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AOL Sued For Over-Zealous Blocking
mik writes "America Online
has been sued by CI Host,
a Texas-based hosting company for defamation, interference with
contractual rights and unfair competition. CI Host
has been
awarded a temporary restraining order, though AOL has apparently not complied.
This may be the first such in a series of suits leading up to, perhaps, to class-action status relating to AOL's recent zealotry in
anti-spam policy
resulting in the presumption that shared-hosting providers are guilty (of spamming)
unless proven innocent."
I had the misfortune of having a dedicated server with them for 2 long years. The machine would lock up frequently, and i'd have to make a 30min call from Australia to the US to listen to their on hold crap so i could talk to a tech and then try and convince him to hit the big red button.
CI Host has a huge marketing and sales department and tiny tech support division. Dont you dare, ever, believe a word of their marketing crap. They suck. Pure and simple. They've cost me thousands because of the clients i've lost because of their incompetence. Some of the people are nice enough but they simply dont have the technical skills of other places.
I'm now with rackspace.com and they kick arse!
Don't be to quick to defend them.
0 27 3.html is another link.
http://www.forumhosts.com/cihost.htm for a taste of what these guys are like.
http://www.stevemaas.com/selbstbild/archives/00
Let's hope to god the EFF's and Timothy don't fall for their lawsuit stuff.
More of AOL's anti-spam zealotry is a good thing (I speak as someone who has had something like 10,000 emails blocked by them in the past few weeks).
Being as I at one time worked in the abuse capacity for a ISP. Although AOL may have over zealous policies as of late they do have a postmaster number which they could call and have the validity of the block checked. I had done this in the past and had resolution in ~24hours.
Just do a quick /. search to see what people think of ci host. I was a ci host customer back in 99/2000 when their whole accounting database was open to the internet, customer information and credit card numbers. There were $5000 of fraudulent charges on my check card around the turn of millenium from my information being readily available to any idiot with a web browser. The bank took care of everything but it was a pain the in ass.
AOL is, needless to say, an over-the-top form of User-Friendly setup for an ISP. Now you may be use to customizing everything that has a plug in it, but for a parent who just wants his kid to get connected for school/after school purposes... it's nice to know that your little one WON'T be getting offers to enlarge his pre-pubescent penis by three inches, increase in girth, etc etc...
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
spews.org
(and indirectly osirusoft.com)
selwerd.cx
blars.org
bl.reynolds.net.au
Personally I choose to use block lists that have clear open operating policies, including clear adding and removal methods. A small sample include:
spamcop.net
ordb.org
proxies.relays.monkeys.org
opm.blitzed.org
This is certainly not a comprehensive list, but it is a good start. A good comprehensive list is at: http://www.declude.com/JunkMail/Support/ip4r.htm
And most importantly, READ THE POLICIES OF THE BL *BEFORE* USING IT. The last thing you want is to start using a BL, only to find most of Asia, or big ISPs, are among the ones blocked, and you're losing legitimate email.
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
Among other petty annoyances, AOL is incorrectly refusing connections from blacklisted hosts, as follows:
According to RFC 821 (sections 4.3 and 4.2.2), the server can respond to new connections in with a 220 ("let's dance") or a 421 ("go away, I have a headache") response. Not a 554 ("you're lousy in bed") code. Among other things, the manner in which they reject mail from residential IPs causes it to languish in the queue, rather than bouncing as it should if they intend to permanently refuse delivery.
I'm sure they do this intentionally so that it will look like your mail server is at fault ("sorry, couldn't get through") rather than theirs ("buzz off, I don't like your IP address").
For those thinking that CIHost sounds like some insane overlitigous company that tries to use lawsuits to make its profit... You're right. :)
:) You can play with the search and creative misspellings, and you'll find a lot of posts about them.
I spend some time at WebHostingTalk.com (a huge forum site for web hosting), and they have a horrible reputation. Actually, you can't search for "CIHost" -- it's banned, apparently due to WHT itself being threatened with legal actions because of posts about CIHost in the forums. But I've read some posts about "See Eye Host" and such.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
So, given that their users have signed up consenting to this, the only people who can legitimately be pissed, are third parties - who have no right to use AOL's network at all.
nutter.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I work for an ISP (holding the name for obvious reasons). We recently had a customer abuse our AUP by sending 3,000+ unsolicited emails with attachments to AOL customers in just one week (total emails reached ~18,000). AOL in turn blocked any and every email with attachments from our domain indefinitely. Our legal team is now trying to resolve this issue with them. Even though emails without attachments go through fine, it has become a huge inconvience for many our customers. I don't understand why they did not block the specific account only instead of our domain. The following is the rejection notice we receive when sending emails with attachments to *@aol.com: > ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- > > > ----- Transcript of session follows ----- > ... while talking to mailin-02.mx.aol.com.:
> ... while talking to mailin-03.mx.aol.com.:
> >>> QUIT
I've been a happy CI Host customer for almost two years. My domain gets very little traffic, but the few times I've had to call for support, they've been quick and very helpful.
There are many parts to CI Hosts lawsuit.
Defamation: If it is shown that CI Host shouldn't have qualified as a spammer AOL has committed defamation by giving CI Host a bad name when they don't deserve it. There are legal precedents for legal reprecussions for defamation.
Interference with contractual rights: AOL is held to any contracts that they have with CI Host (if any.) There are legal precendents for legal reprecussions for breaking a contract.
Unfair competition: Suppliers to businesses must provide equal opportunity to all competitors. For (a simple) example, Cisco can't sell their parts to reseller A at a lower cost than they do to reseller B. There are legal precendents for legal reprecussion for interferring with fair competition.
I can't think of any contracts that AOL would have with CI Host but the point is that AOL can't do whatever it wants just because it isn't the government.
I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. The person suing here is not an AOL customer, but rather someone whose clients had a need to send mail to some AOL subscribers. So, they aren't free to simply choose another company; they never chose AOL in the first place!
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
You're citing an out-of-date RFC. 821 was superseded by RFC 2821, which makes it clear that 554 is a valid connection-opening response, to indicate that mail service is not available. (Indeed, 2821 spells out two codes for use at connection establishment -- 220 to accept, or 554 to reject access.) AOL is correctly using 554 to indicate that it will not provide mail service to your IP address.
A 4xx code would be improper in this case. 4xx codes indicate temporary failures. They mean that the client should queue its messages and retry them later, rather than returning a bounce message to the sender. That's not what is intended here -- the server doesn't want you to retry, it wants you to not try. A 5xx error code is correct.
It's called "tortious interference in a business relationship". In some states, AOL may be forced to pay triple damages plus law fees (note, triple damages would cover lost business).
RoadRunner now has fairly detailed instructions on dealing with the "why are you blocking my email" situation. The linked example is for residential users. Commercial users complaining about blocks are referred to their own ISP and told to have them get in touch with RoadRunner (this may be just for businesses that have been misidentified as being in a residential IP block).
Having a web-based email account can come in handy, especially if you choose a reputable (no hotguy68734@) handle and a known provider (Yahoo, Fastmail).Besides, this gives you an alternate means of contact if your own mail servers become unavailable (blackout, crash, backhoe).
Calling a RoadRunner 800# might have helped.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
CI Host is an evil company. I can't stress that enough. How a company that operates in the manner in which they do is allowed to continue is beyond me.
Last year I had an account with HostDepartment, which was working very well for me. One day I was told by a friend that something bad had happened to my site. I looked at it and panicked, CI Host had hijacked HostDepartment's domains or something and were telling everyone that they owed them money and had gone out of business.
HostDepartment are an equally bad company too, steer clear of them. For more information, see the very first news & views article on my website.