Forum Moderators: phranque
One player stands out in this battle: AOL. On one domain I administer, I'm currently fighting a spam block by AOL. This domain does absolutely no UCE, but getting it resolved has been tedious to say the least. In the meantime, communicating with AOL-members of that site is impossible. I'd characterize the attitude as, "you are guilty until proven innocent."
Now I'm finding that hostilities are going the other way, too. One of my clients called to say her web host (a moderately large national DSL/T1 ISP) was blocking AOL mail. They had customers e-mailing them, but if the customer had an AOL address it didn't get through. I was a bit astounded that an ISP would take this action, so I called them. To my surprise, I was able to confirm that large portions of AOL's e-mail IPs have been blocked for more than a week due to use (the ISP said) by high volume spammers. The ISP claimed that AOL was ignoring their requests to stop the spam volume, so they had no choice other than blocking all the mail from the problem IP ranges. They were quite adamant that the problem was AOL's, and urged me to complain to AOL. They provided no time frame for lifting the AOL ban, but thought it would probably last for an extended time. (I'm currently trying to reach the ISP's upper management, as this and other clients are likely to bail out if they can't communicate with their customers.)
I'm sure that each of these entities feels it is making decisions that will help its customers, although in both cases their customers are failing to get important communications.
These conditions are emblematic of the problems faced by e-mailers today - it's a range war with vigilante justice. If you think you are getting spammed by someone, you simply block their IP, no questions asked. When you multiply this practice across many thousands of web hosts, ISPs, and private e-mail servers, it's amazing any e-mail gets through at all.
Noise in general and abuse seems to be wasting more and more time and many ISPs just dont seem to be assisting at all.
Wouldn't it be nice if ISPs actually used their scanning to isolate *their* virus infected users and take their outgoing email feed offline until they were cleaned.
Likewise with spammers and other abusers .. wouldnt it be nice if the ISPs in question also took these guys off line .. just the ones that are using their own networks .. just as a start.
note: see [webmasterworld.com...]
"coping with domain abuse"
Its wasting a lot of my time.
...10 - 15% of e-mail never reached its destination
Additionally, AOL is not only blocking email, they are now blocking the websites being promoted by spam.
From bad to worse if you ask me.
I am now receiving more AOL postmaster bounce notifications to my catch all address than I am processing in-bound spam.
To summarize the bounce I am receiving:
"The mail server you are using to send mail to AOL has been identified as a source of spam. If you believe this message is in error, please have your mail administrator contact AOL at 888-***-****"
The contact phone number given is the one published on AOL's postmaster info site but none of the headers that I have researched indicate an AOL mail server or IP address.
Looks like I am going to have to drop my catch all forwarding :(
GOOD NEWS on one front - I got a call from the ISP that was blocking e-mail from AOL. They have decided to reverse that policy, at least for now. They were full of cautions about how mail service might be slower (due to the need for their servers to process all that AOL spam), and that the ban might be reimposed if the problem isn't corrected. Nevertheless, it's one small step in the direction of sanity.
At a client we were checking their email and bounces from *returned* fraudulent spam came in from AOL including the text that they had identified the sending server as one sending spam and blocked it by IP.
Now thats more like it .. The sending IP is much harder to fake than the reply to address.
The fact that AOL bounced the email to us, the other party who is being damaged by the domain falsely put into the reply to address means that we now know more about this abusive user and can attack that one of their accounts via their ISP.
If you are having difficulty getting through avoid having any hyperlinks, serial numbers etc in your email.
If they have turned their spam filters to max then you are nearly done for.
If AOL ban the server you use then you are goosed. They recently banned all emails from BT internet!
If AOL had not continually sold their members email addresses then perhaps aol members would not have pushed aol for spam control.
In fairness whilst AOL is by far the worst I have never found email as unreliable as it is now.
Regards
Rod
If you think that caused any significant percentage of the total amount of spam mail AOL members got, you are sadly mistaken.
The solution is to cut them off where it hurts most: the wallet. If you make it so spammers can't profit from spamming, then you solve the problem because no one will WANT to spam.
Think about it ... lets say there was a global "blacklist" of companies and individuals that all of the credit card companies and banks were required to adhere to. If your name is on the list, you can't get a merchant account - period. If you're found guilty of spamming, you get black-listed and can never get a merchant account and accept credit cards or online payments again.
Sure there are ways around it ... having a friend get the account, putting it in the next guy's name, etc. But if "the next guy" knows the law and knows that if they're caught spamming he'll never be able to get a merchant account again and any funds that were captured would be voided and the merchant wouldn't receive them anyway, who would spam?
I'm not a spammer ... but if I WAS a spammer and this law came into existance I sure as heck would STOP being a spammer immediately.
