AOL Placed on Spam Blacklist 364
Hacker-X writes "According to this item over at Spam Kings,
AOL has had a large swath of its IP addresses added to the Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS) Real-time Blackhole List (RBL).
The RBL is used by many corporations and large ISPs to filter spam.
MAPS evidently started blocking the AOL mail servers less than 24 hours after filing a complaint with AOL's abuse desk. The block was initiated in response to spam emanating from AOL mail servers."
Overzealous (Score:5, Insightful)
How does someone seriously justify this? Isn't this like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face?
Maybe it's time to come up with a hybrid system? How about a combinations of black and "gray" lists, where the gray lists are subjected to greater scrutiny or harsher limits by spam filtering software?
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overzealous (Score:4, Interesting)
I am. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is people like me who use the RBL's and have my email server setup to reject (with proper attribution) email from sites on the RBL's.The person sending you the message will get their message kicked back to them with a very clear "We rejected your message because your domain/IP address is on a blacklist at www.xxx.xxx".
How much easier does it get then that?Simple. I read the logs and the discussions. I've only had one problem since I put in the blacklists. And that was from a company with BellSouth who had had other problems with blacklists because BellSouth didn't handle the IP addresses correctly.
Now, balance that against the thousands of rejected spams EVERY SINGLE DAY and the course is clear.
With less than
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be the rude awakening to AOL - clean up your act. Stop allowing spam to be sent, or your users might start getting peeved that their emails aren't getting through. Most rookies have been through this - how embarrassing for AOL to have to go through it to!
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't disagree with you. AOL shouldn't get preferential treatment because they are big, but blacklisting major ISPs comes with the very real possibility of hurting many other businesses by association. Yes, the same is true of the little guys, but the potential loss rate is likely much lower.
That's why I suggest the gray/black list combo. If you could graylist someone immediately, and use that as a means for stricter spam control - combine it with Known Good Senders, whitelists, better heuristics or tougher Bayesian filtering - while mitigating the potential for lost business by not outright blocking all messages, I think that is an amicable solution. Blacklisting then becomes the consequence for not resolving your spam problem, not for simply having one.
Re:Overzealous (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL is not "special" in that circumstance. The short response timeframe is a little harsh...
Well, if you've had your entire domain blocked by AOL without warning, you might disagree. You might disagree strongly if after contacting AOL, they admitted you were wrongly blocked but they were having trouble figuring out how to unblock you (took a week).
How many double opt-in e-mail lists have been blocked simply because some AOL luser couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe (or didn't even try to) and just hit the report as spam button? (Hint: I know of 3 just off the top of my head.) AOL blocking is automatic. Guilty until proven innocent. Is 24 hours really that harsh given what AOL does to others?
Of course, if we could all convince the idiots that buy from spam to stop buying, this whole problem would disappear on it's own.
Re:Overzealous (Score:4, Informative)
How many double opt-in e-mail lists have been blocked...
Do you mean "confirmed opt-in"? If so, you should say so. "Double opt-in" is a meaningless phrase, beloved by spammers. I have every confidence that you're not a spammer, but if you speak in the spammers' language, people will get the wrong idea about your lists.
Re:Overzealous (Score:3, Interesting)
I was going to make exactly this point!
I manage a popular web site in Mexico that distributes an opt-in mailing list. We've been marked as spammers multiple times because a particular user decides he doesn't want to receive the newsletter anymore and does not take the time to click on the unsubscribe link sent in the emai
Re:Overzealous (Score:2, Insightful)
To spammers, hitting the unsubscribe button is no different than saying "I'm here! Look at me, I have an E-mail address that I use! Send more!"
It's just easier to deny a subscription that you don't want, than to risk making 100 more.
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
Yes, but what the post you replied to was talking about was not spam, but lists that people have willingly subscribed to. The problem being that there are some people who, when they decide they no longer want to be on such a list, click AOL's "report this as spam" button rather than unsubscribing from the list, which they themselves subscribed to.
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Informative)
This was caused by one spam. Let me just repeat that: out of 60 million users MAPS saw one spam coming from AOL's outbound mail servers [aol.com].
Now AOL does have a set of IPs out of which some spam does emanate - the rlyIPXX block [aol.com] (64.12.138.(7-9)). This is the IPs that they redirect direct-to-port25 mail through, and they actively encourage people to block this range. It's been publicly stated that they intend to shut this activity down real soon now, but in the meantime most people just block that range and don't see a problem.
