Symantec is Blocking Ericsson and Others

We have reported several times about our email server being blocked by spam-fighting organizations. While most organizations are quick to respond, some refuse to address the issue and others refuse to even talk to us about the issue. What's most frustrating is that our mail server does not send spam.

We are still blocked by SORBS, who told us without hesitation that, until Amazon pays them money, they're not going to unblock our address. The way they phrased their demands, it sounded like extortion to us. Apparently, they block all Amazon IP addresses and, since our mail server operates in the Amazon EC2 cloud, customers of SORBS are unable to participate on mailing lists we operate on Packetizer, specifically lists.packetizer.com.

More recently, Symantec has become a problem. Sadly, this is an organization that we could generally consider more reputable than others. Unfortunately, the company decided to block our mail server by assigning it a 'bad' reputation. This has affected Ericsson and perhaps other companies that would normally participate in ITU-T SG16 activities.

We tried contacting Symantec and they told us that they will not correct the problem, since we are not their customer. We've tried to explain that their customers are entirely unaware of the fact that they are being blocked, but they did not care. We alerted Ericsson once we became aware of this issue, but we do not have any way of knowing if other companies are blocked due to use of Symantec's Brightmail or other spam blocking services or products offered by Symantec.

If you attempt to join a mailing list on Packetizer and never get a response indicating that you successfully joined and your company uses Symantec products or services, then Symantec may be to blame.