What is Outbound SPAM causing you?

It is common to hear about customer complaining that the emails sent by them is not being received by the other parties. And often the reason behind is that the customer sending domain/IP is an victim of blacklisted domain/IP. Why would the domain/IP be blacklisted? or what is blacklisted domain/IP?

Blacklisted IP/Domain are IP or domain listed in a complied listed either of IP/domain that represented source of SPAMMER. These domains/IPs are detected to be sending out mass volume of SPAM and is replicated to different Real-time Blacklist service provider (RBL) or IP reputation watcher. And for anti spam technology using RBL or IP reputation, emails coming from such list are often blocked or diverted to the SPAM folder. So why would the customer domain be blacklisted? They are very sure they are not part of any Spammer organization and they don't sent out mass volume of marketing materials...

As mentioned in my earlier on Outbound SPAM, there are several reason why Outbound SPAM can affect you or your organization and the above reason is one of them as listed below.

Result of sending out SPAM:

1) Domain/IP reputation affected
2) Domain/IP blacklisted resulting in email not being delived
3) Lawsuit
4) Network bandwidth affected
5) Decrease in work efficiency

Any computer or mail server that are compromised can be part of a SPAMMER network without the victims knowledge. (See my blog on Botnets) When this happened, in a very short period, the compromised machine can act as a relay and sent out thousand and thousand of SPAM. This would lead the IP/Domain reputation monitor to believe that the source sending out the mails belong to a SPAMMER network and blacklist it.

Innocent domains/IP that had been blacklisted faced not only inconvenient of not being able to sent out mails but also face the risk of lawsuit and the wastage of network bandwidth and of course work efficiency. Now with all these factors here, don't you think that organizations should be thinking of how to protect themselves from Outbound SPAM?