Your IP address can earn a bad reputation when suspicious activity is detected. Let’s say you have spam or a virus coming from your IP address. This can get you blacklisted by spam databases or banned by a country’s firewall or a content delivery network.
As a result of blacklisting, anything you email from your website won’t get delivered. Your new subscribers to your website won’t be able to get beyond the initial subscribing stage and won’t receive password approval or your welcome email.
Are You Sharing Your IP Address With a Bad Site?
If another IP address within your content delivery network is blacklisted, then your website’s IP address could also be negatively affected. The bad reputation of another website can rub off on your website.
Most hosting providers will share your IP address with hundreds of other websites. In the event that one of the sites you’re sharing your IP with engages in spam or gets a virus, or is blocked by a country or a large network, your site could also share in the negative fallout.
If you think your IP address has a bad reputation in error, or due to sharing an IP address with a hacked site, you should request an investigation. Inform your web hosting provider of your concerns.
How To Check Your IP Reputation
To find out if your IP address has a bad reputation, you can check it with a number of free online tools, including Barracuda Central, MX Toolbox, What Is My IP Address, and IP Void. For a list of ways to check for potentially malicious websites, check out Zeltser’s list.
You also want to prevent your site from being spamvertised. This is when a hacker has placed a piece of code in your site that redirects viewers to a different and often unsavory website. The hackers send out emails with your website’s redirected link because their own site has already been blacklisted as spam.
WordFence is a great plugin for preventing spamvertising from happening, and if it does find something, they will alert you that your files have changed. If you pay for the premium service, you also get an early warning system built in for spamvertising.
How To Check Who Is On Your IP Address
By doing a reverse domain lookup, you can check to see what other sites share your IP address. You Get Signal is a tool that checks for and lists other sites on your web server. The list isn’t guaranteed to be complete (and it probably isn’t). As long as none of these sites are being blocked by spam monitors, your site won’t share in their bad reputation.
Norton Safe Web or Unmask Parasites will scan a URL to see if it’s safe. If it’s been hacked, infected, or is otherwise unsafe to browse, it’s probably not a site you want to share your IP address with.
How To Deal With Suspicious Activity
In the event you discover an issue with your site’s IP reputation, let your web hosting company know. They can help you to get it sorted out. The better you know your web hosting company, the more reassured you can be that they aren’t allowing questionable sites onto the shared server.
Web hosting companies who are web savvy (particularly those with a team of superheroes) are going to be paying attention, and they will investigate suspicious activity for you. Your IP reputation matters. Make sure you know yours is good.