domain sms blacklist

Hey there @thewwwguy. Let's take a look at why texts with your domain are being filtered out. 

We can use some additional information to help us get to the bottom on this. 

• Does your company currently have service with AT&T? If so, we would like to bring you in to a Direct Message to be able to further assist. 
• Are the customers who are unable to send the link with your domain AT&T customers? If so, we do recommend each individual customer to reach out to us, so we can take a look. 
• When you said the link is blocked/filtered, does that mean the customers are getting a page that says blocked or is it not popping up at all to click the link? If the customers are able to click the link but shows up as blocked, then they will need to check the webhost. 
• Also, what messaging application are the customers using when sending out the texts? It may be what is blocking website. 

You may want to reach out to Web Host Support for additional information. 

We do look forward to your response, so we can proceed with our next steps. 

Clarissa, AT&T Community Specialist 

@thewwwguy 

For email block issues, you'll need to reach out directly to our postmaster. 

ChrisZ

Have you found a solution to your problem? I seem to be experiencing the exact same issue and I don't know where to start. I thought it was something with my phone and carrier but no one can text anything if it includes our domain in the message. Regardless of what mobile carrier they use. I'm hoping you could give me a pointer if you found a solution to your issue.

Sadly no... we have spent literally months researching and have spoken with numerous techies and managers at a variety of cell carriers. What we have been able to determine is there DEFINITELY IS a blacklist function of sorts. There's actually an entire "middle market" of companies that provide the service to the carriers themselves (in fact, even when speaking with senior managers at carriers virtually none of them had any idea). We were able to prove this was happening in several cases to open-minded managers who ultimately had no answers but were able to direct us to places where we confirmed this is happening. There seem to be 2-3 main companies providing this service to each/all of the cell carriers. So that's why you can be blocked on one but not another.

It is very odd, that this is not a better documented or explained model in the industry so that reputable companies can abide by the guidelines (similarly to how email marketing and blacklisting works). In our case, our company doesn't even send SMS messages at all, ever. Yet we were being blocked, presumably as a result of lots of our customers texting their coded link to their friends (a link that gets them credit for doing so in our system, and contains our domain in the URL, thus somehow the blocking service was likely assuming our company was the one sending out these texts).

Anyway... all I can say is, good luck. It's extremely frustrating as no one at the carriers can give you answers. And if you are looking to send mass SMS then obviously you would want to follow applicable rules and guidelines that should be publicly set out by carriers just as ISPs have done for email. Where is the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for the world of SMS?

In our case the problem did eventually clear up. Perhaps (as with warming an IP for email marketing) it was just an issue when we first launched our customer referral program and there was a sudden spike of SMS with our domain in it, but over time the shadowy middle company algorithms started allowing texts with our domain to go through again. Who knows. 

I am having the same issue. Did your blacklist get corrected?  If so, what department took care of.  I can't get any one to understand what is going on when I call AT&T.  I have about 1000 AT&T customers that aren't getting SMS, which these alerts pertain to banking information.  So I have lots of unhappy customers.  

Can you send me an email [email scrubbed].  I would like to see if you can help me. 

Please and thanks, 

Hello, I am having the same issue.  Did your issue with blacklisting by AT&T get fixed.  If so who or what department addressed the issue.  I have tried numerous times and I can't get anyone AT&T even try to understand what I am taking about.  One minute my customers are receiving SMS text and then it stopped.  So that tells me we have been blocking.  I have over 1000 AT&T customers that were getting their SMS text which pertain to banking information and now I have 1000 that are complaining. 

So can you send me an email [email scrubbed].

I would appreciate some advice and help in this matter. 

No... in fact after much additional discussion with the AT&T (also T-Mobile) tech team it's clear there is currently no solution. i.e. in our case it's our customers sending person to person texts so none of the traditional "commercial" messaging solutions can even be applied as we don't send SMS text as a company. We ended up just purchasing a couple 100 additional domains and coding them to rotate and be used in our coded URLs so they send fine until they get blocked, then we just rotate to the next one. Very stupid solution, and obviously not what AT&T or T-Mobile would like either but they are not providing any alternative and we find ourselves in a crack with no solution. If you are a huge company like Amazon with an affiliate program your customers' texts with your coded URL link will deliver just fine. But if you are a smaller business (even $10-20 M per year) you are apparently out of luck... and/or can invest in work arounds like we did until the goliath carriers decide to provide an option that actually works for the market. 

Thanks for you input.  Sounds like AT&T just don't care about us little people.  Wonder how they would like it if they lost 1000 customers with anywhere from 3 to 7 lines.

I may have to get my IT person to look into buy additional domains and code them to rotate.   That is so crazy. 

Totally agree, and behind the scenes so do their people... last thing we want to do is tell our customers they need to switch carriers simply to be able to share their referral link (but truth be told, a lot of them have done just that). It's just not the way any of this should be done. Companies should be working together. Oh well. ;-(