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Emperor_Crusher's avatar
Emperor_Crusher
New Contributor II
4 years ago
Solved

Business email address blacklisted as spammer

Hello. I have a business email that I have used for over 20 years. Two Months ago, Cox blacklisted it as a spammer. I only send legitimate emails and when I send those communications to my Cox customers, they don't go through. I can't even send personal emails to my dear 80+ year old widowed mother any longer. I have also been a Cox customer for 21 years, having signed up with Roadrunner which was eventually purchased by Cox. That is to say, I have been a very long and hopefully valued customer and would like help.

So far, I have contacted your tier 1 support twice and they have been of no help. They read from a script and tell me over and over that you have stringent spam policies. But if I send a plain text email with only the word TEST in it, it is still blocked as spam. That means that Cox has blacklisted my email address. I have emailed to thisisnotspam@cox.net and that didn't help.

I can email to every other customer other than Cox listed emails, so this is ONLY and definitely a Cox issue.

I need to know the correct and proper process that Cox has in place to UNblacklist email addresses that were mistakenly blacklisted. As a legitimate business owner and long time valued Cox customer, I expect a prompt and successful response. Thank you.

  • I figured it out. Someone just happened to tell me that extra spam protection DNS records had not been set up for my business email account. While looking that over, Office 365 indicated that my SPF record was incorrect. I had not changed it. However, when my website hosting provider moved my account and web page to a faster server and changed the DNS records to match that new server, he mistakenly put his email server's SPF record in place of my correct Office 365 SPF server. That made Cox think I was not a legitimate email account since I was sending from Microsoft, but my SPF record was from another email server. I changed the SPF record to Microsoft's correct information and my emails now go through to Cox. It would have be nice for Cox to have just said, hey, your SPF record is incorrect.

    I thank everyone who gave help at the forum. It was appreciated.

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  • Emperor_Crusher's avatar
    Emperor_Crusher
    New Contributor II

    This is a Cox blacklisting by sending all my emails to spam folders for all Cox customers. If Spam folders are not set up which is the default, they are deleted immediately. I receive NO notifications on my business email that it failed to go through. On my business email side, it appears to have been delivered.

    I have checked my domain against all blacklists and I am on NONE. As I said, this is definitely a Cox issue where they are purposefully blacklisting all my email as spam, regardless of content. Therefore, the email address itself is blacklisted (or perhaps my entire domain name). Regardless, it is a Cox issue and can only be addressed internally.

    I have gotten through to a tier 2 support person after calling tier 1 support four times. That person understood what needed to be done and started a real trouble ticket and I received that ticket number. They require up to 72 hours to respond. If it still not fixed by then, at least I have a ticket number that they should have responded to indicating why they believe my email address should be blacklisted. Stay tuned, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.

  • Emperor_Crusher's avatar
    Emperor_Crusher
    New Contributor II

    I figured it out. Someone just happened to tell me that extra spam protection DNS records had not been set up for my business email account. While looking that over, Office 365 indicated that my SPF record was incorrect. I had not changed it. However, when my website hosting provider moved my account and web page to a faster server and changed the DNS records to match that new server, he mistakenly put his email server's SPF record in place of my correct Office 365 SPF server. That made Cox think I was not a legitimate email account since I was sending from Microsoft, but my SPF record was from another email server. I changed the SPF record to Microsoft's correct information and my emails now go through to Cox. It would have be nice for Cox to have just said, hey, your SPF record is incorrect.

    I thank everyone who gave help at the forum. It was appreciated.

  • Emperor_Crusher's avatar
    Emperor_Crusher
    New Contributor II

    Cox is blocking their own email messages from this forum sent to my Cox email account as spam. This is a screenshot.

  • bearone2's avatar
    bearone2
    Contributor III

    before i came to the forum i checked for spam in webmail, had one from this forum!!!!