they block the entire ISP’s IP just because of some users of that ISP sending spam emails, but never though that will happen to me.
Normal rbl (dnsl) usually only block certain IP’s, but this uceprotect “smart” and “brave” enough to block the whole ISP’s IP range.
Simply said that I’m getting punished by uceprotect because somebody else spams. That is stupid.
I try so hard to make my IP’s clean, by removing viruses and make sure that no spam going outside through my mail servers. But my hard work is not enough, I still got blocked by uceprotect because somebody else spams.
Uceprotect in their website suggest that I should change ISP, that not that easy, and certainly not cheap.
So, I use a shortcut. I contact the admin of the domain that use uceprotect, and asked politely if it possible for them not to use uceprotect for emails from my domains. I gave them every information they need and explain my situations, and thankfully they agreed and approved my request.
Uceprotect may be want to be a good guy in spam fighter, but to me, uceprotect simply a bad guy.
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Posted in Mail and Spam Related | 23 Comments »
December 8th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I’m a subscriber Teksavvy, a very transperant indy ISP, and they just got hit by the uceprotect blacklist. It doesn’t give a rationale, only a zealous and angry message telling me my ISP is evil.
And now I notice they charge to have ISPs removed from the list! Sounds like extortion. I agree with your ‘bad guy’ statement. This kind of attitude on their part doesn’t help fight spam, only discredit these lofty ‘global blacklists’.
January 17th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I agree, UCEPROTECT IS EXTORTING BY FIRST HOLDING YOU AT RANSOM. I would not use them as a blacklist on my server knowing of this practice.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
They say they don’t block email addresses, just publish lists of IP addresses reported to have sent spam. That’s probably as bad and, if the data they collect is false, then they may be publishing libellous statements. They are so utterly arrogant that they will never admit to even the possibility of having made a mistake, whilst their “express removal service”, costing 50 euros, is little short of blackmail. Their threat to leave one’s IP address blacklisted indefinitely if one dares to take any legal action against them clearly shows them for what they are: thugs and bullies. I am not a lawyer, but I dare say that were that to be attempted, it would rightly be considered to be a contempt of court and the BOFHs at UCEPROTECT might well end up in the slammer.
Whilst I am not sure if they are nazis, plain crooks, or something in between, I am quite sure that they are causing damage to the Internet just as much as – or even more than – the UCE they claim they are trying to stop.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Totally agreed.
I wish that every mail administrator unsubscribe from uceprotect and use another dns based spam protection like spamcop or else.
Uceprotect simply is a bad guy.
March 15th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Uceprotect add to the list one of my customer becouse its worker go to vacation and set autorespond about that. Response was sent to server protected by uceprotect (it was 5 replays to 5 persons – one per person).
Uceprotect is totaly anonymous. Nobody know who they are. Please note, that express delist cost 50euro, and for real you don’t know who takes those money.
March 18th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
we’ve just been blacklisted by them, every other list due to an infected pc removed us immediately, not these guys.. they say to wait 7 days… they are crooks who just want 50 euros of your money. i wish we could put them out of business
April 17th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I had exactly the same problem, some dodgy African spammer hacked into one of my users accounts (easily cracked password). As soon as I discovered it I changed the password and deleted all spam from the mail queues but I still have to wait 4 weeks for my server to be de-listed or pay 50 EUROS. I don’t think so. I changed the primary IP address of my server. Much cheaper!
Phil
June 8th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I just paid these guys to remove us! SvX!
June 9th, 2009 at 7:28 am
@dp, sorry that you must paid to uceprotect.
As an email administrator myself, I know how you feel.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I’ve just received a rejected email from one of our legitimate customers requesting information from our forms. UCE Protect seems structured as an extortion racket which misleads subscribers of their “lists” into thinking that they are “protected”. In our case, because of the Canadian nature of our websites, we firewall out countries such as the ones UCEprotect operates in because of abuse – how can they possibly test/manage mail servers which they are not permitted to access – but they still publish lists to customers who are within our acceptable use realm.
Of course, for 50 Euros, they’re willing to stop hurting your business immediately.
Blackmail. Period.
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:57 am
Have been listed on level 3 because my provider had some ranges that were infected… My IP range was not infected, yet they still listed the whole provider which is second largest in my country. Recently they increased their prices, probably racketing business no longer works that good anymore. Stop paying them and they will cease to exist, so every 2-3 months I wont have to talk to some poor admin to change his list and show why extorsion should not be encouraged.