Check the anti-spam newsgroups and mailing lists some time. AOL is hugely respected in anti-spam terms these days. And deservedly so.
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Informative)
Compared to Yahoo and MSN/Hotmail, AOL is completely buttoned down and has their act together.
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Interesting)
NO -- it's not ok to blacklist the little guy either.
If they're misconfigured/hacked, and spitting out spam, sure
Too many lists don't check though. They get a complaint, and bam, blacklist. I run a small web/mail server (300 domains, 16 IPs), and this is highly annoying. We've been blacklisted before because someone complained about a legitimate mailing list they were on. No double-checking, no investigation into the complain, we just got blacklisted immediately.
Most recently, we were blacklisted by SORBS because another system that shares colocation with our server was hacked. Immediately, they blacklisted the entire subnet. This affected us, and numerous other customers that have no affiliation other than sharing colocation space.
I noticed we were on the list when someone in the office complained about not being able to send mail to an address she could send to a couple hours earlier. Upon looking into it, we eventually found out that teh entire subnet was blocked (and we couldn't even request to remove the block), so we contacted our ISP. They told us they had just discovered that hacked system and disconnected it, and tried to get the block removed from SORBS.
In all, our ISP had found and disconnected the system within 3 hours of it being hacked, yet we were on the list at least 24 hours. During this time, none of our customers can send mail to anyone with a provider using SORBS. Our server was fine, their servers are fine, but because of a completely unrelated incident with unrelated people, it affects hundreds more.
The big problem is, it's basically impossible to run a mail server without using RBL's (we tried).. you just get hammered. RBLs are definately useful, but there are too many run by over-zealous admins with basically an itchy trigger finger. Hopefully stunts like this will make people realize the problems with RBLs and maybe we can drop the ones that are run this way.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Overzealous (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Overzealous (Score:3, Interesting)
And just how are you going to do that??? An RBL? Basically, you're eithere going to generate your own RBL, or you're going to use someone else's. If you're going to use someone else's then the best you can do is look for (an) RBL(s) that have a listing policy compatible with your views.
Some RBLs (like MAPS) have put a lot of energy and time into coming up with ways to keep out as much spam as possible without extensive false-positives. Doin
Mail acceptance/rejection (Score:3, Informative)
One of the big necessities we had when picking our current system was that it had to be able to validate an address during the SMTP exchange; it does this by having access to the same database the mail storage back-end uses for deciding where to stuff the message after it is accepted. If it isn't in the database, the mes
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overzealous (Score:3, Informative)
I do agree, however the flip side of that coin is that nothing says `drop that black list' like not being able to get email from grandma or Aunt Tillie [catb.org].
By adding AOL to the blacklist, you might persuade AOL to clean up their act, maybe, but you also will find a lot of people dropping your blacklist because _their_ customers got angry ...
Fair or not, you really can't add AOL's main mail servers to any sort of
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
I expect this will manifest itself as a widespread drop of the particular RBL, not AOL changing their policies. People want to email companies, and companies want to be able to get legitimate email. AOL and the RBL service are in the middle, and the vocal ones are going to point at the RBL.
This is really just a guess, though. I'd certainly prefer if someone at AOL got their head out of their ass.
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
While blacklists certainly have a place, that motivation could - and I stress could - result in serious financial consequences. Can you imagine if Yahoo! was blacklisted, and the thousands upon thousands of Yahoo! Stores could no longer send e-mail to large segments of their customers?
Binary though our technology may be, the world in which we use it is not. The answers need
Re:Overzealous (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Overzealous (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Overzealous (Score:3, Insightful)
That is to say - not everybody has the flexability to put in a user-tunable system. Some of the "black-box" systems are more tunable than others, but most of the time, if a black-list is configured - it's "black".
*everyone*? (Score:2)
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
Giving them less than 24 hours to respond seems a little extreme to me, but I don't really make many complaints to abuse desks so don't know what the average response time is.
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Funny)
What about silver lists that block AOL cd's?
