Re: [PLUG] AOL weird spam behavior

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff@purple.com>]

On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 05:20:59PM -0400, Stephen Gran wrote:
>   [26 lines, 208 words, 1336 characters]  Top characters: -etoansr
> 
> On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 04:27:56PM -0400, Jeff Abrahamson said:
> > I'm trying to figure out how to handle AOL.
> > 
> > I was having trouble with AOL not accepting mail from me.  I would get
> > messages like this from them:
> > 
> > I set this up.  All of the complaints are AOL users complaining about
> > legitimate mail coming from purple.com hosted lists to which they have
> > subscribed.
> 
> Use verp for mailing lists.  You will then see who complained from the
> envelope that aol sends the message back to.  then just unsubscribe the
> individual knuckleheads and wait.  There's nothing else you can do with
> aol, unfortunately - they just are too bug to listen or care.

I think what happens is that AOL users click some "this is spam"
button and I get an email sent to a special purple.com address.  That
email has an attached email message (no headers) with the suspected
spam.  But, as indicated by Tom, I have no idea who claimed it was
spam.  I suspect the users are thinking they are going to block that
sender, not the list.

Anyway, I don't think verp will help here because of that.  It's not
the bounce, it's the scomp@aol.com report.

I talked to "postmaster support" at AOL.  It's staffed by morons.
Example: first question, "Are you sending your mail from an email
address or from a domain."  I'm not exaggerating, I'm afraid.  It
didn't get much better.

I asked about white listing.  He referred me to a URL,

    http://postmaster.aol.com/tools/whitelist_guides.html

that says that to be white listed you have to send at least 100 emails
per month to AOL users.  Oh, well.

I think I'm going to go ahead with the mass unsubscribe of AOL users
with invitation to resubscribe.  So dumb.

*Sigh*.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>    +1 215/837-2287
 GPG fingerprint: 1A1A BA95 D082 A558 A276  63C6 16BF 8C4C 0D1D AE4B

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