Help! My site is being blocked

[lebowski99]

I have a small vbulletin forum for sports chat associated with a university. In the last week or two, many of my active posters have reported that my site is being blocked by their work filter. Reason listed is typically phishing, but also adult content (we have neither). At first I worried that someone had posted a link to a malicious site, but I can't find anything. My new theory is that we have a disgruntled former poster that is maliciously reporting my site to various filtering services. We had a DDoS attack a couple of years ago, so there is someone out there with an axe to grind.

Either way, I am desperate to get this resolved. Most of our activity is during a work day so if we get universally blocked it could kill us. Anyone experience something like this before? Is there any way to get a list of widely used filtering services and see what they blacklist and why?

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To clarify, the "disgruntled former poster" is just a theory. It could be anything.

[In Omnibus]

Check with honeypot projects like:

https://www.spamhaus.org/
https://www.projecthoneypot.org/
https://stopforumspam.com/

They can not only tell you if your site is listed but who reported it, why, and how to get it removed.

[lebowski99]

Originally Posted by ProSportsForums

Check with honeypot projects like:

https://www.spamhaus.org/
https://www.projecthoneypot.org/
https://stopforumspam.com/

They can not only tell you if your site is listed but who reported it, why, and how to get it removed.

Thanks. Tried all those, but couldn't find anything.

[Dave]

Does your domain name contain any keywords that may be blocked by the firewall?
Any content or keywords on the site that got it blocked perhaps?

[lebowski99]

Originally Posted by Dave

Does your domain name contain any keywords that may be blocked by the firewall?
Any content or keywords on the site that got it blocked perhaps?

No. It has been active for several years with no issues.

[Dave]

If you know the company or the firewall/filter service, you could reach out to them. I'm sure they can tell you why/what is happening.

Also feel free to PM me the domain name and I can take a look at it.

[BirdOPrey5]

It could just be being blocked because it's not a site that has any reason to accessed by the employees of said companies. The adult/phishing message is probably just a generic message set by the IT staff.

Sometimes you can get around this by having an alternate domain pointing to the same forum (easy on VB3, possible on VB4, but not possible on VB5.)

In that case you get a domain name that sounds somewhat professional so it doesn't stick out if someone is reviewing a list of accessed domain names and only share it privately with those who get blocked on the main domain name.

You need to "park" the additional domain with your hosting account.

Example- my forum is juot.net but for years an alternate domain was poisonwoodgroup.com, even though juot.net was flagged at many people's jobs poisonwoodgroup worked for years.

Some firewalls can tell its a forum and just block all forums if set to, regardless of domain.

The people who did get fully blocked at work just access via their phones these days.