Re:Overzealous (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
Though the one I'd *really* like to see on the list is ebay until they both actually accept complaints at abuse@ebay.com, and actually do something about them . .
hawk
Re:Overzealous (Score:5, Informative)
[UPDATE: Looks like MAPS changed its mind. As of Tuesday afternoon ET (GMT -4:00), AOL's listing at the MAPS site is gone, and a lookup shows AOL's mail servers no longer seem to be on the MAPS RBL list. No word yet on whether AOL resolved the spam problems, or if MAPS just decided to give AOL more time.]
MAPS is a for-pay RBL. (Score:2)
Because customers are paying them to do it. If Kelkea (the new MAPS owners) lose enough business because they put a large chunk of AOL on their blacklist, then they'll think twice before making large decisions like this.
However, my guess is that they won't lose any business at all.
No. (Score:2)
Re:No. (Score:3)
Yes they are. But in their defense, they are quick to unblock you provided you comply with their request (fixing the problem, setting up reverse, etc).
My only complain is that any email you send to them gives you an autoreply telling you to phone their postmaster helpdesk.
But at least you don't get caught in limbo like so many unlisting procedures out there.
Re:Overzealous (Score:2)
Well a year or two ago i was making a complaint about a couple of AOL members abusing a web server(could of been only one with 2 accounts). in total i think i sent them 50 complaints with logs and only ever got 2 emails back saying it will be looked into
Time passed but still nothing , in the end i had to blacklist most of the USAs AOL members and all AOL email address(random IP adress on a nasty scale , and free emails).
Im not alone in this action i know
Won't miss them (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Won't miss them (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, who wants to do business, say, with tens of millions of people.
I've got e-commerce clients that, unable to communicate gracefully with AOL users, would run into trouble with a third or more of their customers. This is not trivial, it's blacklist BS, and a sign of how that solution to the problem is part of the problem.
Re:Won't miss them (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, newbies being given crappy software.
Receivers *choose* to use RBLs (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got e-commerce clients that, unable to communicate gracefully with AOL users, would run into trouble with a third or more of their customers. This is not trivial, it's blacklist BS
Is MAPS forcing you to use their lists? No. So what's your problem?
Re:Receivers *choose* to use RBLs (Score:2)
Just because I host or maintain e-commerce tools for a merchant doesn't mean they're in the mood to break their e-mail away from some other ISP to which they're somewhat attached, or which they use for mail because that's who provides the pipe into their offices. Of course I'd prefer to host their mail, though spam management has me more and more allergic to that side of the business. Issues like this can kill a man-week of productivity,
Re:Receivers *choose* to use RBLs (Score:5, Insightful)
So in the end no one is accountable. The ISP doesn't make the list MAPS does, so it's not their fault. MAPS says no one has to use their lists so it's not their fault they just make the list. Any collateral damage is just a figment of your imagination. Nobody's fault, nobody's problem.
This is the major issue I have with many spam lists. You are fed this circular logic and the only way to break the circle is to change ISPs and hope you don't have a problem again.
Re:Won't miss them (Score:2, Interesting)
They're a risky isp to deal with, or maybe it just seems that way because of their size. I used to admin a site that sold long distance calling minutes. We had a disproportionate amount of fraud coming from their domain. I believe it has to do with their "free cd" blitzing and their size giving the ability to eat small losses.
You get fraudsters with stolen credit cards, an isp that enables you to use them and does not respond to mer
Re:Won't miss them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Won't miss them (Score:2)
The internet is more than just the US, thank you.
Re:Won't miss them (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm really glad that e-mail is such a great way to keep in touch with everyone! Even the ones I won't miss
Does that make him yahoo.com!my.cousin@aol.com?
--LWM
Re:Won't miss them (Score:2)
But yes, it's somehow similar. I'm also constantly irritated by the delay function of my uni mailserver, that makes all mail arrive 30min to 6 hours later than they should. Really irritating when I need to register for something, and I can't activate the account. It's like the email world is connected together with modems. Thankfully I don't get any spam anymore though.
Re:Won't miss them (Score:2)
I have had friends who got AOL accounts just for this reason - it is a good place to "hide".
What ???? (Score:2, Funny)
Accountability (Score:5, Interesting)
Some BL lists have no published way to get off once on. There should be some consistency to at least getting removed. I speak from experience of having "inherited" an IP addr from my hosting provider that was formerly an open-relay. It took a lot of effort over 2 weeks to clean that mess up.