M
August 6th, 2009 at 10:00 am
UCEPROTECT is a SCAM and nothing more, no matter how they try and package it.
If you find anyone using UCEPROTECT’s so-called lists, advise them of this fact and tell them to drop them like a stone.
They must be cleaning up charging legitimate, well-run mail domains to be “whitelisted” WHEN THEY’VE DONE NOTHING WRONG!
As this is an issue of public interest, please go to the following link and submit a detailed complaint to the European Parliament:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/staticDisplay.do?id=49&language=EN
If they receive enough complaints, they will investigate, and as this tawdry little organisation is operating out of Holland, it should be a simple matter to close them down.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Correction, operating out of Germany.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:37 am
i just get blacklisted due to 1 or 2 user in our ip range get blacklisted.
My ip not in the blacklist but i still have to pay money to get white-listed ?
There are hard to get alternative ISP here. omg.
Where can we complaint them ?
August 31st, 2009 at 2:09 am
Same hear. Just started getting emails bounced back a few days ago. Turns out useprotect added a range of Godaddy.coms IP addresses to their blacklist. Ridiculous. Definitely an extortion scam. Shame on uceprotect. They will get what’s coming to them. Karma has a way of catching up to everyone.
October 24th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Do not be shy to immediately contact and inform the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Office) which is the authority in charge as that website operator in question is seated in Bavaria, Germany under alternating postal addresses. Out of there, they operate nationwide and worldwide.
Please contact
Bundeskriminalamt
65173 Wiesbaden
Germany
phone: +49 – 611 – 55 – 0
fax: +49 – 611 – 55 – 12141
E-mail: info(at)bka.de
Their website is http://www.bka.de
October 28th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
IF I am a spammer I can pay 50 euro every day to get unlisted so my spam gets through
so THIS SYSTEM IS BROKEN
October 29th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
As the ‘company’ operators are German citizens physically lingering in Germany, victims should immediately contact the German government agency BKA which is in charge of transnational crimes and is legally bound to become active on their own behalf in case of a suspicion of such crimes.
Contact:
Bundeskriminalamt
65173 Wiesbaden/Germany
phone.: +49 611 55 – 0
fax: +49 611 55 – 12141
E-mail: info(at)bka.de
Using a fax machine is advisable. Write “organisierte Kriminalität” in the subject heading.
March 31st, 2010 at 9:29 am
I had issues today because of UCEPROTECT. They are a scam and nothing more They are worse than spammers since they will take money to “remove” you from the list. If they care about spam they would not take money at all – this shows they are just a scam.
I got my ISP not to use UCEPROTECT. Someone should start a class action suit againt these scammers.
I have contacted Bundeskriminalamt in Germany with a formal complaint.
April 14th, 2010 at 3:44 am
Contacting police wont help, I think, only educating ISPs and individual mail server operators to ditch such scams will help IMO.
However, since last year things have changed there a bit, now they are explicitely warning users of their lists about what might happen and why. Perhaps because some legal problems they had, so I believe acting on the legal field is no longer productive now, they adapted to avoid prosecution.
I think admins should be really dumb to use their list when they explicitely say “you will lose legitimate mail if you use our lists”.
M
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I am a legitimate business, who has been listed by this bunch of idiots and this is causing a problem for my mails both in and out.
Then I see that they want to charge $18 for a “whitelisting”
Stuff them!!!!!!!
What right do they have to stuff around with my legitimate IP.
I think they are the criminals here and please someone who knows how, take legal action against this bunch of f….g idiots who are stuffing up my business.
August 19th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Out of 70 RBL UCprotect is the only 1 listing softlayer.com containing 550,000 ip addresses.
August 19th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
These crooks are worse than Hitler and the Nazi’s. They have found a way to prey on the fear of spam and to black mail and extort money through this fear. But they can only be stopped if people like gmail and comcast.net stop blindly using them just because they claim to be an RBL. They are evil. For example that have over 550,000 ip addresses for softlayer blocked and since each of those could house 2-10 domains they can block 2 or 3 millions mail servers from these domains. This from about 1700 perceived spam emails. This is very irresponsible for major networks to blindly use an RBl that may be twisted and evil as hell. Why doesn’t a major ISP take action, sue them, report them? They are not protecting their customers or providing the service their customers paid for if they don’t. Black Lists are a unique form of evil. With black lists we don’t need laws or justice. Stand UP and be counted. Our of 70 RBLs UCEprotect is the only 1 listing softlayer.com containing 550,000 ip addresses.