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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 don't want to hear from anyone who uses AOL anyways.
No smoking sigs indoors.
You mean AOL isn't the only one forwarding spam?
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.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
HA HA!
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
I have been filtering AOL along with many other free email hosts, straight to the trash. If I know someone with an email there, I whitelist them.
I just about spewed my lunch across my lovely dual monitors... don't do that!
Damien
AOL is definately a group that deserves a bit of their own treatment. I've found so many networks get blocked for insignificant things. I have a mailing list of just my members, and no one else. Because one person accidently hit "Abuse" (of the 40 AOL people on the list), we were blacklisted. Not just an IP, but a
It's not the first encounter I've had with AOL. Anyone who sends mail eventually finds themselves blacklisted with AOL. They're just a pain in the ass. Unfortunately, you can't just convince anyone using AOL's email to switch to someone else. If only it were so easy.
At one time, AOL blacklisted my home IP. It was a static IP, which I was the only user of. I don't know which genius did it, but someone who I was personally mailing (like, not even Bcc lists or newsletters) must have hit the abuse button.
I'm sure it helps them out. If they can knock out 25% of their mail load at any given time, it's 25% less mail they have to process. Who cares which 25%, eh?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You can please some of the people some of the time... but this should just about please everyone :)
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
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.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
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.
Now we need to find a way to black-hole all of the AOL CDs being spamed to my snail mail address!
Google is getting blocked to spam too:
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
[an address forwarded to gmail.com]
Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 10): 554 Service unavailable; Client host [64.233.184.203] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?64.233.184.203
--
The address: 64.233.184.203 is wproxy.gmail.com
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
I quit using MAPS years ago because it was no longer effective, especially for business use. Their solution to one spam from a customer of a large ISP is to block the whole ISP or, if you were lucky, just the whole contiguous IP space that one spam came from. Still, this meant something like a quarter of the Fourtune 500 had mail servers being blocked, which is unacceptable for a business-to-business email server. Worse, it rarely blocked much spam.
In fact, I just searched the MAPS RBL for the last ten spams rejected by my mail server and only two of the hosts were listed in the MAPS RBL.
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 is listed on SpamCop too. http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=checkblock&ip=20 5.188.157.37
[UPDATE: Looks like MAPS changed its mind. As of Tuesday afternoon ET (GMT -4:00), AOL's listing at the MAPS site is gone, and a lookup shows AOL's mail servers no longer seem to be on the MAPS RBL list. No word yet on whether AOL resolved the spam problems, or if MAPS just decided to give AOL more time.]
Apparently AOL got their heads out of their collective asses. MAPS pulled the entries as of noon Eastern time (-5 GMT).
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
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
One of my most frequest complaints from my customers has to do with their inability to send email to AOL customers. AOL has shown little restraint when it comes to blacklisting others. This is a nice wake up call for AOL. Live by the blacklist, die by the blacklist.
Inigo Montoya, you sent me SPAM, prepare to die.
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
...but what will I do with my remaining 67578 free hours?
-- often wrong; never in doubt
well, with less spam today I cannot say I am complaining at all...
And really.. my rbl and filtered spambox only has a couple hundred spams in it, whereas it normally has ~600 by this time...
I might blackhole aol mails after this just to cut down on my daily intake of the processed pig.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
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.
On the other hand, AOL is overzealous with their own spam blockers, so meh
Yes they are. But in their defense, they are quick to unblock you provided you comply with their request (fixing the problem, setting up reverse, etc).
My only complain is that any email you send to them gives you an autoreply telling you to phone their postmaster helpdesk.
But at least you don't get caught in limbo like so many unlisting procedures out there.
No sig
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?
One of the big necessities we had when picking our current system was that it had to be able to validate an address during the SMTP exchange; it does this by having access to the same database the mail storage back-end uses for deciding where to stuff the message after it is accepted. If it isn't in the database, the message gets rejected before it enters the hard-working parts of the system.
That's just one of the gauntlets it passes through on our system, but it stops 20% of the traffic. Our internal block lists get another 50%, all with the speed of a few SQL queries. The 30% that's left do not impose much load on the other tests, and our whitelists jump over the later tests for recognized senders.
But, if you are like some universities and businesses, and can't reject ANYTHING due to policy, it's a moot point, anyway...