Re:Accountability (Score:5, Insightful)
The assumption of anti-spam activists seems to be that spam wouldn't be possible without the knowing collusion of evil ISPs. Obviously, evil, greedy people will only respond to threats to their income. So never mind negotiations -- blacklist 'em until they repent.
Which ignores the difficultly of enforcing a spam policy. You can't just terminate somebody's account the first time somebody accuses them of spamming -- it's not fair, and will probably get you sued. Having worked at an ISP, I can tell you they get lot of bogus spam complaints, mostly from people who don't know how to figure out who owns an IP block, or who misread mail logs. And in some cases, the owner of the IP block just rents rack space to the SMTP provider. Which may well do a poor job of policing spammers -- but you have to make some attempt to get them to improve before you ditch a customer who's paying you tens of thousands of dollars a month.
MAPS and their ilk also seem totally ignorant of Hanlon's Razor [jargon.net]. Very often ISPs assign their abuse issues to unsocial geeks whose communication skills and capacity for objective thought is quite limited. So of course they return MAPS's arrogant ignorant anger with more of the same. The resulting interaction is not conducive to solving the problem.
So yeah, ISPs are not blameless. But they're not the greedy bastards the stupid bastards at MAPS like to get mad at.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And I quote: (Score:2, Funny)
For several years (Score:2)
Funniest news today (Score:3, Funny)
Damien
Re:Funniest news today (Score:2)
Was your lunch made with SPAM(TM) [spam.com] by any chance?
AOL deserved it (Score:3, Interesting)
AOL is definately a group that deserves a bit of their own treatment. I've found so many networks get blocked for insignificant things. I have a mailing list of just my members, and no one else. Because one person accidently hit "Abuse" (of the 40 AOL people on the list), we were blacklisted. Not just an IP, but a
It's not the first encounter I've had with AOL. Anyone who sends mail eventually finds themselves blacklisted with AOL. They're just a pain in the ass. Unfortunately, you can't just convince anyone using AOL's email to switch to someone else. If only it were so easy.
At one time, AOL blacklisted my home IP. It was a static IP, which I was the only user of. I don't know which genius did it, but someone who I was personally mailing (like, not even Bcc lists or newsletters) must have hit the abuse button.
I'm sure it helps them out. If they can knock out 25% of their mail load at any given time, it's 25% less mail they have to process. Who cares which 25%, eh?
Re:AOL deserved it (Score:2)
Re:AOL deserved it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AOL deserved it (Score:4, Informative)
I just pulled a report from one of our membership databases. Of 370,918 users, there were 39,692 distinct domain names. In the top 50 of that list are a few I can't call. wanadoo.fr . t-online.de, libero.it, bluewin.ch, tin.it, planet.nl. You get the idea.
If everyone took up AOL's anti-spam scheme, I would need a staff of people who's sole job was to call all the ISP's, and make sure we weren't blocked.
The *BETTER* method is not to block based on any one rule. It's what you see with hotmail, mail.yahoo.com, gmail, etc.. Bad mail is received, and filtered into a spam box.
With our mail servers, we do the same thing. We use mailscanner (mailscanner.info), with spamassassin, 5 blacklists, and two virus scanners. If the score is high enough, it simply adds a bit to the subject line.
[UBE/UCE/SPAM] original subject
My users have the option of deleting those automatically, or filtering them off to another box.
Right now, I have 6,634 messages in my spam box, and 1052 in my inbox. You could say 15.8% of my mail is real, but that's not completely accurate. A lot of the "real" messages in my inbox are automated messages, such as server notifications.
The ***HUGE*** difference between what I do and what AOL does is this.. When I get a message, even though the mail server suspects it is spam, it still gets delivered into my spam box. **I** have the option of choosing what **I** want done with it. If **I** want to delete it, I can. If **I** want to have the mail server delete it before it even gets to my box, I can. If **I** want to keep them all, so I can make statistics about how many spams I get, I can. And if someone says "I sent you an Email, but never got a reply", I can check my spam box. The last time that happened was over 6 months ago. It's very rare that a legitimate message gets flagged as spam.
Since I know for a fact that AOL blocks legitimate messages, that means that they are completely in the wrong with their methodology.
