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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
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...
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
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
AOL profits from these spammers and they know it.
.. hell, ask the kooks, they'll tell you AOL has a fraction of the spam problem anyone else does, and their main complaint is only bounce spam, which they've nearly eliminated this year. Carl has since moved on (got promoted I think) and left two more in his stead who hopefully will continue to be as effective as him.
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.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
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.
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