Black List Removal refers to the set of processes, actions and requests adopted in order to remove a Public IP Address from Global Black Lists.
Differently from personal or providers’ blacklists, which block at the private level only some contacts or specific suppliers, global blacklists are public and available for all the ISPs in the world. They are often used by navigation or incoming email filters. The result is that an IP compromised by the inclusion in a blacklist is excluded from most of the communications.

The procedures for Black List Removal should be executed paying attention to suggested instructions available on popular websites such as MxToolBox, DNSBL and SPAMHAUS, which permit the re-evaluation of the IP Reputation of an Internet Network.

Every blacklist adopts different procedures for Black List Removal. In some cases they are easy since it is enough to restore IP Reputation, hence securitizing the net, to be classified again as a trustworthy source of traffic. Sometimes, on the other hand, such practices require complex iters with long presentation and acceptance periods.
The real problem is a request for removal that is repeated in time since this represents an obstacle for cancellation from the lists of “dirty IPs”.

Internet service suppliers make available to their users a specific number of IPs. If they end up in black list, they can ask for removal, but every time they do so the waiting time for removal becomes longer and longer until total compromission is reached, which implies a costly substitution with clean IPs.

For this reason, the more efficient solution is that of intervening with prevention measures by monitoring traffic and by exploiting the same global playlists with a navigation intelligence that is always updated and forbids users from accessing such addresses and hence from compromising their IP reputation.

How can I keep my IP clean?

To correctly approach a preventive maintenance of IP Reputation you need to be aware about the fact that the IP address is involved in every Internet navigation process, email, message on all social platforms.

To avoid having to ask for Black List Removal, the first step can therefore be that of managing internal traffic in your net using a navigation filter that allows you to block ex-ante, forbidding DNS resolution, access to websites considered malicious, infected, illegal and that include inappropriate contents that are subject to warning in international blacklists and could be a way to be the target of Viruses and Hacking attacks, compromising IP Reputation.

DNS intelligence, hence, is the easiest and cheapest tool an Internet service provider can adopt to shield ex-ante the traffic of his users and keep up a good reputation for its IP addresses.

DNS filtering hence plays a fundamental role in avoiding having to resort to Black List Removal.
Several Web Filter solutions are available, but in the next section we will see what made us define FlashStart as the most thorough one.