Has AOL changed its SPAM filtering?

I'm getting a bunch of complaints

[universetoday]

I send out a daily newsletter to about 15,000 people. It's just a collection of widget news stories, and totally opt-in. That said, computer filters sometimes classify it as SPAM because it contains things like an unsubscribe link at the bottom. :-(

I've gotten a bunch of emails over the last couple of days from my readers wondering where I went. They've all got AOL email addresses.

I'm wondering if AOL has done something recently to clamp down on SPAM, and they're a little over-enthusiastic about implementing it. I need to get to the bottom of this, but I'm not exactly sure where to start looking.

Anyone else getting this kind of feedback from your newsletter readers?

[rcjordan]

AOL pressed to stop blocking addresses [rss.com.com]

[universetoday]

Okay, that makes me pretty grumpy. I've sent a complaint to AOL and my ISP. Anything else I can do, short of switching ISPs or changing my domain name?

[hanuman]

I found that contacting AOL postmaster with delivery issues does not help. I am doing a monthly survey, send to all AOL users who receive my list. In the survey I advise my readers to contact AOL postmaster if they DO NOT receive my list. I also encourage them to actually call AOL and demand to get the list. It will work if your readers really like your eZine.

When enough people complain to AOL, AOL data analyst will contact you (hopefully) and together you will work some delivery tests to resolve the issue and whitelist your domain name.

I have found that AOL does not like "Fat" e-mails, keep your newsletter below the 40K, if can't send it in two parts.

Make sure to remove and keep your list clean from bad addresses.

Check if your ISP / network IP block is not listed in AOL blacklist

Monitor Monitor and Monitor.....

my 2 cents

[thewebboy]

Maybe you should send out a special AOL version to AOL users that looks less like spam. Maybe remove the unsubscribe link.

[BlueSky]

How many AOLers are on your list? If it's a couple hundred or even a thousand or more of course you're going to look like a spammer to them.

AOL actually changed its practices months ago. They started beefing up their spam fighting effort by blocking email from all home servers, all dynamic IPs, and broadband IPs sending bulk mail. Using this blanket technique, they caught a lot of innocent people. You're actually kinda late in noticing. Others have been complaining about this ever since it started.

They really need to take an approach like some other ISPs have done. Develop better spam blocking software then let the customer decide who gets blocked and who doesn't not them.

[Jenstar]

Are you sending it in HTML with embedded images? Last summer I began to receive numerous complaints about my newsletter not being received (double opt-in). I switched to HTML without images, and then just included the table of contents with a link to where readers could view the newsletter online, in order to keep the size down. Not ideal, but I have a huge number of subscribers using AOL, including many advertisers, and this was the only way for them to receive the newsletter.

[BlueSky]

Are you still sending out newsletters today to all of them without any problems? Or was this before they started really clamping down this year?

I know folks who have trouble sending one email with a password or maybe an account activation link to their AOL'ers.

[universetoday]

I've got 1500 AOL subscribers, so 10%, but I'd never really noticed people weren't receiving them until I got a few emails in the last couple of days. The emails are sent TO: each reader, and not BCC:, so I suspect some are let through and then some intelligent system says, hey, I've gotten a bunch of emails like this, it's got to be SPAM.

But there have to be thousands of huge opt-in newsletters out there that have gigantic subscriber lists. It seems impossible to me that AOL has attacked SPAM with such broad brushstrokes. You'd think their users would have put enough pressure on AOL to change its methods to something more discerning?

I sent an email into AOL's technical support, but I suspect I was just sending that email to its death. Anyone know a place you can complain at AOL to get a real human being to make decisions? [e-mail]?

And where would I look to see if I've been blacklisted?

[cfx211]

I ran into this problem back in April, and posted here

[webmasterworld.com...]

about it.

We thought that our bulk emailer was getting a lot of our emails caught in the AOL spam filter so we ended up doing a manual mailing of a short text message. 76% of the manual emails bounced back as not being a good address anymore.

While I am not convinced either way, I think there are two factors at work here. 1. AOL's spam filtering 2. people are dumping AOL left and right for broadband or juno/netzero.

Has anyone else tried a manual text mailing of their bounced AOL addresses to see if they are getting through?

[tedster]

I understand that one of the factors that big ISPs like AOL use to determine what is USCE is how fast those inbound messages start hitting their server from the same origin. One of my clients recently outsourced to a service that intentionally spaces out the emails, and they found significant improvement in getting through to AOL.

I'm pretty sure that something like this can be programmed into most mail servers.

[Jenstar]

Many AOL users will simply ban an email address rather than unsubscribing from a newsletter. Several AOL'ers have told me it is just easier to hit the "block" button than the "click here to unsubscribe", even when it is a double-opt-in newsletter they chose to subscribe too.

When AOL changed their spam filtering and included the "report this as spam" link, I heard stories from many who found their newsletters reported as spam, when people were simply clicking that link as a way to unsubscribe from a newsletter they signed up for themselves. I am not sure if it is still that easy to report spam using AOL, as I haven't heard other webmasters complaining about it in recent months.

When people chose to block your newsletter address, what bounces back from AOL is a different bounce than their standard "user not found" bounce. I just wish AOL changed their bounces so you could see the email address and bounce reason at the top of the email, rather than having to scroll down to the bottom each time.

[lasko]

I was just about to post a new thread to complain about email being blocked by ISP then I noticed this with AOL.

Its funny how I just had a problem with AOL and wanted to post here.

I had a problem with another ISP that was blocking my emails, and I have to add I have never sent bad emails, nor do I send newsletters from the domain.

The reason I am being blocked is because of my success in search engines. Yes I am top ranked for major keywords and this particular site is for advertisers which displays email addresses.

AOL says it blocked my email because it found to be either from a server that sends SPAM or the domain is not real.

So if your one of those sites that are highly ranked and receive many virus attacks that send out emails to AOL etc that appear from your web site you may as well change your email account.

SoBig and many other mass mailing viruses are to blame also ISP over reacting.

Just face it the mailto: link is finished brings me viruses and gets me blocked.

What can we do but complain which get us no where! :(

[universetoday]

That's an interesting theory. I've got so many subscribers that my emails address is being spoofed by Sobig emails. I wonder if that could cause AOL to block it.

On another note, I just sent an email to my entire list asking for AOL subscribers to let me know if they're getting my newsletters. I got one person early on in the list saying they got it, and then nothing but silence from the rest of them.

This is frustrating.

[cfx211]

Silence is better than bouncebacks. I would not expect too much of a response from people, but let us know how many of your emails bounce back with problems and what type of bounce messages you get.

[universetoday]

No, my readers are very active. If there's silence, that means they aren't even seeing my message. It's obviously being blocked completely by AOL.

I got a few bouncebacks today, and I've been asking individual readers to contact AOL and complain that the newsletter is being blocked. Hopefully I can get this resolved once and for all.