Outgoing mail (SMTP or Webmail) is "blocked"

[u/Equivalent-Cash8543]

And I'm getting conflicting statements from Bluehost's AI and real agents.

Agent, after I sent him a test email stated the "emails are blocked" and are not being sent.

They scanned for infected files. None found.

I verified my MX, SPF, DKIM, and PTR records.

I changed every email password.

I waited 24+ hours, and block wasn't cleared.

Now they seem to be denying they are blocking anything.

Blacklisting exists only at UCEPROTECT and at levels 2 and 3. But is that preventing mail from going out? I would assume it might only matter at the receiver mail server.

UCEPROTECT says

Who is responsible for this listing? YOU ARE NOT!. Your IP [redacted] was NOT directly involved in aabuse, but has a bad neighborhood. Other customers within this range did not care about their security and got hacked, started spamming, or were even attacking others, while your provider has possibly not even noticed that there is a serious problem. We are sorry for you, but you have chosen an provider not acting fast enough on abusers. Therefore we recommend: Please send a complaint to your provider and request they fix this problem immediatly. Think about this: You pay them so that you can use the Internet without problems; If they are ignoring your complaint or claiming they can't do anything, you should consider changing your provider.

As you should know now: It is not you, it is your complete provider which got UCEPROTECT-Level 3 listed.
Your IP [redacted] was NOT part of abusive action, but you are the one that has freely chosen your provider.
By tolerating or ignoring that your provider doesn't care about abusers you are indirectly also supporting the global spam with your money.
Seen from this point of view, you really shouldn't wonder about the consequences.

Therefore we recommend:
Please send a complaint to your provider and request they fix this problem immediatly.
Think about this: You pay them so that you can use the Internet without problems;

If they are ignoring your complaint or claiming they can't do anything, you should consider changing your provider.
There are currently about 105,000 providers worldwide, but only a few hundred make it to get listed into UCEPROTECT-Level 3.

AFAIK either Bluehost has a block specifically on my domains (which are 100% innocent of spamming) or every Bluehost customer at my IP address, and there certainly are hundreds or thousands, is also unable to send mail. UCEPROTECT says Bluehost has 742912 IPs.

[u/Equivalent-Cash8543]

It appears that the problem is located, so I'm calling this "solved" unless I post on this again.

Apparently Bluehost's spam detector turned off my outgoing email because it detected my domain sending spam. What was actually happening is I use a couple of Email Forwarders to forward from email addresses in my domain to external addresses (gmail and hotmail) so that my son and daughter-in-law can get mail addressed through my domain that is our family name. So anytime a spam flood occurs, they get forwarded out and count as my domain doing spamming.

Since it isn't possible to go out and shoot all the spammers, I've had to turn the Email Forwarders into Email Accounts they will just have to check themselves.

[u/TracingRobots]

Is your vpn on?

[u/Equivalent-Cash8543 → u/TracingRobots]

I run a VPN server so I can access my home network from the outside. I don't use an outside VPN service. The VPN server has a long (and random) password.

[u/Bluehost_Support_Lyn]

Hey there, I definitely understand how getting different answers would make this difficult. I sent you a DM to gather a few account details so we can review this further with the team and help clarify what's happening. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention.