Xfinity silently blocks lots of new domains

Posted by dschwartz18 3 days ago

We built a site for a launch and it was unreachable for anyone on an Xfinity router. We only found out because we have an Xfinity router at home. There's no notice to the site owner.

Xfinity's Advanced Security draws on third-party domain reputation lists and blocks at the gateway. We found out a blacklist called SURBL had flagged us. Not sure exactly what tripped it. Since then I've hit the same block on 10+ unrelated sites and told the site owner. Now sharing with everyone here.

How to check whether it's happening to you:

https://spa.xfinity.com/check_url_status If blocked, look for the upstream list: https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx Report at https://spa.xfinity.com/report and call them nonstop (reviews take ~3 business days) and get off the upstream list too.

Trying to help get this out there so it happens to less people who are launching products.

Comments

Comment by ronsor 2 days ago

This is the problem for using email blacklists for non-email purposes. They're barely good for email at that.

Comment by dschwartz18 2 days ago

yeah and they're super outdated. the one that blocked us was SURBL that have no way to contact them besides a form

Comment by gigisfndr 3 days ago

Most useful thanks! I found 3/5 of my sites blocked including my startup website. However on adding www to the url they were reported as not blocked. I requested a review on the non www urls anyway . Shared on my X for what its worth ( small account )

Comment by KomoD 1 day ago

Mine is not on any of the lists yet it's blocked on Xfinity. Fun!

Comment by nateb2022 3 days ago

Interesting, it blocks 3 out of my 4 domains. One of the blocked ones is over a year old.