I've spent several conference calls on with AOL. They believe that they are the Internet. They are the only mail server, and anyone who isn't using AOL is some sort of evil hacker. It was really frustrating, when every reference they made indicated there was only AOL. They said that their blacklist protects all mail servers. Even mine? Yes. So I asked how I got that protection. They don't know. It's just there. Like divine intervention, or eye boogers. I tried to explain that I'm a SysAdmin, and I may know a little bit about the magic of the Internet. He refered me to their standard page, http://postmaster.info.aol.com
Yes, we are already in the "feedback loop". They know all our networks. They have the email and phone number of a contact who's always available. The contact watches the abuse mail for the occasional misguided soul who hits "Abuse" instead of "Reply". Every month or two, we get some part of the network blacklisted. We call up, and they promise to 'whitelist' us. We dance around this with a few dozen calls, and then everything is fine for a month or two. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It's *REALLY* annoying to **NEED** to call another company to ask for their permission to play on their Internet with them.. Like I said at the beginning of this message, almost 40,000 domains. If everyone played this way, that would mean 40,000 calls so people could send out EMail. That *ALSO* means I would need to have phone support people ready to answer 40,000 calls. I don't really want that. My budget for staff is better used for staff who do a job which is helpful to the company.
I guess if 40,000 providers did hire say 8 employees to handle calls (4 outbound, 4 inb
You can please some ... (Score:2, Funny)
What does this resolve? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can say this well, lets say I know how things work; they have automated spam blocking mechanisms to disable accounts who spam. A majority of accounts used for spamming are compromised, and that is the issue. Repeat offenders are terminated. No questions, and they can not reactivate. Spammers are just password cracking accounts and bulkmailing out of them. It sucks because a few people w
this is out of hand (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA:
"the RBL blacklist is used by some of the biggest ISPs in the world, including RoadRunner, USA.net, BT, Telstra -- and AOL itself"
I could send an email from my own account, to my own account, and it would be deleted as spam.
Re:this is out of hand (Score:2)
irony (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:irony (Score:2)
why is anyone still using MAPS? (Score:5, Interesting)
It was quite sad to see them fall to the dark side. It's even sadder to see that MAPS is still in active use by anyone outside of MFN.
Back-port (Score:5, Funny)
Happening to google too! (Score:2, Informative)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
[an address forwarded to gmail.com]
Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 10): 554 Service unavailable; Client host [64.233.184.203] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?64.233.184.203
--
The address: 64.233.184.203 is wproxy.gmail.com
Re:Happening to google too! (Score:2, Informative)
64.233.184.203 not listed in bl.spamcop.net [spamcop.net]
Re:Happening to google too! (Score:2)
Genuine users blocked (Score:2, Insightful)
Now coming to /.
whenever i try posting from home I get a message announcing "bad postings from your subnet.. hence you have been blocked" Now I have tried connecting to various wireless ne
Who still uses the MAPS RBL? (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, I just searched [mail-abuse.com] the MAPS RBL for the last ten spams rejected by my mail server and only two of the hosts were listed in the MAPS RBL.
Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as anyone hates AOL and finds this funny, it is more the entire anti spam community in general, than AOL in the short term.
On SpamCop too (Score:4, Informative)
Update from link (Score:2, Informative)
Fair is fair (Score:2)
UPDATED (Score:3, Interesting)
AOhell (Score:2, Insightful)
Judging by the fact that a large amount of spam we get is from AOL, I can see why they are getting blocked.
AOL profits from these spammers and they know it. Very soon, AOL needs to take control of their spammers and start blocking them. Apparently, this is either too difficult & time consuming for AOL, or they just don't care and know that the profits will just keep rolling in.
There are so many other better
Re:AOhell (Score:2)
The RBL lists have been around for a long time, yet there has been zero impact on spam. I'm frankly shocked that anyone still uses them at all.
Re:AOhell (Score:2)
The RBL lists have been around for a long time, yet there has been zero impact on spam. I'm frankly shocked that anyone still uses them at all.
