[SC-Help] Re: AOL Issue

[Chris Wright]

The message was along the lines of:

<xxxxxxxxxxxxxx at aol.com>:
Connected to 64.12.138.152 but greeting failed.
Remote host said: 554- (RTR:BL) 
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbl.html
554- AOL does not accept e-mail transactions from IP addresses which
554- send abuse reports to AOL
554 Connecting IP: 72.22.69.58

Any mail I send to AOL users now via my YAPS4U.NET domain, 
(72.22.69.58), just doesn't get delivered to the AOL users and I haven't 
seen a failure message like the one above for a while.

And 72.22.69.58 hasn't appeared on any blacklists for years AFAIK. (It 
was on DSBL once, but was appealed and removed in hours more than days).

And I know, its sounds incredulous, and unless I can find the original 
return receipts, it doesn't sound plausible/believable.  Had I been 
aware of these NG's back then, I would have mentioned it.

But, if the general belief is that no one has heard of it, then fair 
enough, it was just something that Joel Balazuc said in his message [Re: 
[SC-Help] Re: Spam as pictures] that got me thinking about it again.

Regards

Chris





Mike Easter wrote:
> Chris Wright wrote:
> 
>> A good few months back I started getting failure messages back from
>> AOL when I used accounts that I forward SPAM from to SPAMCOP.
> 
> I'm not clear on what you are saying yet, but at first glance it might
> sound like you were doing something wrong, like reporting your own
> provider.
> 
> You didn't define the scenario with sufficient detail and clarity that I
> am getting the picture yet.
> 
>> Something along the lines of "AOL is not able to process your email
>> because it comes from a domain that reports SPAM".
> 
> So far that story doesn't make any sense to me yet and I know of no such
> AOL error message.  I'm going to put an example of an AOL mailbounce
> message below^3, obtained from the AOL postmaster faq information page
> http://postmaster.info.aol.com/selfhelp/index.html
> 
> You are saying you have multiple mail accounts.  You are saying some of
> those accounts are used to forward spam [not SPAM, see below^1] to
> spamcop for purposes of reporting
> 
> The way spam reporting is supposed to work is that the reporter submits
> a spam to the parser, I recommend the webparser when you are learning
> and fine tuning your spam reporting.  I also recommend that you
> understand the structure of mail headers.
> 
> Altho' maybe an 'ordinary' mail recipient might have less need to
> understand headers, someone who is taking the role of being a spam
> reporter, which function causes IP addresses to become blocklisted,
> needs to have a better understanding -- because they have a higher level
> of responsibility for their actions.
> 
> If someone is spam reporting with spamcop, and that reporting activity
> is causing their own provider's IP address to become spamcop
> blocklisted, then that listing of their own provider is going to have
> trouble with its mail failing.  Problems with sending mail from listed
> servers can occur with any provider, AOL or otherwise.
> 
>> Was this ever discussed on SPAMCOP?
> 
> I haven't heard of any such thing and it also doesn't make any sense.
> 
>> I contacted the AOL users via GMAIL and forwarded
>> them a copy of the returned mail headers.
> 
> A copy of the returned mail headers?  You are saying you gmailed your
> failed recipient a copy of /what/ headers?  The headers of the AOL mail
> to you?  The headers of the mail which was rejected?  Both?  Showing
> that 'whole enchilada' [but not here, see below^2]
> 
>> ps. Hope this is the right group for this discussion.
> 
> It sounds like a great topic for discussion here, but you are going to
> have to get a lot more 'windy' and descriptive of the situation and
> provide some exact information or 'evidence' rather than a description
> of something before I understand.
> 
> 
> ^1 SPAM is the Hormel meat product, and anti-spammers and Hormel both
> agree that spam is not SPAM and we won't use the terms interchangeably
> 
> ^2 When an occasion arises in which 'ugly' mail needs to be displayed
> somewhere, which ugly means such things as complete mailheaders and
> bodies which might have attached complete mailheaders and bodies, it is
> not acceptable to post such items into the discussion groups like this
> spamcop.help or spamcop.  Originally the newsgroup spamcop.spam was
> created for that purpose.  Nowadays we do it differently and feed the
> entire mail with its contiguous headers and attachments into the
> webparser, copy the parser's tracking url, and paste the url into the
> discussion group such as this.   The tracking url looks like
> http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z893785525z78007b39eb7150585dfb33e7dd17d2fbz
> 
> ^3 If you are having problems sending email to America Online please
> choose the appropriate link below so we can further help you.-- I have
> the bounce error message I received in email- select one below --  I
> have the AOL specific error message (example RLY:B1) -- <then follows a
> specific example, on another different AOL postmaster page are about 60
> other examples^4 in 12 different classes>
> 
> ^4 http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/index.html Error Messages  RTR
> Blocks | HVU Blocks | DNS Blocks | RLY Blocks | ISP Blocks | HTM Blocks
> | FSV Blocks | IPT Blocks | GEN Blocks | SDI Blocks | DYN Blocks | CON
> Blocks
> 
>