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AOL Placed on Spam Blacklist
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 RBL admins screw everyone. If they think everyone is going to sit back and not mind that major ISPs like AOL have been blacklisted, they are (hopefully) if for a rude awakening.
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?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
This doesn't resolve anything except make end users on both sides angry. This is very unproductive for both parties.
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 who do it ruin it for everyone!
I was helping a fellow member who couldn't CC 20 people on his biker club list. So, AOL is aware of the issue and trying their best to crack down on the bulk mail. Adding them to a blocklist WILL NOT stop bulk mail. This shakeup is not gonna "make AOL" doing anything.
I would think your in a minority. I would be willing to bet a large segment of the internet population gets regular email from AOL users. Whether they be clients or family members, who you can't simply tell "AOL is a piece of crap, get a different ISP." Why? Because either they'll ignore me or I'll have to spend every other weekend having to show them how to do what they used to do on AOL.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
To me this is ironic, because AOL is currently refusing e-mail from my server, due to unspecified (and assuredly inaccurate) allegations of spam coming from it.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
My cousing uses AOL. I haven't been able to send e-mail to him for a long while already (they blacklisted us); now I guess he can't write me, either!
;-) Seriously, though, it's like we're going backwards in time, when you couldn't just send e-mail to one address to reach somoene. If I want to contact him, I have to log into Yahoo, use that account...
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
Now coming to /. /. (before you pounce on me, I have emailed to the id that comes up in the message, got a response that i'm in timeout zone. Forever???)
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 networks. Still the same message. My karma is 'good'. It implies that most of my postings get modded up. Still I'm BANNED from
Now coming back to the real problem. AOL is a profit driven corporate. Imagine if they insert the names/ids of small time rivals in their list. The poor souls would have no clue what hit them.
fuvoo: watch something
It seems like the anti's aren't doing themselves much good at the moment, when events like this hit the news, the block lists just loose credit in people's minds
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.
Business Voyeur
AOL has had a large swath of its IP addresses...Sorry I can't show you this listing.
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 alternatives to AOL, I don't even know why people use AOL in the first place. I guess it is all those damn install cds they dump all over the place like rabbit poop.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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?
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Learn to read. He said " I don't want to hear from anyone who uses AOL anyways." See that? "I don't". Not "Who would". "I don't"!!!!
Actually, this surprises me as an exception rather than the rule as far as AOL is concerned.
(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.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
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. 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.
More likely that MAPS got their heads out of their collective asses and removed the block.
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 milter is one way to do that intelligently... :-)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
is to go after the people who are advertising through spammers. If you hold those businesses responsible for the spam, then they will stop seeing spam as a reasonable option.
There are a couple of foreseeable problems:
1. Someone is always going to hire a spammer (viagra merchants, member-enlargment firms, etc.). The problem won't ever completely go away.
2. It could be used as a means of forcing competition out of business (eg., Microsoft hires a spammer to create fake Linspire spam or vice-versa).
3. Pure accidents - some idiot clicks the wrong button in their mailing software and the the internal corporate viagra offer goes out to all the customers on the lawn-mower sales list.
4. Someone just decides to be an a-hole about things.
Of the problems listed above, #1 and #3 already exist. #2 and #4 are hypotheticals, but could actually happen.
The only thing we haven't done in the entire process of blocking spam, is to hold the original advertisers responsible. Instead, we go after the spammers, ignoring the fact that they have to get their money from somewhere.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
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
What exactly is the problem here? People subscribe to blacklists because they think the folks maintaining the blacklist are doing a good job; if they aren't the subscribers will stop using that blacklist. End of story.
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
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?