Forums and mailing lists do not like my new e-mail address...

[harrkev]

Forums and mailing lists do not like my e-mail address.
Anybody experts with phpBB?

I have a domain that I purcased a couple of years ago, and it looks like this: <last_name>family.org, where <last_name> is replaced with my last name. My last name is 9 letters long, and all standard alphabet characters (no funny foreign accented characters or anything like that). This domain has been idle for a couple of years, but I got it up and running for e-mail a couple of months ago. In order to control spam, I have created around 100 forwards, and each company or web site gets its own different e-mail address. This is working well so far, but I have hit a couple of snags...

I have encountered a couple of places that have absolutely barfed on any e-mail addresses from this domain, and I have no idea why.

The first is a forum operated by my favorite band, but they are a small band and the forum has very low traffic ( http://www.echocentral.com/forum/ for the curious). It is on phpBB. When I tried to change my account to one of my new e-mail addresses, I was told that the e-mail address was banned. The funny thing is that this domain was only hosted starting a couple of months ago, and I give each web site a different e-mail address, so that address was never used for anything else. I was able to change my e-mail address to one in the domain <my_user_name>.dot5hosting.com, so the forum WILL allow changes to the e-mail address, just not to my domain.

I also encountered a similar problem on a mailing list at http://www.straightdope.com. I tried to create a new subscription to something at that address, and that list also barfed on the e-mail address. However, I was able to change my existing subscription to the new e-mail address, but this still bothers me. My domain causing a problem one place might be a fluke. Doing it twice is a pattern.

** EDIT **
Googling my domain name only brings up a list of posts that I made to Slashdot, and one entry at a who.is.com. So, this leads me to believe that my domain name has not been used by spammers or anything.

 

[bsobel]

Initial thought is your on a domain black list for some reason. Google for RBL and check some of the 'check your domain' options....

 

[harrkev]

Originally posted by: bsobel
Initial thought is your on a domain black list for some reason. Google for RBL and check some of the 'check your domain' options....

Thanks. That was the sort of thing that I was looking for.

The only problem is that my domain came up clean in the first couple of checkers that I tried (one tries 60 lists). So, that must not be the problem. Any other ideas?

 

[bsobel]

Some anti spam systems do heuristics on things like the age of the domain. Its possible that was tripping you up, and as the domain 'ages' your seeing less of a problem. Hard without logs or more data from the site that disallowed you. Any chance you can ask them for a reason, that should shed a lot of light on the issue.

 

[harrkev]

The site was registered about two years ago, but only hosted two months ago.

I will certainly try harder to contact the admin on this forum, but it is a small (but still awesome) band, and the forum does not see much traffic.

Like I said above, the only reason that I bring this up here is that TWO PLACES have barfed on my e-mail addresses so far. That sounds like a pattern.