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."

Comments

Accountability

[winkydink]

I'm a big fan of MAPS, but one would think that over the years they've developed some very high-level contacts over at AOL and that they would call these guys up and talk it out before undertaking a major blacklisting.

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.

this is out of hand

[nganju]

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.

why is anyone still using MAPS?

[frankie]

MAPS stopped being a reputable service ever since they joined MFN/Abovenet. I say this as someone who previously supported MAPS and even donated to their legal defense fund.

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.

Re:Overzealous

[Oculus Habent]

AOL is not "special" in that circumstance. The short response timeframe is a little harsh, but I don't keep up on my blacklist policies, so I can't compare it to others.

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.