For those who don't know us yet, we are Managed Server Srl, a company specialized in hosting, systems engineering and IT services, and we have encountered a rather serious and serious problem with one of our "competitors" VHosting Solution Srl
For some time, in fact, we have noticed that all the e-mails we send from our domain (@managedserver.it) to the addresses residing on the VHosting mail servers seem to disappear into thin air, as if they were blocked as spam.
By checking the automatic replies (such as the one proposed above) after sending, we realized that the sent emails actually come back labeled as SPAM.
It should be noted that under normal circumstances, when an email is rejected due to suspected spam activity, the automatically generated response usually indicates which spam list was used to determine the bounce. This allows the sender to better understand the situation and to take possible delisting actions, i.e. removal from the blacklist. However, in our case, this did not happen, making it even more difficult to figure out the exact cause of the freeze and fix the problem.
We ran a series of tests to figure out what was going on and sadly confirmed our suspicions: our emails are blocked by VHosting. This problem has been going on since at least March 31, when we first noticed the anomaly.
What concerns us is that this blocking does not appear to be automatic or based on international spam lists, but rather a deliberate choice of VHosting. In other words, it appears that they are trying to prevent their customers from receiving our communications, thus limiting our ability to compete in the market.
We want to emphasize that we have always behaved responsibly and in compliance with anti-spam regulations. We have never been blacklisted by major email service providers such as Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, libero.it, email.it.
We have used all the current precautions and best practices, such as for example the use of SPF records, the use of DKIM records and DMARC records, in order to be spam free compliant and therefore facilitate the trust of our mail systems towards those of recipients.
Precisely for this reason we are not in any spam Black List, as we can easily prove from the following tests.
We tried to address the problem directly with VHosting, asking for explanations and the removal of the block via a legally valid message (PEC), but unfortunately without success. They have not responded to our requests via email, via PEC, nor on WhatsApp and the block is still active.
We believe the shares of VHosting to be very serious violations of correspondence, as well as of the rules on the free market and competition. In particular, we are referring to Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which prohibits agreements between companies which restrict or distort competition within the internal market.
Furthermore, the Digital Information and Communication Code (Legislative Decree No. 70/2003) provides that communication via e-mail must take place freely and without restrictions, unless it concerns spam messages or illegal contents.
It is self-evident that VHosting is deliberately clinging to the excuse of spamming in order not to deliver our messages, however peacefully remembering that any company and domain can run into false positives, but regardless the BAN has a limited time of a few weeks and above all removal and delisting procedures are made available.
Even if the explanation may be different from the one indicated above, VHosting Srl has refused to provide a plausible explanation to the problem indicated, and after more than a month they do not seem willing to give their version of the facts, even though they have been explicitly accused by us of illegitimate and anti-competitive behaviour.
It therefore appears willed, that things remain as they are, given that Not only does Vhosting not provide a procedure for delisting, but above all it completely ignores communications of legal value sent via PEC.
For all these reasons, we have decided to report the matter to the Competition and Market Authority (AGCM), requesting an intervention to evaluate the work of VHosting and requesting the immediate removal of the block or filtering on our @managedserver.it domain.
Let's not forget that this is a matter of Net Neutrality, a fundamental principle which establishes that all data on the Internet should be treated equally, without discrimination or preferences. This principle is essential to keep the Internet open and free (source: Net Neutrality EU).
It is important to note that our volume of outgoing emails is less than 20 per day and they are almost entirely used for professional relationships and assistance with our current customers, of which only a small part use VHosting services. We do not even use newsletter services to promote our services, nor mass mailing or mail bombing initiatives.
Despite everything, VHosting Solution Srl continues to block our communications, causing inconvenience to our customers and hindering our business. We cannot respond to customers who contact us for support requests, malware removal, performance optimization and other technical needs, because our responses do not reach them.
In this regard, if you are trying to contact us from an email account registered with them, we invite you to contact us with an alternative address (see gmail.com for example) or preferably by telephone, in order to bypass the arbitrary filtering actions put in place. deed by VHosting Srl
We make ourselves available to publish any replies on their part, granting the right of reply if it is founded and supported by technical evidence.
