Overview
The Backscatterer blacklist specifically tracks mail servers that send backscatter. Backscatter happens when a mail server receives spam with a forged sender address and then sends a bounce notification to the forged (innocent) address. This effectively makes innocent people secondary victims of spam.
How It Works
Backscatterer deploys numerous honeypot addresses. When these addresses receive bounce notifications (meaning someone forged that address as a spam sender), the mail server that sent the bounce gets logged. IPs that consistently send such bounces get blacklisted.
How to Get Delisted
The fix is to configure your mail server to reject invalid recipients during the SMTP session (rather than accepting first and bouncing later) β this eliminates backscatter at the source. After fixing, request removal at backscatterer.org.