Apparently, a lot of DigitalOcean IPs are added to some SPAM database called UCEPROTECT [2] and I just found out that some large companies (microsoft/outlook exchange etc) uses this list to block emails from an entire domain IF this domain is on this list.

DO is one our primary server provider and looks like tons of their iP is on this list by default because 100%, we don't do any spamming. We run a legitimate SAAS business and this is very concerning as a customer who pays thousands of dollars a month to DO.

The part that is really troubling is that now to unblock a specific IP, we have to PAY these guys. The amount is not the issue for me but as a principle, it feels like a Ransom and I absolutely hate paying a random 3rd party when I know we are not at fault directly.

Does anyone at HN know what's going on here ?

I googled DO's support on this and found that they are replying with generic answers on this which is not good enough. [0]. Also found an interesting reddit article on this [1]

[0] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-removed-my-ip-as-blacklisted-in-uceprotectl3-spam

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/eur4ju/removal_from_uceprotectl3_blacklist/

[2] http://www.uceprotect.net/