The likely reason you’re landed here is because your email server’s IP got back listed by UCEPROTECT or you’re wondering what or who UCEPROTECT is.

What is UCEPROTECT Network?

The subject has been discussed at length on various technical forums, including AWS and Trend Micro. Uceprotect is a one man show operated by an entity going by Claus von Wolfhausen (love the moniker ). He’s known to take rather aggressive approach and tends to backlist entire subnets and address blocks indiscriminately because of a single IP being suspected source of spam. And he demands to get paid to be removed from his purgatory.

In order to get your IP(s) whitelisted/delisted you get directed to http://www.whitelisted.org – a website registered and hosted in Germany.

Unlike known and reputable blacklists, one must pay him (in Swiss Francs) 25CHF/month – 70CF/year to maintain his whitelisted status. There’s no option to get white listed without paying.

The ” Free of charge removal” option means you if play nicely and send NO spam, your IP address temporarily listed as Level 1 will automatically expire after seven days. Sit back and relax.

If you to read his Help page (which sounds like a rant) it becomes apparent he has no intentions to unblock or whitelist any IPs, even though you jumped through setting up SPF, DMARC or DKIM hoops for your servers.

This model has a strong whiff of extortion.

What’s the solution or a workaround?

Although Barracuda Networks and Trend Micro have acknowledged the resurgence of the malicious activity in January 2020, they don’t seem to offer any viable solution.

At this time, a workaround is to contact recipient’s postmaster to stop using UCEProtect, which is unpractical and not scalable.

If your email gets rejected by Comcast you need to go to this link  http://postmaster.comcast.net/smtp-error-codes.php#BL001000  then reach out to see if Comcast is blocking your IP due to UCEProtect list. If it is UCEProtect, then adding the IP address on their firewall or exception list in their mail settings will allow the emails through.

Below is a verbatim copy of whitelisting request pages from the UCEPROTECT website:

WHITELISTING IS RECOMMENDED FOR IP 209.222.82.241.

Your IP is listed in UCEPROTECT Level-3.

Since your IP wasn’t directly involved in abuse, you can exclude your IP from neigborhood blocklists as UCEPROTECT Levels 2 and 3 and others that are importing our whitelist, by registering your IP with us.

Registration is available for 1 Month (25 CHF), 6 Month (50 CHF), 12 Month (70 CHF), 24 Month (90 CHF)

PLEASE NOTE: Registering your IP with us doesn’t give you a free ride for spamming / portscanning / hacking.
Exclusion from UCEPROTECT Levels 2 and 3 will only affect the DNSBL Zones if no abuse originates from your IP.
If your IP is seen spamming / portscanning / hacking after you registered with us, we will drop your IP from our whitelist-zone
ips.whitelisted.org immediatley and we will list your IP at our blocklist UCEPROTECT-Level 1 for abuse instead.

You will get notified to your Paymentserviceaccount’s E-Mailaddress if that happens or in case your subscription ends.

Register my IP 209.222.82.241 with ips.whitelisted.org and exclude it from UCEPROTECT Level 2 and 3 for   1 Month (25 CHF)  6 Month (50 CHF) 12 Month (70 CHF) 24 Month (90 CHF)  

IP 54.175.129.112 QUALIFIES TO BE WHITELISTED.

Your IP is currently not listed in UCEPROTECT Level 2 nor 3, but registering improves your trustworthy at commercial UCEPROTECT-Systems
and other users of ips.whitelisted.org and it can prevent your IP to become listed in CIDR or ASN blocklists as UCEPROTECT Levels 2 or 3.

Registration is available for 1 Month (25 CHF), 6 Month (50 CHF), 12 Month (70 CHF), 24 Month (90 CHF) .

PLEASE NOTE: Registering your IP with us doesn’t give you a free ride for spamming / portscanning / hacking.
Exclusion from UCEPROTECT Levels 2 and 3 will only affect the DNSBL Zones if no abuse originates from your IP.
If your IP is seen spamming / portscanning / hacking after you registered with us, we will drop your IP from our whitelist-zone
ips.whitelisted.org immediatley and we will list your IP at our blocklist UCEPROTECT-Level 1 for abuse instead.

You will get notified to your Paymentserviceaccount’s E-Mailaddress if that happens or in case your subscription ends.

Register my IP 54.175.129.112 with ips.whitelisted.org and exclude it from UCEPROTECT Level 2 and 3 for   1 Month (25 CHF)  6 Month (50 CHF) 12 Month (70 CHF) 24 Month (90 CHF)  

An example of an NDR:

Remote Server returned ‘554 5.7.1 <domain that rejected the email> #5.7.1 smtp; 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host ] blocked using uceprotect.net

 Remote Server returned ‘554 5.0.0 <domain that rejected the email> #5.0.0 smtp; 550-XXX Anti Spam Engine has blocked this Email because the sender IP 550 Address is blacklisted.>’

 <email@address>: host <host that reject the email> error: said: 553 NET 52.58.62.0/24 is UCEPROTECT- listed 

host [x.x.x.x] said: 550-Blacklisted in dnsbl-3.uceprotect.net: 550-Your ISP AMAZON-02 – Amazon.comm Inc. US/AS16509 is UCEPROTECT-Level3 550-listed for hosting a total of xxxxx abusers. See: 550 http://www.uceprotect.net/rblcheck.php?ipr=x.x.x.x (in reply to RCPT TO command)