Advice needed: Spamhaus blocklisting Njalla domains

General
1

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone can help me out with a really frustrating issue I’m having with my email. For the last couple of years, I’ve had a domain registered with Njalla. Even with alerts from other users (see https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/s/4A4TXPCG0S) I decided to use one of those domains as email custom domain in Protonmail.

As “expected”, my outgoing emails started getting rejected because my domain was suddenly listed on Spamhaus.

Spamhaus flat-out refused to remove my domain. They told me my domain is in an “Internet neighbourhood with a poor reputation” because of Njalla’s network and that it would keep happening. They basically said my only option is to transfer my domain to a different registrar with a “good reputation,” and they even discouraged from moving to another privacy-friendly option like 1984.

I’ve talked to support from both ProtonMail and Njalla, and both essentially said their hands are tied and there’s nothing they can do.

So, I feel stuck. Refusing to delist my domain seems to me a direct fight against privacy and anonymity. I understand that many bad actors might use such service and that blocking the registrar (maybe) might make sense from the security side of things. However, refuse to delist a user who can prove legitimacy looks like an attempt to kill the privacy-oriented business model.

Has anyone else gone through this? Is there any way to fight Spamhaus on this “bad neighbourhood” thing, or is transferring away from Njalla really the only fix? If I have to move, are there any registrars that are both privacy-respecting and have a good enough reputation to avoid these blacklists?

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks

2

I just checked my njalla domains and none are blacklisted by Spamhaus. Did you set SPF, DMARC, and DKIM records appropriately? Are aliases correctly set as allowed senders? Also what TLD is it if you don’t mind sharing?

Why was it expected? Are your mails not transactional?

3

Yes, it’s all set according the proton instructions, so I assume it’s all correctly set.

I said it’s was expected to be blocklisted because the history behind it. Check the link to the Reddit forum I posted above. They said I was blocklisted because my domain is on a neighborhood “with poor reputation” and because of that I’m no eligible from being delisted. The only ways, according to spamhaus, is change my domain to another registrar.

Just for clarification I use this domain in my nextcloud instance, to notify users and my self. I have total control of sent messages and none of them was improperly sent.

The other domain I use as my personal email was not affected.