Maybe there's zero impact on the amount of spam being sent, but there is a huge impact on the amount of spam being received. I block 90,000-120,000 spams per week by way of RBLs. These amount to huge amounts of bandwidth that I don't have sucked up by spam. Of those that make it through to the next level of filtering, there's still another 20,000-50,000 that get
Re:AOhell (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. MCI profits from spammers. You're talking out of your ass. You think they care about the monthly dialup access fees from spammers? AOL until recently had Carl Hutzler, one of the most respected names in anti-spam, who has turned AOL around and made them one of the leaders in anti-spam, from outbound port 25 blocking to SPF. Ask anyone on NANAE
MAPS is run by some righteous little twits driving their fiefdom of an RBL into irrelevance at flank speed. Most responsible admins have moved on to some subset of SORBS, Blitzed OPM, and the Spamhaus XBL, with perhaps SPEWS turned on for advisory data only.
You on the other hand just think you're hot shit because you don't like AOL.
Re:AOhell (Score:2)
Never really had a problem with AOL, although they DID blacklist a couple of our hosted domains due to spam issues, which we found out were caused by stupid website owners running formail.cgi scripts, which were expressly verbotten in the AUP for our hosting service...
They complained enough w
Re:AOhell (Score:3, Informative)
Don't credit things to people if they didn't do them. Carl wasn't responsible for outbound port 25 tagging/filtering/blocking. I know that for an absolutely certainty. And while Carl may have done a lot of anti-spam work, the outbound port 25 work is what dropped AOL from one of the top 5 spammers to not even on
Re:AOhell (Score:3, Informative)
I'd assume he's still doing good things at AOL as far as anti-spam goes, given his new title.
Re:AOhell (Score:2)
Though bad in many ways, AOL are not a spam-friendly operation by any means. You do not get a large amount of spam from AOL. What you get is a large amount of spam with forged headers that looks like it is from AOL. There's tons of that.
AOL are wielders of the special-issue BFG-9000 ultra-merciless LART, I'll say that for 'em. Draconian filters on anything coming in, and a distinctly Genghisian att
the shoe is on the other foot... (Score:2, Interesting)
My name is .... (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, poned, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Good... (Score:2)
less spam today... (Score:3, Interesting)
And really.. my rbl and filtered spambox only has a couple hundred spams in it, whereas it normally has ~600 by this time...
I might blackhole aol mails after this just to cut down on my daily intake of the processed pig.
Gomer Pyle quote: (Score:2)
the worse spam (Score:2)
Use RBL for TEMPORARY (4xx) rejections (Score:3, Insightful)
This way the accidentally blacklisted server has several days to straighten things out while the really spammy server gets overloaded with huge mail queue.
Using my skem [virtual-estates.net] milter is one way to do that intelligently... :-)
Re:Use RBL for TEMPORARY (4xx) rejections (Score:3, Informative)
Most spam engines don't use a mail queue, which is why greylisting [openbsd.org] works so well.
so what's the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for all the whiners complaining about being blacklisted, you don't have a 'right' not to be blacklisted. You don't have a 'right' to send your email to people who've decided they don't want it - and they have decided this, because they're using the blacklist. If they *do* want your email they'll stop using the blacklist that blocks you.
Time to get over yourself. You have no right to send email to anyone you please. Anyone can block you at any time, for any reason, and there's nothing you can do about it. Hell, I use a whitelist for my home network and that means that unless I know you your mail will NEVER get through. Are you going to tell me that I don't have a right to reject your mail out of hand?
Max
Re:A.O. What? (Score:5, Insightful)
(I posted the following in an earlier discussion on a different topic, but it is 100 percent applicable here.)
I am not an AOL customer, have never been, never will be (at least, not by choice), but I am glad AOL is there to serve the unwashed masses. Because a huge portion of their customer base is, shall we say, "uninformed," AOL has taken a number of measures to protect them (and their network) from malicious traffic. Based on anecdotal observation, it seems to be working.
Because hundreds of people have my "public" email address in their address books, I recive dozens (sometimes hundreds) of virues per week whenever there is an outbreak. However, I cannot recall the last time I received one from an AOL user.
I receive hundreds of (filtered) spam messages daily, but again, cannot recall receiving any from an AOL machine. (This based on source IP address, not the forged FROM line.)
On the flip side, 30-40 percent of spam comes from zombied Comcast and RoadRunner accounts (most from Comcast). The rest come from non-North American IP addresses.
Like I said, limited anecdotal observation, but it appears to me AOL is doing something right, and is the perfect ISP for the "uninformed" user.
Considering the size of their customer base, imagine how much more junk/malicious 'net traffic there would be without AOL.