Click here to immediately register your IPv6 address (for free)!

With the introduction of IPv6 the number of IP addresses from which email can origin increased from 2^32 to 2^128. Many antispam technologies rely on the historical reputation of IP addresses to score the traffic originating from the mailserver, in order to accurately block the spam. With IPv6 however there are so many IPs, that it will be impossible to list all the IPv6 IPs from which spam is originating. The spammers will simply have access to too many such addresses. This presents a problem for traditional spam blocking.

The introduction of IPv6 offers a unique opportunity to do things differently. The idea is very simple. Any human is able to register his/her mailserver IPv6 address(es) for free on this website. By requiring mailserver administrators to register their IPv6 mailservers, we create a list of “registered mailservers”, the inverse of which will automatically be a list of “non-registered mailservers”. The list “registered mailservers” will  be extremely small compared to the total list of available IPv6 addresses. Thanks to this simple distinction, we can simply block all traffic originating from “non-registered mailservers” by default, which will generally be hijacked computers that form the so called “botnets“. Also, anyone can keep track of IP reputation again, thanks to the relatively small list of registered IPv6 mailservers to track.

Unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world, which is why it is extremely important to keep this initiative open and accessible to anyone. Therefore there are NO technical restrictions, and there is not even a judgment of the IPs registered. Once you are registered, and receive at least a lookup once yearly, the IP will never be automatically removed from the whitelist.

In order to have a successful whitelist, it is extremely important that every mailserver is indeed registered. The only way to accomplish this, is to have a sufficient number of parties blocking the traffic from unregistered mailservers. Therefore the IPv6 mailserver whitelist is only accessible to supported countries. Any country can query the list to block the non-mailserver traffic from these supported countries, however to register your IP (and be part of this initiative) you will require to have your IP address registered with an address set to a supported country. To become a supported country, it is required that at least 3 industry players decide to support the IPv6 mailserver whitelist initiative to ensure sufficient pressure on the mail servers.

Hence, this initiative will:

  • reduce the chance for legitimate mailservers to be blocked by blacklists
  • reduce the volume of spam originating from the supporting countries
  • reduce the resources needed for antispam filtering world-wide

Supported countries:

  • The Netherlands