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Other tests concured, that email from sites such as SlashDot, WebmasterWorld, and most vbulletin based forums, were not making it through the filters either.
<added>clarified the email statement there</added>
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 9:04 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2004]
Do newsletters that include customized content in the body get blocked? For example, "Hello <Firstname>, here's your November newsletter"
Have you tried sending a test through a third party to see if it is an ip issue or a content issue? With spam filters being so touchy these days, you could have something unwittingly in the code/text of all the newsletters that's tripping it.
Makes me wonder whether it's worth running an opt-in list anymore?
f
<edited to add footnote>
p.s. yep we customise the body of all messages with name and other info so they would all be diff.
[edited by: fasteddie_uk2001 at 7:44 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2004]
Regarding renegade users tagging you as spammers .. I hope the gatekeepers recognize this as a significant loophole in the whole antispam/one-size-fits-all approach.
Frustrating? Yeah!
I am glad that this problem has been raised on the frontpage of Webmasterworld. Maybe collectively, we can get an answer from AOL.
Ironically, I use AOL to access my personal email at home (because I have had my AOL email address for many years). However, I have now decided to cancel my AOL account because I cannot be sure whether or not I will recieve emails sent by my friends. I feel that AOL should either give users more control over their spam filters or indicate the severe limitations of their service to prospective clients.
joined:Jan 7, 2004
posts:83
votes: 0
For example, mail.webmasterworld.com does not reverse resolve to webmasterworld.com .. be surprised if they made it through.
Our BT Boradband reseller speculates that AOL block emails from whole blocks of IP addresses when one user in that block sends spam.
Obviously that is not true - BTOpenWorld/BTInternet/BTBroadband were/are notorious for totally ignoring egregious spamming campaigns carried out from their networks - they've paid the price by becoming a standard on most blacklists.
With such a cheap currency, I would have thought Americans would be happy to recieve emails from us Brits anxious to secure bargains with our shiny Pounds.
joined:Jan 10, 2003
posts:300
votes: 0
I buy a pc...junk aol sales pitches installed etc etc
Yes I hate aol and have reasons
Broadband...go with telewest if you can, I have had no problems at all the past 18 months.
I suppose some people have?
I do not mind reading SPAM if I earn .20 an email.
Tim
Further AOL aggravation from morons who sign up for post notification and then are too lazy to turn it off; it's easier to flag it as spam. I get bounces on these, and usually take a minute to send a note to the member.
I run an advertising service and all email addresses for my clients are stored in a Mysql Database to reduce the email harvesting and spaming however every contact which is made through our web form which extracts the correct email address from the database is being blocked by AOL.
I have advised all my AOL adertisers to set up a free Yahoo email account. Which they did, and with their new found email address they updated their contact details on other web sites since then they have received a huge increase in business.
I am constantly have emails returned by AOL so if I need to send an email to someone with an AOL account I use my personal ISP email address which has never been published on the net. Only then can I contact an AOL account holder.
With Spam and AOL E-mail will become the worst and untrusted unreliable comunication tool ever.
I like how Yahoo works by splitting the E-mail it believes into two boxes so the customer can decide and quickly sift through the emails just incase something was blocked by mistake.
Shame AOL thinks they know best and everyone has to follow their rules.
Very frightening the thought of how much business has been lost because of AOL's actions.
This is probably just a check for messages with duplicate content? AOL notices that over n messages have the same exact body and it marks it as spam?Do newsletters that include customized content in the body get blocked? For example, "Hello <Firstname>, here's your November newsletter"
Good questions, whoisgregg.
Some more facts were nice. I know that msn will deny msgs that have more than 100 recipients.
So for AOL is it really the number of recipients? It could be other parts of the header as well. Anybody here that actually has experience and can shed some more light on the facts. :)
Shame AOL thinks they know best and everyone has to follow their rules.
The spam problem is becoming too nasty for them to ignore. They must do something and they have chosen the easiest solution for their users, which tend to be more, how shall I say this, helpless than most.
Personally, I use spamcop and turn on ALL blacklist filters, then whitelist only what I want to receive. Spamcop is by far a person's best friend to stop spam.
Obviously that is not true - BTOpenWorld/BTInternet/BTBroadband were/are notorious for totally ignoring egregious spamming campaigns carried out from their networks - they've paid the price by becoming a standard on most blacklists.
If AOL uses IP blacklists like spews.org, whole IP ranges will be blocked even if only one IP address in that range has been linked with spamming.
This causes problems if a webhosts IP range is blacklisted because hundreds of businesses are unable to communicate with their customers.
Making it more difficult for spammers to get hold of e-mail addresses in the first place is a better idea. Many of us use "spider traps" to block spambots from crawling our websites looking for e-mail addresses. An early warning system built into operating systems which pulls a list of confirmed spambot IPs to block from a centralised database could be more effective, long term, in cutting down spam.
Later we started mailing our own newsletter, and the same thing happened. In that case, as I recall, we were being blocked because (as someone else mentioned) we were sending "too many" emails at once. It was really hopeless.
This was before AOL allowed its members to access spam folders (blocked email) but if your subscribers are not receiving their email today, you can tell them (maybe a note to new subscribers on your subscription page?) to try going to Keyword: Mail Controls and then clicking the Spam Folder link. I don't know how long AOL retains blocked mail there, but probably a day or two.